I just recently began learning about a new way of thinking. An eye opening method for breaking down complex problems and discovering how the pieces are interlinked so that you can find ways to improve with high leverage (small efforts that provide outsized results).
I'm talking about Systems Thinking.
And, no, it's not very new at all. I'm actually kinda pissed that I hadn't been introduced to it until now.
It it originally attributed Ludwig von Bertalanffy, an Austrian studying biology in the 1920s. It was then picked up and digitized with early computers at MIT by Jay W. Forrester in the 60s. Since then it has been expanded upon by his students and has spread throughout the world of business, economics and governments - popularized by names such as Donella Meadows and Peter Senge.
It's a huge subject and area of study - so I won't pretend to be any kind of expert but I thought it'd be good to introduce the concept here and explore it further over time because I believe it could be incredibly valuable for many people and it's a shame that more of us don't discuss these ideas.
It came to me at first when I happened upon a recommendation in Audible for Peter Senge's - The Fifth Discipline. A book about managing and creating organizations which are able to learn, grow and adapt to changing environments.
That led me to a book by Donella Meadows called Thinking in Systems which was published posthumously in 2018, based on a draft she wrote and circulated within her peer group in the 1990s. It is a distillation of her 30 years of using this type of thinking on big topics like sustainability and climate.
The book is intended as a broad introduction to Systems Thinking, one aimed at peaking your interest and making you want to go deeper.
In her opening paragraphs one passage struck a particular cord to me, "... if you're frustrated with how hard it is to make a positive and lasting difference. I think that this book can help."
These books describe a new way of understanding and modeling complex, dynamic systems. While it isn’t a silver bullet, Systems Thinking is a tool to understand and talk about the way the world around us works. It helps us find ways to act in which we can impact positive change.
To start we need some definitions:
A System is a collection of elements which are interconnected in certain ways to produce a particular function or purpose.
Let's use an example of a football game.
Elements
These are the things which work together to achieve a purpose (people, objects, etc.). The players, the coach, the referees, the field, the ball. Elements of a system are usually the easiest aspect to identify.
Interconnections
How the elements are related and work together. For a football game you'd have: the rules of the game, the coach's strategy, even the laws of physics.
Purposes
To what function or end does the system exist? The purposes of a football game might be to win the game, have fun, get exercise o make millions of dollars if they’re professionals. Purposes can sometimes be hard to deduce. A stated purpose might even hide a real purpose when you look deeper. You need to observe the behavior of the elements and identify what outcomes they are achieving.
What does this have to do with our desire to build a better career?
One of the stories in Donella's book discusses an example of the dynamics of the illicit drug trade in a city. That system involves many subsystems but one includes the level of stress, happiness or hope the inhabitants of the city have and how that being low can impact the demand for escapes such as drugs and alcohol. Increasing stress can lead into a downward spiral, a feedback loop mechanism which causes other systems that interact with that feedback loop to take actions which they believe are in the best interests of their purposes but eventually end up causing more harm than good - in the case of the war on drugs.
If a Systems Thinker can use this tool to model something as ephemeral as those human emotions - why can't we use it to model our system of interaction with our work and career path?
What might that look like?
What would the elements be? Our purpose? How do the elements currently interact to achieve that purpose? Might we modify the interactions to better achieve our purpose? Change them, increase them or decrease them? Might it be better to alter our purposes all together? How does our own career system interacts with our family, personal and other aspects of our lives?
It would probably be different for each of us but I feel it'd be an worthwhile to take a stab at describing how your system works.
Again, the topic is huge and I'm learning along with you. So lets end here and save discussions of specifics of how to use Systems Thinking and modeling for future posts.
Till then, some resources for you to explore:
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And if there's anyone you'd like to discuss this concept with, forward or share this post with them so that you can build a group of your own Systems Thinkers.
-James
P.S. Looking for more? Check out some of my other recent posts about building a fulfilling career as a software engineer: Open for Business, Why?, Knowing What’s Possible