Systems Thinking: An Overview
How to describe systems and their inter-dependencies...
This is a big subject and I only plan to provide a simple overview here. If you want to find out more details, check out the References section on the right (as well as the countless resources available on the Internet). The main book I use and recommend is 'Seeing The Forest For The Trees' by Dennis Sherwood.
Systems Thinking is about studying a system as a whole (also sometimes called 'holistic' thinking). The idea being that a system cannot be truly understood by examining its individual components. For example, the success of a team in a competition cannot be predicted by studying each individual player - it's how they come together as a team that creates the performance on the day. Building your ideal 'dream team' of the most talented players, whilst fun to do in a fantasy league, is unlikely to guarantee you a winning team in the real world - it assumes a team is successful solely because of the individual talent it contains. If that were true, there would be no competition...
One of the reasons a system cannot be fully understood by examining its individual parts is a system property called emergence. Team work is an example of an emergent behaviour - it doesn't exist in each individual in your sports team, it emerges when individuals work together as a team. If you break up the team, you lose the team work. Emergent properties are what make a system greater than the sum of its individual parts.
Systems thinking enables you to identify potential implications from changing an element within a system - it's all about joining the dots! Being able to describe a systems interdependencies can highlight why a seemingly irrelevant change to just one element can lead to disastrous consequences (or unrivalled success).
In short, systems thinking helps improve analysis, understanding and decision making. That's got to be a good thing :-)
Causal Loop Diagrams
Causal Loop diagrams are key component of systems thinking - they are a visual method for describing the relationships between the elements that combine to form a system.
This diagram is a casual loop for a rider and horse competing in a show jumping competition. Go to sub-topic: Causal Loop diagrams for a brief explanation about how to draw causal loop diagrams.
Drawing a system as a series of connected loops with inputs and outputs can show how different elements combine to either strengthen or balance a system. These diagrams are not meant to be perfect - just like the real world. But, when drawn correctly, they should look obvious. The goal is to draw the system as it is, not as you would like it to be. Once everyone agrees that this is how a system behaves, you can start to show how changing elements within the system will change the behaviour of the whole system, and in what way.