Subject: Definition of System Thinking

Posted by Jack Harich on 11/16/2007
In Reply To:Definition of System Thinking Posted by Alice Squires on 11/16/2007

Message:

Or we tend to first jump to an event oriented view, rather than a system dynamics based view, which requires training the average person doesn't have.

BTW, I'm a systems engineer too, from Georgia Tech. I'm now rather late in my career, and am attempting to apply my analytical skills to the sustainability problem. It appears that most people working on this problem lack certain skills that could make a large difference, so maybe us system engineers can help. I self-taught myself system dynamics from Sterman's book, starting in 2003, so I still have a lot to learn.
> In reading your definition two things come to mind, I hope you don't mind my sharing them.
>
> First, I have many quotes from Jay Forrester of his feeling and
> concerns about the term 'systems thinking', and I view his commentary
> in that light. For example, the most recent Jay Forrester quote I have
> is from Lawrence M. Fisher's article Fisher, L. M. (8-26-05). "The
> Prophet of Unintended Consequences." strategy+business
> http://www.strategy-business.com/press/16635507/05308:
>
> "Jay Forrester confesses to a certain ambivalence about Dr. Senge's
> book. He is glad of its success, but disappointed that the book doesn't adequately explore the assumptions that went into the models underlying the archetypes.
> "The trouble with systems thinking," he says, "is it allows you to
> misjudge a system. You have this high-order, nonlinear, dynamic system
> in front of you as a diagram on the page. You presume you can
> understand its behavior by looking at it, and there's simply nobody
> who can do that." For his part, Dr. Senge says his mentor's concern
> is justified, but there is still a value in introducing systems
> thinking to people who may never go on to system dynamics." (p. 10-11,
> Fisher)
>
Nice. Thanks for sharing this, on a beautiful Fall day. The quote I used from Forrester in my definition of structural thinking is from 2/24/2007 on this very list. Actually I expected this would raise the most eyebrows here. Notice how Forrester says:

"I believe that the drift toward systems thinking and away from explicit simulation is apt to be harmful to the understanding of systems."

I discern from this that not just the term but the whole conventional notion of systems thinking has become corrupted. So I was offering an alternative term that is hopefully less easily corrupted, and gives trainers and writers another option.

In the very small amount of training I've done, "structure" does a much better job than "system" when it comes to starting a model. You don't want to capture the system in your dynamic hypothesis or first rough model sketch. You want to capture the structure of the problem.

Ditto for explaining what modeling is. You are capturing the structure that matters, and ignoring the rest.
> Second, the Wikipedia definition holds no weight to me.
I agree with everything you say below. The definition was introduced with this sentence: "The tendency toward pseudo systems thinking can also be seen in this definition of systems thinking from Wikipedia." So the Wiki definition was not presented as a "good" definition, but a questionable one.

I think I see my error. The Wiki definition came right after the Forrester quote, so perhaps you were expected a continuation of high qualitiy quotes. So I've modified the web page to say this about the Wiki definition: "Caution: This is quoted as an example of pseudo systems thinking, not as a good definition."

The Wikipedia definition was chosen because it represents a popular consensus.

Sorry to cause a problem. Great feedback!

Jack