Mastering Systematic Thinking

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and structure determines system behavior.

What is System Thinking?

System thinking is an approach to problem solving by thinking holistically.

Different from the simple way of thinking about the problem itself intuitively, systematic thinking often needs to observe the behavior, structure, and association of complex systems, summarize its internal laws from different levels, and understand its operation. Furthermore, the internal laws can be changed by adjusting the structure of the system to achieve the goal of changing the behavior of the system.

Focus on the whole, not the parts. Focus on connections, not things.

For example, seeing an apple falling to the ground, the intuitive way of thinking is that the apple will fall to the ground when it is ripe.

Systems thinking may need to consider:

What is the connection between apples, fruit trees and the ground?

What internal law causes the behavior of the apple falling to the ground?

What factors can be changed to prevent apples from falling to the ground?

......

Another example is to see inflation, intuitive thinking may think that it is due to additional currency issuance. New systems thinking takes into account the cyclical laws and distribution mechanisms of the economy.

Why master systems thinking?

The world itself is a complex system, and many problems in real life are dealing with complexity. For example, designing a bridge, building an assembly line, implementing an enterprise software, and so on.

Simple systems tend to be linear, i.e. 1+1=2, while complex systems are usually nonlinear, i.e. 1+1>2.

Usually, due to the limitations of knowledge, cognition, and way of thinking, it is difficult for humans to intuitively see the whole of things.

Also, it's hard to understand it directly for most complex objects.

These all require dissection and thinking using systems thinking, which can help us analyze problems more comprehensively.

How to Master System Thinking

Systematic thinking can be mastered through training, which mainly includes the following steps:

First, to observe the dynamic behavior of the system, including system events, behavior characteristics, and summarize the behavior rules of the system.

Afterwards, its possible internal structure is predicted through behavioral laws.

Further, the divide-and-conquer system is divided into multiple small-scale simple systems according to the structure.

To verify that the predicted structures are accurate, prototypes can be built to conduct experiments. Make adjustments through experimental feedback.