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How to Meet Challenges with Systems Thinking

Written by Brandon Klein | Jul 14, 2014 4:44:36 PM

Your life continuously presents new challenges. And your success directly depends on your ability to meet these challenges. You can choose various approaches – react on problems as they come, appeal to supernatural forces or seek for advise.

But how many times

    you didn’t understand why thing happen and what to do
    you found that reality and challenges are more complex than they seem
    your solutions create new problems and make things worse

Welcome to the messy world of complex systems that encompass your life and compose our Universe.

    1. You can be the master of your life if you can understand and influence systems involved in your challenges. That means that you should become the Master of Systems Thinking.

However, it is daunting task to understand and use the systems around you. That is why many people stuck without career growth, cannot achieve their top level or stop pursuing big goals. They gave up attempts to master systems that drive our projects and life.
B. What is a system and systems thinking?

system - a group of independent but interrelated elements comprising an integrated whole

systems thinking - the process of understanding how system elements interact to produce system behavior.
The systems are characterized by

    structure - composition of elements
    behavior - involved inputs, processes and outputs of material, energy and/or information
    interconnections - structural and functional relations between elements
    emerging properties -system properties that do not appear in individual elements (e.g. car individual parts cannot move by themselves)

Systems are everywhere. They interact with each other and environment, belong to other systems and contain own sub systems. In addition, we, humans, constantly create new systems that usually cause more problems than solve.