Book Review: Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Donella Meadows

Three-Sentence Summary

If you ask me the most insightful subject I have ever learned through university study, I will say System Engineering, an interdisciplinary engineering and engineering management field. It uses System Thinking and System Theory, the core topic of the book we will discuss in this post. It is a transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and multi-perspectival field that collects and restructures concepts and principles from engineering, biology, economics, political science, etc.

Who Is This Book For?

It is tough to recommend books about System Theory. People who like them are most likely to have been utilizing the principles in practice. Seeing all those practices chain into a more robust solution to a more prominent topic can be refreshing. People who never see things through the lens of a complex system might find every single topic is self-evident, while the connections are either loose or even contradictory.

The subject of system thinking can be taught. But it can only be understood by the person themself. We use the verb 悟(wù) in Chinese to describe this transition. It can be loosely translated as Self Enlighten. Suddenly, you will see the world from a different angle. You might not rush to conclusions when discussing the cause of a single event. You might start to notice the bias and mental shortcuts politicians use to trick the public. You might understand why certain business behaves that way even though many other models are popularly presented in the textbook. You might realize that sometimes optimizing a component inside a tech product will not lead to the overall best performance.

I am a new practitioner of system thinking. And I want to invite you to the club. Chances are that you are one of the chosen ones.

Major Concepts

Three major characteristics of the complex system hold the system together and develop itself:

1. Resilience. A system can contain multiple feedback loops and different system stocks (resources). Each feedback loop, balancing the stocks on a certain value operating through different mechanisms in different time scales with redundancy, makes the system resistant to perturbations. However, there is also a limit. Only by the time the system collapses people start to realize the existence of resilience. The nonlinear behaviors of the complex system to the inputs can create surprising reactions.

2. Self-organization. Complex systems can regenerate, diversify, and evolve into different systems from themselves. This phenomenon is also called emergent. Compared to the regeneration out of resilience that the system uses to restore the destroyed parts, self-organization will help the system to emerge new parts or behaviors from simple states.

3. Hierarchy. Through self-organization, complex systems also generate the hierarchy simultaneously. And hierarchy improves the resilience and stability of a system. It also reduces the amount of information that any part of the system has to keep track of. One must also remember that “Hierarchical systems evolve from the bottom up. The purpose of the upper layers of the hierarchy is to serve the purposes of the lower layers.”

System Thinking Toolbox:

The Iceberg Model

1. The Iceberg Model.

   The iceberg model is a valuable tool for fostering systems thinking and providing a comprehensive understanding of an issue within its larger system. The author didn’t present the model in this book. However, I linked it here as it summarizes the systematic thinking well.

   The iceberg model reveals the underlying structures that influence the event by prompting you to establish connections between an event - a singular incident or occurrence - and broader patterns of behavior, system structures, and mental models. Similar to an iceberg, where 90% remains hidden beneath the water's surface, these structures often remain concealed. Any solution that reacts directly to the event is like chasing an unleashed dog—it will lead you anywhere unexpected. Most sane people will try to follow the event with a time scale and summarize a set of patterns of behavior. However, if you rely on observation, the system will surprise you with a unicorn event. Then, it is time to dig into the system structure and reason bottom-up. Finally, nothing can compete with understanding the system mindset and being able to alter it. A paradigm shift can be explosive and powerful for a system with humans as major players.

2. Honor, respect, and distribute information.

   “Missing information flows is one of the most common causes of system malfunction.” Information flows over feedback loops, and delayed, biased, scattered, or missing information will lead to feedback loop malfunction. Adding or restoring information can be a powerful intervention, usually much easier and cheaper than rebuilding physical infrastructure.

3. Only intervene when it helps the system to run itself.

   As mentioned earlier, a complex system is resilient and self-organized. Too much intervention will only weaken the two most important characteristics and lead the system to collapse once the intervention can no longer sustain itself. What we should do before forcing changes is read the existing value in the structure of the system. Then put the responsibility into the hands of players within the system as the decision-maker can alter their behaviors through direct feedback loops and fast information flows.

4. Stay humble; stay a learner.

Related Readings/Resources

1. Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future. 2016. Jeff Howe, Joi Ito.
   A story version of the system thinking. A relaxing read about the same topic if the theory is too dry.

2. A New Discipline of Science The Study of Open Complex Giant System and Its Methodology. 1993. Qian Xuesen(钱学森).
   This is a short introductory article about system engineering from a major scientist who takes China to space.