SYSTEMS THINKING

System Thinking

It is a new perspective and way of understanding reality.

● Emphasizes the relationship among a system’s parts and seeing the whole picture.
● Peter Michael Senge an American system scientist who wrote The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice
of the Learning Organization.
● Understanding the Forces and Interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems.
SYSTEM

● Set of parts and elements that interact to produce a unified whole.

● It is different from just a collection of parts. It requires each part to work and interact with all other
parts to function as one.
● Collection on the other hand are parts which does not intend to work as one.
LET US IDENTIFY IF WHETHER IT IS A
SYSTEM OR COLLECTION
 According Senge
The discipline of system thinking helps us to see how to change system more effectively, and to act more in tune with the
natural process of the natural and economic world.
System Thinking is used to analyze patterns in an organization by looking at it from a holistic viewpoint rather than small unrelated
manageable parts. Senge himself describes the elephant metaphor. When you split an elephant in two, you do not have two small
elephants which you can take care of. You can only take care of the one complete elephant. An organization is like a living organism and
should according to Senge also be managed as one.
SYSTEM THINKING IS ESSENTIAL BECAUSE:

1. It expands the range of choice available for solving a problem.

2. It makes us aware that there are no perfect solution.
3. It provides tools to describe and communicate our understanding of systems.
4. It serves as diagnostic tool that surfaces one’s mental models which contain deeply-ingrained beliefs
and assumptions.