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tl;dr
Chapter One: The Basics
System = elements + interconnections + purpose
A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. (p. 13)
Relationships are hard to see, but purposes are harder. They are not usually explicitly stated. However, they are most critical determinants of the system’s behavior.
Keeping sub-purposes and overall systems purposes in harmony is an essential function of successful systems (p. 16)
Reminds me a lot to Extreme Programming Explained and the Theory of Constraints:
The Theory of Constraints shares with other theories of organizational change the assumption that the whole organization is focused on overall throughput, not on micro-optimization. If everyone is trying to make sure his function is not seen as the constraint, no change will happen…
đź”— to original context
System thinkers see the world as a collection of stocks along with the mechanisms for regulating the levels in the stocks by manipulating flows. That means system thinkers see the world as a collection of feedback processes.
(balancing loops and reinforcing loops, system zoo)
Part two: Systems and Us
If the biota, in the course of aeons has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering. -Aldo Leopold, forester
Characteristics of a good functioning system:
- Resilience
not the same thing as being static or constant over time (p. 77)
Systems need to be managed not only for productivity or stabil- ity, they also need to be managed for resilience- the ability to recover from perturbation, the ability to restore or repair themselves. (P. 78)
Self org: learn and evolve Like resilience, self-organization is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity and stability. Productivity and stability are the usual excuses for turning creative human beings into mechanical adjuncts to production processes. Or for narrowing the genetic variability of crop plants. Or for establishing bureaucracies and theories of knowledge that treat people as if they were only numbers (p.79)
Self-organization produces heterogeneity and unpredictability (…) These conditions that encourage self-organization often can be scan for individuals and threatening to power structures (p. 80)
INSERT HERE A SUMMARY OF THE WHOLE HIERARCHY
The original purpose of a hierarchy is always to help its originating subsystems do their jobs better. This is something, unfortunately, that both the higher and the lower levels of a greatly articulated hierarchy easily can forget. Therefore, many systems are not meeting our goals because of malfunctioning hier- archies.(P. 84)
When a subsystem’s goals dominate at the expense of the total system’s goals, the resulting behavior is called suboptimization. Just as damaging as suboptimization, of course, is the problem of too much central control. (P.85)
Why Systems Surprise Us
You can’t navigate well in an interconnected, feedback-dominated world unless you take your eyes off short-term events and look for long-term behavior and structure; unless you are aware of false boundaries and bounded rationality; unless you take into account limiting factors, nonlinearities and delays. You are likely to mistreat, misdesign, or misread systems if you don’t respect their proper- ties of resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy (p. 87)