accomplishments.
■ Bobby studies maps of his hunting area, studies the flora and fauna therein, monitors weather patterns, and analyzes changes in elevation of the terrain. He applies both structured analysis and “a gut feeling” that he has developed over time to determine what this information implies.
■ He periodically reassesses the situation during each hunting trip, evaluating presenting events and circumstances to recognize unanticipated and unexpected occurrences that might influence his thinking and behavior during the remainder of the trip.
■ Bobby has conversations with as many individuals as he can who might be familiar with the area, the wildlife, and prevailing or emerging situations, events, and circumstances.
These examples reflect the integrated application of both types of discovery questions as well as both System 1 and System 2 thinking. Bobby integrates these methods to improve his performance as a hunter, just as we each have the opportunity to integrate practical concepts from cognitive psychology into our work and daily lives.
We consider systems thinking to be a key element of strategic thinking. Much has been written about systems thinking since noted systems scientist Barry Richmond began studying and writing about the topic in the late 1990s.10 Richmond considers most challenges we face to be multifaceted, interconnected, and constantly changing. He stresses the challenge of recognizing and understanding these interdependencies when dealing with such complexity. Given this challenge, he has been a champion for more effective methods of thinking.
Unfortunately, many people do not think in a way that is likely to recognize and understand the complexity that surrounds them. Richmond notes that many people are raised to be linear, sequential, and one-dimensional thinkers. For our purposes, we will focus our discussion on the tendency of some individuals to demonstrate a “checklist” mentality. While Richmond identifies other important implications of linear thinking, we emphasize the checklist mentality because it is particularly relevant to our exploration in this book.
One implication of having a checklist mentality is considering “cause” to be the one or two actions that occur immediately prior to a particular event. Such a cause-effect relationship can reveal an unconscious assumption that only directly linked factors can influence an event in meaningful ways, underestimating the relevance and impact of indirect causes and influences.
Whenever an incident occurs, an individual using this mode of thinking would likely ask:
■ Have we identified the one or two actions immediately preceding the state, event, or incident? If so, check.
■ Have we created a solution to be applied to the one or two contributing factors? If so, check.
Having evaluated and confirmed these two questions, the matter would be considered closed. Unfortunately, this leaves several additional questions unexplored:
■ What other factors directly or indirectly influence the event?
■ Do each of these factors contribute equally, or do some have a greater impact than others?
■ To what extent will a specific solution address the contributing factors?
■ Which solutions should occur first, second, and third to ensure optimal results?
■ Is this event a symptom of some larger problem?
Each of these questions combats the checklist mentality by opening up the possibility of discovering additional relevant data.
We frequently observe the checklist mentality at play when working with our clients, colleagues, and graduate students. We therefore recognize the strength of Richmond's recommendations for countering such a mind-set and helping us recognize and understand how things really work. His recommendations take the form of the following discrete types of thinking that contribute to his broader definition of systems thinking:
■ Dynamic Thinking: Involves recognizing patterns and trends that materialize over time rather than focusing on isolated factors, events, or circumstances.
■ Closed-loop Thinking: Involves recognizing that systems consist of connected and interdependent processes that do not flow one way but, rather, interact in dynamic and constantly changing ways. An important facet of closed-loop thinking is that it helps you recognize the role the individual plays in influencing the system.
■ Generic Thinking: Involves recognizing the broad-based and multifaceted implications of people, processes, systems, mechanisms, and events. Using an example common in business school courses, what might have happened if the railroad companies had considered themselves to be part of the transportation industry rather than merely being railroad companies? Might Southern Railway now be responsible for transporting supplies to the International Space Station?
■ Operational Thinking: Involves thinking in terms of how a system, process, or mechanism actually works rather than how it was intended to work. This helps one avoid falling into the trap of assuming that the system designed in the planning process will perform “in accordance to plan” simply because that was the original intent.
■ Continuum Thinking: Involves recognizing that what seems like opposing forces typically are connected and have certain commonalities or interdependencies. Such recognition allows one to find common ground upon which to build rather than continuing to focus on the boundaries and disconnections.
Each of these examples provides concrete ways to apply systems thinking to avoid the checklist mentality and to understand more accurately the dynamics typically at play in a given situation.
Just as systems thinking can help individuals think more strategically, it can also help teams and organizations. In the 1980s, Peter Senge conducted research to discover how organizations build learning capacity and why some organizations are better at learning than others. The practices that differentiate the effective learning organization are referred to as the Five Learning Disciplines, all of which we consider to contribute to strategic thinking:
● Shared Vision: Involves formulating a compelling vision to create commitment among a group to “pull” individuals toward the envisioned future state.
● Mental Models: Involves surfacing the values, assumptions, and expectations that determine the way people think and behave. We will describe tools later in this chapter that can help challenge existing assumptions and ensure that contributors working together to turn the vision into reality do so in a consistent and mutually supportive manner.
● Personal Mastery: Involves taking steps to strengthen self-awareness about how we think, draw conclusions, make decisions, and manage conflict, as well as how we apply these to establish, manage, and strengthen relationships.
● Team Learning: Involves teams working together to review situations and gain mutual understanding of what they had hoped to accomplish, how things progressed, and how they handled unexpected and unplanned events. Doing so can reveal underlying and contributing factors, and identify necessary steps to increase effectiveness and efficiency in the longer term. Again, we will describe tools later in this chapter that can help teams work together to identify lessons learned and establish new best practices.
● Systems Thinking: Helps teams and team members recognize interconnected factors and forces that influence or impact events, analyze events to understand related and contributing challenges and opportunities, and identify ways to leverage the opportunities and mitigate the challenges.
Barry Richmond, “Systems Thinking: Critical Thinking Skills for the 1990s and Beyond,”
