This deck was used for a learning lunch at Mutually Human. Think of it like two lightning talks with slides. It touches on the tip of the iceberg.

1. Brief, Very Very Brief
Intro to Systems Thinking
Learning Lunch

2. Goal of this slide deck
• Intro on Systems Thinking
• Some examples and such
• Resources for diving deeper

3. Brief Intro

4. Systems thinking is fundamentally different from
traditional forms of analysis.

5. Take these three parts

6. Traditionally, we might narrow in one part at a time.

7. If I change Part #1 then that will cause X to
happen.

8. But in Systems Thinking, you look at entire system,
and the interactions between them.

9. If I change Part #1 how does that influence Part
#2?
If Part #2 is influenced then how does that
influence Part #3?
So on and so forth.

10. Each part of the system becomes both cause
and effect.

11. How does one actor in the system influence others?

12. And in what ways?

13. Concrete Example
(Reinforcing Process)

15. As sales goes,
so does # of
customers

16. As # of
customers goes,
so does word-of-
mouth

17. As word of mouth
goes, so does
sales

18. Concrete Example
(Balancing Growth)

20. As relaxation
exercises goes,
our stress level
goes in the
opposite way

21. As stress level goes,
so does our stress
level gap.

22. There’s a decision
point, our acceptable
stress level informs
us about using
relaxation exercises.

23. Concrete Example
(Shifting the Burden)

25. There’s a problem symptom ->

26. The more people we
have on the bench
the more likely we
are to engage in a
symptomatic
solution.

27. Engaging in
symptomatic
solutions lessens
our problem
symptom.

28. Engaging in
symptomatic
solutions increases
the self-imposed
limit we put on
ourselves for
working towards
fundamental
solutions.

29. By limiting our
availability to work
towards the fundamental
solution we decrease our
chances of reaching the
fundamental solution.

30. Engaging in a
fundamental solution
has a longer delay

31. As fundamental
solutions go, the
problem symptom
does the opposite.

32. Ways of thinking

33. A Visual Language

34. A pattern
library

35. are occurrences we encounter daily
are accumulated “memories” of events
over time
are ways in which the parts of
the system are organized

36. Structure Influences
Behavior

37. Resources & Tooling

38. kumu.io
• Web-app for visualization complex information and
relationships
• Like github but for data visualizations
• Opensource projects are free!

39. thesystemsthinker.com
• Site with lots of good content and information
around Systems Thinking

40. The Fifth Discipline
• Great book.
• First half, fantastic.
• Second half, half fantastic.
• Back quarter, quarter
fantastic.