A Complete Set of Systems Thinking Skills

Abstract

This paper proposes a complete set of systems thinking skills for use across many different disciplines. The paper places particular emphasis on the ability to assess each of the skills quantitatively, a comprehensible description of the skills, and the completeness of the set. The proposed skills were derived from a review of the literature, the application of systems thinking experience, and the application of systems thinking to itself. Several different sets of systems thinking skills can be found throughout the systems community, but common key concepts can be distilled from these sets. When combinations of these concepts are considered separately, holistically, and together as a system, a single, cohesive set of skills emerges. Systems thinking is widely believed to be of critical importance across many different fields; it has been said that skillful use of systems thinking skills could have prevented such disasters as World War II, the Great Depression, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, as well as lessened or avoided the effects of many major environmental disasters. At the opposite send of the spectrum, systems thinking can be used to enhance health care, improve the economy, improve technology, laws, international and interpersonal relationships, schools, organizations, and so much more. However, this very useful skill set still lingers outside mainstream education. To address this problem, a set of assessable, comprehensible systems thinking skills is required. Such skills are defined, described, and detailed in this paper.

Applying influence for systems change in a large-scale community-based prevention intervention

“…exploring multiple perspectives, maintaining boundaries, identifying feedback loops) that is relevant to health promotion practitioners who are trying to solve complex public health problems. 32 A limitation of this paper is the narrow focus on self in the system. Nonetheless, this focus appears to be unique within the health promotion literature.…”

The Lake Urmia vignette: a tool to assess understanding of complexity in socio‐environmental systems

“…Other studies proposed different variations of the taxonomy (e.g. Arnold and Wade, 2017). While these frameworks are very helpful, most of these studies are more conceptual in nature, and their testing and validation in educational contexts are forthcoming.…”

Charting a Clear Course Through the Methodological Jungle: Lessons About PAR from and for Simulation‑Based Educational Research

“…This links strongly to the systems thinking approach (Senge, 1990) which advocates for a holistic view of the system in question with the goal of creating learning organisations. Part of this holistic perspective involves identifying connections between sub-parts of the system that are not obvious and understanding why they are behaving the way they are (Arnold & Wade, 2017). According to Arnold and Wade (2015) systems thinking can be defined as a "system of synergistic analytic skills used to improve the capability of identifying and understanding systems, predicting their behaviours, and devising modifications to them in order to produce desired effects".…”

“…This resonates with the researchers as multiple interventions may converge to improve, for example, the teamwork skills of students. Feedback loops play an important role in systems thinking in terms of garnering growth and ensuring large impacts from limited resources (Arnold & Wade, 2017;Karstens & Manduca, 2017). For example a negative feedback loop governs departures from goals and serves to balance efforts before the escalation becomes overly negative.…”

“…For example the researchers noted that pointed reflection questions were answered more holistically and provided more opportunities for the kind of reflection that was envisaged so all reflection questions were revamped to take advantage of this insight. The discussion on feedback loops highlights succinctly the two facets or skill areas in systems thinking that must be mastered, namely, gaining insight which involves improving systemic insight of a particular system and secondly, using insight which involves application of the systemic insight gained (Arnold & Wade, 2017). It is no wonder that the systems thinking approach offers the potential for an ambitious educational interventional to amount to more than the sum of its parts (Kastens & Manduca, 2017).…”