Systems Thinking Skills

6 engines. 168 cylinders. One aircraft. In this 1940's factory image (digitally enhanced) , the wing of the Convair B‑36 Peacemaker is being fitted with six Pratt & Whitney R‑4360 Wasp Major radial engines each producing 3,800 horsepower. That’s 28 cylinders per engine. 168 cylinders across the wing. Built by Pratt & Whitney, this was the most powerful piston aircraft engine ever mass-produced. But the real lesson isn’t horsepower. It’s systems engineering. Every one of those engines had to integrate with: • cooling airflow • fuel distribution • propeller dynamics • structural loads in the wing • vibration modes across a 70-meter wingspan • maintenance accessibility for ground crews One engine is a machine. Six engines become a system. And systems create problems you can’t see when you design components in isolation. That’s why early strategic aircraft like the B-36 forced engineers to think beyond parts , toward integration, redundancy, and failure tolerance. A single engine failure was expected. The aircraft had to keep flying anyway. The lesson still applies today , whether you're designing spacecraft, AI systems, or aircraft: Engineering breakthroughs rarely come from bigger components. They come from better integration of complex systems. The engineers at Convair building this aircraft understood something we often forget in modern engineering culture: Complexity isn’t solved by adding technology. It’s solved by designing systems that survive it. One aircraft designed to carry the weight of an entire strategic doctrine. Sometimes the most important engineering achievement… is making complexity fly. Pic Credit : Jets n Props

🇸🇾🇸🇹🇪🇲🇸 🇹🇭🇮🇳🇰🇮🇳🇬 This was the single biggest learning I took from my years as a #diversity and #inclusion practitioner at Google, thanks to my brilliant former colleague Dr. Myosha M. – who introduced the concept to me. And seeing Harvard Business Review spotlight it this month reminded me just how pivotal it's been in shaping my career. The article makes a clear point: many "innovations" create as many problems as they solve, because they're designed in silos. Plastics made life cheaper and more convenient – and created an ecological nightmare. Ride-sharing expanded access – and gutted livelihoods. Breakthroughs and design thinking alone can't handle wicked problems. That's where systems thinking comes in: zooming out to see interdependencies, ripple effects, and relationships before zooming in to act. And honestly, DEI are the definition of a wicked problem: complex, entwined, yet unresolved despite the best efforts of people with noble interests at heart. Too often, we see linear, surface-level fixes like: ‣ Rolling out #UnconsciousBias training hoping that alone changes culture; ‣ Announcing hiring targets without rethinking criteria nor shifting retention practices; ‣ Celebrating "heritage months" without shifting power or budgets. A systems lens flips that: ‣ Instead of just bias training → embed equity checks and accountability loops into promotion processes, feedback systems, and manager incentives; ‣ Instead of hiring targets → redesign career paths so that minoritised employees stay, grow, and lead; ‣ Instead of one-off cultural celebrations → rewire procurement, governance, and leadership pipelines to shift actual resources and decision-making power. The HBR piece – written by Tima Bansal & Julian Birkinshaw – outlines four moves that resonate deeply with DEI work: 1️⃣ Define a desired future state (equity not as a slogan, but as the organisation's actual vision); 2️⃣ Reframe problems so they resonate across stakeholders (it's not "fixing women" but redesigning systems of overwork, pay, and recognition); 3️⃣ Focus on flows and relationships, not just one-off events (think: sponsorship networks, not just mentoring matchmaking); 4️⃣ Nudge the system forward with experiments (pilots that test structural change, then scale). These may sound abstract at first, but they're actually more grounded and effective than the window-dressing that burns out practitioners and disappoints employees while fuelling anti-DEI rhetoric. Because here's the thing: equity work should never be a side project, something delegated to an amateur, or a PR play. It's inherently a system redesign. And once you see it through that lens, the work gets harder — but also genuinely transformative. 💬 Curious: looking at your own org's DEI efforts, which feel most aligned to #SystemsThinking? ⬇️ Link to the article in comments.

I thought working more would make me indispensable. It almost made me irrelevant. Growth without systems is just delayed burnout. Managing 10+ clients alone didn’t make me impressive. It made me fragile. When I started my agency, I did everything. Strategy. Content. Client communication. Revisions. Operations. If something moved, I handled it. At first, I felt proud. I thought this was what growth looked like. Full calendar. Constant execution. Always needed. But slowly, something changed. Ideas became forced. Deadlines felt heavier. Quality started slipping. Not because I didn’t care. Because I became the bottleneck. The business depended on my energy. And energy doesn’t scale. That was the real lesson. Value doesn’t come from doing everything. It comes from designing systems that do. So I rebuilt the entire content process. Not by hiring more people. By building an intelligent content system that: – structures strategy – aligns positioning – standardizes execution – protects quality Now I don’t create from pressure. The system runs the engine. I oversee. I refine. I ensure precision. That shift didn’t just reduce stress. It created leverage. And leverage created stability. If you feel overwhelmed creating content, you don’t need more discipline. You need structure.

After 12+ years supporting organizations - from factory floors to boardrooms - here’s what I’ve realized: 👉 Most companies have a systems thinking problem. Because leaders are trained to see parts, not patterns. Here’s what that sounds like in practice: Low engagement?  ↳ Let’s buy a new pulse survey tool. High attrition?  ↳ Let’s launch an employer branding campaign. Inclusion issues?  ↳ Let’s run a one-off bias training. Each is a surface fix. But what’s beneath the surface? In one client organization, HR kept tweaking performance appraisal forms to improve fairness and motivation. But the real issue was that leaders weren’t giving feedback because it wasn’t safe to fail in their teams. No form could fix a fear-driven culture. In another, an inclusion program showed high attendance but low impact. Why? Because behind closed doors, team leaders were afraid to speak up in leadership meetings. They were modeling silence, not inclusion: “If I can’t say what I think, why would my team?” That’s the systems trap: We focus on what’s visible, not on what’s causal. And that’s why psychological safety still gets sidelined. If we practiced real systems thinking, it wouldn’t be a “nice to have” - it would be the starting point. Because in any human system: 📌 No safety = No learning 📌 No learning = No progress 📌 No progress = Talent loss, strategy failure, innovation stagnation We need less symptom-solving and more systems design. And we don’t need more tools. We need a new lens. P.S. Where have you seen surface fixes being used instead of systemic change? I'd love to hear your examples. Photo Credit: Pride Business Forum Conference, 2025

Understanding complex systems changed how I think about design, strategy and futures work. It’s also the fourth and final ellipse in my strategic design model. Complex systems have some unique qualities: - Cause and effect aren’t linear - Even observing the system changes its nature - You can only really make sense of what happened in hindsight Those properties matter more than most design models acknowledge. A lot of design and strategy work assumes that if we can define a future state clearly enough, we can plan our way towards it. That can work when a problem is complicated. It doesn’t hold in a complex environment. If you’ve ever worked in a situation where: - People disagree on what the problem actually is - Interventions create unexpected side effects - The same “solution” works in one place and fails in another - Progress feels real, but hard to explain or predict you’re probably dealing with complexity. This is the work of Dave Snowden and The Cynefin Company, particularly through the Cynefin framework and Snowden’s work on anthrocomplexity. Complex adaptive systems shaped by human sense-making, not just behaviour. In that context, the approach changes. Rather than defining an end state and working backwards, we: - Understand and start from where we are - Run multiple safe-to-fail experiments - Amplify what seems to work - Dampen what doesn’t - Watch for what else emerges Importantly, we run these experiments in parallel. This is where complexity challenges design habits. Design often pushes us toward convergence — finding the best answer as efficiently as possible. In complexity, diversity matters more than optimisation. We might deliberately run experiments we think might fail, as we can’t be certain of the results. And because cause and effect are only clear in the rear view mirror we should expect surprises. I’m barely touching on the depth and breadth of anthrocomplexity here. There’s a substantial body of work behind it. In my practice it doesn’t replace design, strategy or futures thinking. It reframes how and when they’re useful. It’s also a reminder to be careful with familiar models, especially when the system itself is adaptive, complex and uncertain. As Col. John Boyd put it: “If you don’t challenge assumptions, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after.” For me, complex adaptive systems thinking is one way of keeping that challenge alive. #StrategicDesign #FuturesThinking #Strategy #DesignThinking #ComplexAdaptiveSystems

Understanding Systems Change 🌎 To address complex social and environmental problems, businesses need frameworks that go beyond surface-level interventions. The Systems Change Tree and the Six Conditions of Systems Change offer structured approaches to analyze and influence systems effectively. The Systems Change Tree represents a system as a tree with different levels: visible outcomes and events (leaves), recurring patterns (branches), power dynamics and relationships (sap), institutional structures (trunk), and underlying mindsets and beliefs (roots). Each level influences the others, and most challenges originate deeper in the system. The Six Conditions of Systems Change, developed by Kania, Kramer, and Senge, defines six areas that hold systems in place: policies, practices, and resource flows (structural); relationships and power dynamics (relational); and mental models (transformative). These are categorized by how visible and tangible they are, helping organizations identify where interventions may be most effective. Both frameworks emphasize that visible outcomes are often symptoms of deeper causes. Addressing only structural or policy issues can lead to limited or temporary impact. Long-term progress requires engaging with less visible elements like informal influence, relational dynamics, and cultural assumptions. For businesses, these tools provide a useful lens to analyze operational, organizational, or sector-level challenges. They help identify which areas require redesign, redistribution, or rethinking to enable sustainable outcomes and reduce systemic resistance to change. The frameworks also reinforce the importance of interconnection—between departments, stakeholders, and systems. Change in one area often depends on shifts in others. This is particularly relevant for ESG strategies, where social, environmental, and governance factors interact in complex ways. Using these approaches can strengthen impact strategies, risk assessments, and stakeholder engagement. They also support alignment between purpose-driven goals and operational practices. Both frameworks serve as practical guides for understanding systems, identifying leverage points, and designing interventions that address root causes rather than symptoms. #sustainability #sustainable #business

Teams often implement solutions that do not fix the problem they were trying to address. That's because the issue wasn’t framed correctly in the first place. This is especially true in complex or unfamiliar situations, where quick conclusions feel comforting but are often wrong. When I work with teams on decision-making, I turn to a framework developed by Julia Binder and Michael Watkins. Their E5 approach helps leaders define the right problem before trying to solve it. Phase 1: EXPAND Suspend early judgments and deliberately broaden how the challenge is understood. By exploring multiple interpretations of the issue, teams uncover hidden assumptions, surface blind spots, and create the conditions for more original thinking before jumping to answers. Phase 2: EXAMINE Shift from scope to depth. Teams analyze the problem rigorously, moving beyond visible symptoms to identify behavioral patterns, structural drivers, and underlying beliefs that reveal what is truly at play. Phase 3: EMPATHIZE Center on the perspectives of those most affected by the issue. Through (real) listening and reflection, teams gain insight into stakeholders’ motivations, emotions, concerns, and behaviors, often uncovering needs that data alone cannot reveal. Phase 4: ELEVATE Step back to see how it fits within the broader organization. Viewing the challenge through lenses such as structure, people, power, and culture exposes interdependencies and systemic tensions that shape outcomes. Phase 5: ENVISION Articulate a clear future state and map a path to reach it. Working backward from a shared definition of success, teams prioritize initiatives, sequence efforts, and align resources to move from understanding to execution. I've found that when leaders take the time to frame problems well, they increase the likelihood that those solutions will actually matter. #decisionMaking #leadership #perspective #learning #problems Source: The model is described in more details in this Harvard Business Review article: https://lnkd.in/gAeBb5uT

A few years ago, a CEO I coached said, “Every week feels the same. The same fires, just in different departments.” Like many leaders, he was solving brilliantly but within the same loop. ✅ What he needed was a systems-thinking shift. It often comes down to this: • Leaders who think in steps solve problems repeatedly. • Leaders who think in systems solve them once. Most leadership energy is wasted in firefighting mode, reacting to outcomes instead of addressing the structures that create them. Systems-thinking leadership changes that. It’s preventive leadership. Instead of asking, “What went wrong?” Ask, “What pattern keeps creating this?” When you fix the pattern, the symptom often disappears permanently. That’s why organisations led by systems thinkers see up to a 60% reduction in recurring issues. You can start by: 1. Mapping the flow:  Where does the problem originate? 2. Identifying repetition: What keeps resurfacing? 3. Intervening at structure: What policy, rhythm, or decision loop fuels it? One systemic intervention can prevent dozens of future fires. That’s strategic leverage. Because when leaders build systems that self-correct, teams become self-managing, and leadership finally shifts from firefighting to fire prevention. What’s one recurring issue in your organization that might be a system problem in disguise? #LeadershipDevelopment #SystemsThinking 

Something cool I realized over the years: you should build process in your company EXACTLY like you build software as an engineer. If you're starting a company or team today and want to build great processes, do what software engineers do, just replace "software" with "process": 1. Start with no process. 2. Make small, frequent updates to your process. Updates should be small but complete. 3. Solve real problems with your updates. - Always start with the most important problems. - Solve bugs and improve quality. - Identify real problems by performing a root cause analysis on events that ACTUALLY happened and that you’re trying to avoid going forward. 4. Push those updates to the machine that executes them. When you make process changes that humans need to follow, always “push it to their 🧠” by notifying them of the process change. 5. Don’t just accumulate processes. Perform “garbage collection”: occasionally reexamine your process and delete what doesn’t serve us anymore. 6. Your process should have one entry point. Every software system has an entry point. Build a central playbook for your team and company and make it the entry point, to ensure that everyone within your team has an entry point into your full process, and doesn't have "blind spots". Going deeper: --- 1. ACTION QUALITY I think about all actions in all processes in 3 categories: 🟢 GUARANTEED: these are actions that are software-controlled, and don't require human discretion. They are executed on 💻 Example: starting 2022, every sandbox sign up at Unit sends a welcome email. 🟡 MOSTLY GUARANTEED: these are actions that happen because we expect people to follow a playbook. We give them feedback and help them develop habits to do it. They are executed on 🧠 Example: in 2021, we had a step within the sales playbook to send a welcome email for every sandbox sign up. 🔴 NOT GUARANTEED: these are actions that are not written in playbooks: implicit expectations, reminders in people’s heads or a message in Slack 2 years ago. They are executed on 🧠 Example: in 2020, I had a reminder in my head to send a welcome email for every sandbox sign up. --- 2. ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS In the Israeli army, there is a saying that "all rules were written in blood". If you instill a culture of root cause analysis in your company, it will AUTOMATICALLY upgrade your process over time: - Upgrade 🔴 not written in a playbook into 🟡 written in a playbook. - Upgrade 🟡 written in a playbook into 🟢 fully automated. Below is how we like to do root cause analysis at Unit.

Working on your resume and want to show your impact? Here are two things to remember: 1. Impact is almost never related to keywords in the *job description.* Impact comes from turning around or resolving a business problem. These business problems rarely show up in job descriptions. 2. To show impact, your *accomplishment* needs to be put in the context of the business problem it solved. That is, impact = "<a problem existed>, so <I did a thing>, and <business benefits resulted>." Your resume must show impact for the hiring manager to bring you in for an interview. For example (based on a story from a client I worked with): * Brattle had long struggled to quantify analyst performance, limiting business success. I developed an accurate algorithm and internal tool that supported analyst decisions, gave managers clear tracking, and became a competitive differentiator - accelerating sales cycles and removing a key barrier to growth. This bullet: • Sets the context of a meaningful problem ("failure to quantify analyst performance") and why it was worth solving. • Shows the business outcome ("decision support" and that it created a competitive differentiator leading to faster sales). • Implies mastery of many key product management skills - discovery, prioritization, working with developers, etc. Review your resume's bullet points. Is it clear what business problem your accomplishments address? Is it clear why the result was meaningful? (I don't mean, "Could someone 𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘴?" I mean is it explicitly clear, no guessing required?) Are your bullet points showing your impact? Or are they simply saying, in effect, "I did my job." --- (Yes, I know it's long, and it has no metric - but it's still 10x more likely to get my client an interview than his previous bullet point - because it shows his impact. Here's the original: "Developed improvement processes around data quality of risk analytics, resulting in greater confidence in the attribution platform and reducing the team’s manual efforts by ~20 hours per month." Nothing about competitive differentiation or accelerated sales. Nothing about a long-term struggle to come to grips with this analysis. Just a useless metric that may or may not represent a meaningful change.)