Recently I have been thinking about systems thinking.  Or more accurately about what systems thinking is.  There is a lot of debate within the “systems thinking” community about what systems thinking actually is, and when I posted rhetorical question, “what is systems thinking” on social media I got a number of differing, yet equally valid, responses.  And then Tony Davenport hit the nail on the head when he said on Twitter, “not sure there is an elevator pitch version…”, which is, as far as I can see, correct.  

However, I believe there does need to be an “elevator pitch” version, if to do nothing more than to start the conversation with individuals and organisations that have never heard of systems thinking and who, possibly, associate systems with computers.  After all it was Ackoff (2006) that said, “we (systems thinkers) are an introverted profession. We do most of our writing and speaking to each other”, and a similar view is put forward by Cabrera and Cabrera (2015) who write, “many people have given up on systems thinking because they didn’t understand it before being introduced to a specialized tool”.  So, whilst there does not appear to have been an “elevator pitch” produced to date, I believe it is possible, especially as “wide reading within this literature does reveal a core concept, which appears in many places, from landscape gardening to political science and from psychology to engineering” (Checkland, 2012) and the elevator pitch needs to describe that core concept in a language which is easily accessible.

And so, I present Systems Thinking Elevator Pitch v0.1.  

Systems thinking is a way of communicating a situation so it is possible to see the influences, outcomes and relationships that affect the situation as well as the individuals and organisations that are active within that situation.

Now I fully accept that not everyone will agree, and that in producing an elevator pitch I can be accused, rightly, of reductionism (and reductionism is generally considered a non-systems-thinking approach (Arnold and Wade, 2015)).  But is reductionism a bad thing, especially when you are trying to introduce a subject or concept to a new audience? And sometimes people don’t need to go further than the elevator pitch and to explain let me use an analogy.  When you are a child and learning about the world you become aware of cars.  And for some people they never go further than that.  Then, most people as they evolve come to understand that there are different types of cars, e.g. sports cars, SUV’s estate cars.  And then people who like cars will be able to differentiate between different models with some people being able to go as far to tell the different specification of each model within a range.  But essentially, they all recognise the basic concept of a car.

This definition is v0.1 and so will no doubt evolve as my research develops but it does at least give me an initial “elevator pitch” when talking to individuals and organisations.

I will leave the final word to Ackoff (2006) who said, “until we communicate to our potential users in a language they can understand, they and we will not understand what we are talking about”.

References

Ackoff, R., 2006. Why few organizations adopt systems thinking. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 23(5), pp.705-708.

Arnold, R. and Wade, J., 2015. A Definition of Systems Thinking: A Systems Approach. Procedia Computer Science, 44, pp.669-678.

Cabrera, D. and Cabrera, L., 2015. Systems thinking made simple. Plectica.

Checkland, P., 2012. Four Conditions for Serious Systems Thinking and Action. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 29(5), pp.465-469.