© 2015 Next Level Up. All rights reserved.

Introduction to Systemic Thinking

The key to systemic thinking is to focus on effective ways of detecting problems and finding constructive ways of dealing with them.

If you don’t know what’s standing in your way, how are you ever going to overcome it? The daily people problems, frustrations and irritations all feel like insurmountable challenges standing in the middle of your road to success. But they are not to blame. The fault actually lies with missing systems. I’m going to show you how to identify those missing systems that are the root cause of all your frustrations. How to have your people engage in the process and become part of the solution, not part of the problem. And how to sharpen your detection skills and find out that problems are brilliant opportunities in disguise.

© 2015 Next Level Up. All rights reserved.

This is your introduction to systemic thinking. It’s not yet the introduction to systems themselves, but to the thinking and the mindset that you need to have to be able to develop the right systems. Irritations and frustrations in your business are simply indicators of missing systems. Why is it important to deal with this? Problems, frustrations, daily irritations, little and big things going wrong are time consuming and you have better things to do with your time then to be constantly fixing things. Never ending problems create chaos and stagnation in the business. Changing your thinking about these problems can shift your business from that chaos to a smooth running, profitable business. If you want smooth sailing, consistency, predictability then the best solution is prevention. What you want to do is eliminate these time consuming problems and frustrations. And to make sure we’re talking about the same things, let’s define a frustration or a problem. A frustration in a business is an undesirable pattern of events that can be eliminated by installing a system. Too often, the first reaction to a problem is frustration and blame and you look for the person who screwed up, or you blame yourself for it. Those are ineffective and often destructive responses. The essence of effective problem solving is to think systematically about problems. Focus on the system and partner up with the people involved to find the most constructive solution.