Decision Making in Systems Engineering and Management, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2Applied Systems Thinking

It's about constellations, not stars.

—Ryan Quinn, Shakespeare Director

2.1 HOLISM—FRAMING SYSTEMS

Simply stated, most successful organizations have learned that attempting to solve modern system problems or pursue innovation and creativity in system design and development by focusing on individual system elements while disregarding the myriad of connections that exist between and among these elements and the world surrounding them is a wasted effort doomed to fall short of expectations. It's impossible to optimize system performance without understanding how it fits into its environment. Putting a phenomenal scope on a poorly functioning rifle will only do a better job of showing clearly the target missed. As a result, systems engineers working on systems decision support teams embrace systems thinking as a best practice. Among other benefits, doing this consistently helps illuminate dependency relationships occurring in space and time that must be addressed if a system solution is to be successful.

To recap from previous: systems thinking is a cognitive perspective that recognizes interrelationships and dependencies between real world elements in a way that allows the entirety of what is being looked at to be interpreted as a system. Interpretation defines perspective and uniquely determines possible actions and alternatives. At the heart of any decision process lies this framed understanding that is the result of conditioning through ...