The Complete Guide to Systems Thinking and Learning

Chapter I—Introduction to Systems Thinking and Learning 7

the solutions into an explanation as a whole. Analysis tends to explain things by the

behavior of their parts, rather than by the whole!

Even today, analysis is probably the most common technique used in corporations.

Managers “cut their problems down to size,” reducing them to a set of solvable components

and then assembling them into one solution. It is still so much the norm that many

managers continue to see analyzing as synonymous with thinking. But what really is

needed is synthesis . . . holistic systems thinking.

3. Mechanization

This way of thinking seeks to explain virtually every phenomenon ...