
26 The Complete Guide to Systems Thinking and Learning
Systems Concept #4:
Changing Systems (The Natural Cycles of Life and Change)
Our natural world does not operate in a linear, sequential fashion, despite all our training and all
the traditional engineering models available to us which assume that it does. The natural way of
life is that there are cycles of change—day and night, up and down, awake and asleep. Even
the Bull and Bear markets on Wall Street aren’t immune to this. We call this natural rhythm of
life (birth, growth, maturity, decline, death)
The Rollercoaster of Change
SM
in order to
acknowledge the complexities of change in our dynamic ...