This is a corollary to an earlier Medium piece of mine. There I retraced my own developmental trajectory as a move across several horizons of systems mastery: from systems thinking to systems tinkering to systems being. With the proviso, of course, that all this talk about mastery has an aspirational character and that this personal journey is far from finished.

The point I wanted to make is that familiarity with systems thinking tools is only a beginning. With an emphasis on the indefinite article. …

Note: This is a review of a short book that has been published in Dutch. However, the ideas foregrounded in the essay are accessible to English readers via a paper that is freely available. I’m heading my review by the title of the paper, rather than that of the book, as the former is more attractive and offers a more faithful reflection of the core ideas.

This is a very important book. For me anyway. Because it provides a scientific basis for beliefs and a praxis that I have long since embraced. In short, I believe that life comes down…

During the holiday break I did a sweep of the attic and cellar. And I rediscovered that crate with filled notebooks. The written and doodled sediment of two decades of work and life, infused with a spirit of systems thinking and practice. Leafing through thousands of pages generates mixed emotions. One senses the enormous effort that goes into a random life, this ceaseless and yet fleeting concatenation of encounters, readings, conversations, jobs, reflections, here dutifully captured in longhand.

“In this book I offer a notion of research that is thoroughly integrated into everyday life, through which I seek to live with integrity in potentially challenging times. Living life as inquiry is at the same time philosophy, orientation and practice, seeking to treat all I think, feel, say and do as experiment.” — Judi Marshall

This is a significant book because it formulates a tentative, first-person answer to vital questions for our age.

First, we are seeking to come to terms with life in the Anthropocene. The awareness that we have caused immense devastation to our planetary habitat is…

“This life provokes moments of joy, and that joy can propel ethics.” — Jane Bennett

Recently I accompanied my godchild Liesl on a visit to the German city of Essen. It was close to her milestone 18th birthday. Secondary school was behind her and she had just a few weeks left to decide in what direction she wanted to pursue her education. The day before we left Liesl received notice of having successfully passed the very competitive entry exam to medical studies. Still she felt quite unsure about the impending choice. It was in this mood of indecision that we got on the train and made our way to the Ruhr, Germany’s erstwhile industrial heartland…

Systems practice

In common parlance ‘systems thinking’ is understood as ‘thinking in systems’ (as the title of Donella Meadows’ posthumously published, widely read book suggests). It relies on systems concepts — such as stocks, flows, feedback loops, network and hierarchy — to structure the problem solving process in relation to particular design challenges.

‘Systems practice’ goes beyond that. It is ‘systems thinking and doing’, or ‘system praxis’. The thinking cannot be dissociated from intervening in the messy world around us. …

“Cybernetics thrives among people who are interested in, and revere, the reality of their own and other people’s minds and hearts.” — Frank Galuszka

‘Cybernetics’ is a rare example of a ‘new’ science, the origin of which can be pinpointed rather precisely. In 1948 the American mathematician Norbert Wiener published his book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. This put in place the foundations for the study of workings of goal-directed systems that are involved in circular feedback chains of action and communication: from effectuating a change in their environment, to sensing the effect, comparing…

John Morecroft’s book is an excellent primer in system dynamics for aspiring practitioners. The backbone of his argument, developed in 10 chapters, focuses on developing intermediate skills in building models. The purpose of these models is to help us explain the dynamic behaviour of systems in the world of industry and business.

Goal Seeking behaviour

The first two chapters are introductory but vital reading for starters in the discipline. One learns about the rationale behind system dynamics and its basic underlying notions (causality, positive and negative feedback, the use of causal loop diagrams to visualise interdependences). Chapter 3 moves into dynamic simulation proper…