Systems thinking: critical thinking skills for the 1990s and beyond

The problems we face at all levels in the world today resist unilateral solutions. While the web of interdependencies tightens, our capacity for thinking in terms of dynamic interdependencies has not kept pace. As the gap between the nature of our problems and the ability to understand them grows, we face increasing perils on a multitude of fronts. Systems thinking and one of its subsets—system dynamics—are important for developing effective strategies to close this gap. Unfortunately, system dynamicists and systems thinkers have not effectively taught their framework, skills, and technologies to others. The door has not been opened wide enough to let others share our insights with respect to the workings of closed-loop systems. To transfer this understanding on a broad scale, we need a clearer view of its nature and of the education system into which it must be transferred. This article casts some The problems that we currently face have been stubbornly resistant to solution, particularly unilateral solution. As we are painfully discovering, there is no way to unilaterally solve the problem of carbon dioxide buildup, which is steadily and inexorably raising the temperature around the globe. The problems of crack cocaine, ozone depletion, the proliferation of nuclear armaments, world hunger, poverty and homelessness, rain forest destruction, and political self-determination also fall into the category of "resistant to unilateral solution." Why is it no longer possible for some world power to pull out a big stick and beat a nasty problem into submission? The answer is that it probably never was. It's simply that the connections among the various subsystems conspiring to manifest a problem were less tight. Then, it was possible to score a Pyrrhic victory by essentially pushing a problem off into the future or into "someone else's backyard." Unfortunately, as Dana Meadows is fond of saying, "There is less and less space remaining to throw things away into." Away means both space and time. We have less and less space remaining to serve as a receptacle for our "garbage." And we have less and less time before we must endure "the morning after." Both are artifacts of sustained material growth in our finite earthly realm. Every generation of human beings has been subject to these rules, but our generation is the first to have to take them seriously.