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How to Safely Think in Systems

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Re: How to Safely Think in Systems

#11

Post by gmuslera »

jackblemming wrote: post #3

The authors number one recommended book is ~166 pages in total. I skimmed through and it's mostly pictures. The blog also contained no data. This is all completely fine, but it rubs me the wrong way when things are posed as scientific or rigorous, but are mostly subjective opinion pieces. I like to see what "thinking in systems" gets me with real evidence. I appreciate they took the time to create and share this thou…

If it was so short, why you just skimmed through it?

You are seeing a few parts (titles, maybe a paragraph or two, a sample of the diagrams and pictures) and you are not seeing the system behind it. You have to read it whole to properly understand its point.

And as that system is not isolated from the world, after you understanding it you will get a good hint of the outer system, things that are happening in the real world outside of it.

Re: How to Safely Think in Systems

#13

Post by gumby »

Barrin92 wrote: post #5

None of that has really anything to do with systems thinking. That models change, omit information and don't represent reality as such is true for any kind of thinking, systems or otherwise. That's just a truism. At its core systems thinking is an antidote to reductionism. The essential feature of a system is that it is an indivisible whole and that its features are more than the sum of its parts. Systems lose their…

> At its core systems thinking is an antidote to reductionism.

This is a brilliant insight.

Re: How to Safely Think in Systems

#14

Post by Tuckerism »

RajSinghLA wrote: post #2

Solid read. Will sounds like a Farnam Street reader. > Effective systems thinking comes from the tension between model and reality, without a healthy balance you’ll always lose the plot. I’ve also heard this as “don’t confuse the map for the territory.”

I have this article bookmarked on this very topic: https://fs.blog/2015/11/map-and-territory/

I also like quoting George Box to those who are drinking the kool-aid a little too much with their models, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." :)

Re: How to Safely Think in Systems

#15

Post by bmitc »

gumby wrote: post #13
Barrin92 wrote: post #5

None of that has really anything to do with systems thinking. That models change, omit information and don't represent reality as such is true for any kind of thinking, systems or otherwise. That's just a truism. At its core systems thinking is an antidote to reductionism. The essential feature of a system is that it is an indivisible whole and that its features are more than the sum of its parts. Systems lose their…

> At its core systems thinking is an antidote to reductionism. This is a brilliant insight.

It’s a pretty old and well known perspective.

More is Different by P. W. Anderson

https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/ander...

More and Different by Philip W. Anderson

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/9814350133/

Re: How to Safely Think in Systems

#16

Post by naasking »

Barrin92 wrote: post #5

None of that has really anything to do with systems thinking. That models change, omit information and don't represent reality as such is true for any kind of thinking, systems or otherwise. That's just a truism. At its core systems thinking is an antidote to reductionism. The essential feature of a system is that it is an indivisible whole and that its features are more than the sum of its parts. Systems lose their…

> At its core systems thinking is an antidote to reductionism. The essential feature of a system is that it is an indivisible whole and that its features are more than the sum of its parts. Systems lose their properties when taken apart into components, because their properties are the result of interactions between components, not the sum of the properties of components in isolation.

If this is true, then "systems thinking" = "emergentism".

Re: How to Safely Think in Systems

#17

Post by throwaway984393 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #5

None of that has really anything to do with systems thinking. That models change, omit information and don't represent reality as such is true for any kind of thinking, systems or otherwise. That's just a truism. At its core systems thinking is an antidote to reductionism. The essential feature of a system is that it is an indivisible whole and that its features are more than the sum of its parts. Systems lose their…

To expand on that microservices point, there's a particular form of systems blindness that happens when people focus on one part of a system, think they understand that one part, and then ignore all the others, as if all you need to know is what's right in front of you.

I see it every day, in every team that I work with. The team works on component A. Maybe they can see that it's supposed to work with components B and C (maybe). So they design for those components alone. Meanwhile, components D, E, F, and G depend on components B and C. But because they don't directly work with each other, team A doesn't know that its design decisions will cause problems for D/E/F/G, and those teams don't learn about the limits of A. And they don't even think to ask. It's really nutty.

As a systems veteran, I already know problems are going to happen purely because of not having a deeper understanding of the system. If I ask them to go out of their way to discover the interaction of the whole system, they balk (because "that's not my job"), and upper management doesn't care that nobody knows how the whole system works. It's like this at most places I've worked. We need a revolution in establishing these conventions of building components in a system, the way the 12 factor app redefined building a modern stateless app.

Re: How to Safely Think in Systems

#18

Post by DelightOne »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #17
Barrin92 wrote: post #5

None of that has really anything to do with systems thinking. That models change, omit information and don't represent reality as such is true for any kind of thinking, systems or otherwise. That's just a truism. At its core systems thinking is an antidote to reductionism. The essential feature of a system is that it is an indivisible whole and that its features are more than the sum of its parts. Systems lose their…

To expand on that microservices point, there's a particular form of systems blindness that happens when people focus on one part of a system, think they understand that one part, and then ignore all the others, as if all you need to know is what's right in front of you. I see it every day, in every team that I work with. The team works on component A. Maybe they can see that it's supposed to work with components B an…

How are all connections usually tracked, if they are?

Re: How to Safely Think in Systems

#19

Post by secondaryacct »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #17
Barrin92 wrote: post #5

None of that has really anything to do with systems thinking. That models change, omit information and don't represent reality as such is true for any kind of thinking, systems or otherwise. That's just a truism. At its core systems thinking is an antidote to reductionism. The essential feature of a system is that it is an indivisible whole and that its features are more than the sum of its parts. Systems lose their…

To expand on that microservices point, there's a particular form of systems blindness that happens when people focus on one part of a system, think they understand that one part, and then ignore all the others, as if all you need to know is what's right in front of you. I see it every day, in every team that I work with. The team works on component A. Maybe they can see that it's supposed to work with components B an…

I lead a team that went beyond this problem in an investment bank: we must make the trading resistant to volume increase, whatever the system.

It's an exhausting exercise: we must constantly join new team, extract the source code from their grippy hands, show them how to profile, explain the globality of the problem, how doing a good job only matters if down the line people can still trade whatever the volume and yes, even if it's a silly volume, what can we do.

We were able to really get creative solutions by stopping the absolute technical talk and just ask stupid questions: what's our upstream maximum rate, how fast are we feeding down stream, what's blocking in the middle, how do we scale (usually we can stop at profiling after we find 3 horrendous beginner mistakes, thank God lol)

Re: How to Safely Think in Systems

#20

Post by janpieterz »

kqr wrote: post #8
jackblemming wrote: post #3

The authors number one recommended book is ~166 pages in total. I skimmed through and it's mostly pictures. The blog also contained no data. This is all completely fine, but it rubs me the wrong way when things are posed as scientific or rigorous, but are mostly subjective opinion pieces. I like to see what "thinking in systems" gets me with real evidence. I appreciate they took the time to create and share this thou…

Donatella Meadows created real impact wherever she went. You might also want to look into real-life studies of efficiency and safety by people such as Deming, Weinberg, Womack, Leveson, Dekker, Shewhart, Hollnagel, Ward, etc. There plenty of evidence that it works, even if Meadow's more popular book isn't filled with references.

I read the book twice. I walked away feeling the same as OP. I would appreciate it a lot of you have any other reference material on this, any book or resource that convinced you or helped you. I feel I'm close to grasping the underlying reasoning and benefits, but think I am missing a slightly different angle on this.
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