Systems Thinking – A Smart Approach for Complex Issues
- Published in June 12, 2022

“We can’t solve our problems
– Albert Einstein
with the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them.”
The virtues of Systems Thinking are so great that one might wonder why it is not more widely taught and commonly practiced.
This short video illustrates what is covered below.
Thinking systemically is being able to understand a whole, its parts, the interactions between its parts as well as with its environment.
Systems Thinking provides effective methods, practical tools, and documented patterns to understand and manage complex environments and settings. First, it helps to comprehend why things are what they are. Second, it facilitates the finding of how to change things in order to produce effective and lasting results.
An approach suited to address complex issues
Systems Thinking is particularly adequate for addressing and resolving a complex problem. Through conceptual modeling of the associated system, it helps reducing its apparent complexity and improve the ability to identify appropriate interventions at the right place.
But first of all, how do we know that we are dealing with a complex problem? We can use four criteria, mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, to assess the extent of a problem’s complexity:
- the level of difficulty to identify the real causes that explain why the problem exists;
- the level of disagreement about what the problem is;
- the level of difficulty to find how to effectively solve the problem;
- the level of unclarity about who is responsible, accountable and has authority about the problem.

Now, let’s step back and contemplate the many problems we face and struggle to resolve in our world, society, organizations, or life. We can see that they all satisfy at various levels several if not all of these criteria. Complex problems are indeed more the norm than the exception.
Systems thinking allows us to realize that complex problems share four intertwined characteristics that make them intrinsically difficult to resolve.
- The issue may be difficult to explain because many factors come into play and several feedback loops influence them back.
- The context may be evolving over time making it difficult to assess what is actually going on.
- Many actors may be concerned by the issue with competing perceptions, values, objectives, and expectations, and therefore conflicting actions.
- Several solutions may be possible, but each would influence back the issue at hand or trigger side effects that may not be visible right away.

Complex problems are therefore dynamic not static systems that appear chaotic at first sight and seem intractable. Systems Thinking enables to solve complex problems by helping to identify and understand the associated systems, predict their behaviors over time, and devise appropriate changes to them in order to achieve the expected results.
The methods, tools, and patterns to find viable, long-lasting solutions
Systems Thinking has a unique and outstanding value proposition for problem resolution. It has a proven record of allowing to develop effective and suitable solutions that resolve complex issues while avoiding or at least minimizing undesirable effects.

Systems Thinking enables to achieve such remarkable results by combining five key capabilities. Together, they are conducive to build relevant, effective, durable solutions capable of producing sought-after outcomes.
1. Insightfulness: understanding the overall dynamics of a system. The cause and effect relationships, the delays that differ the effects, and the causal feedback loops they form are identified. They represent the causal structure of the system that creates its emerging behavior, often unanticipated or counterintuitive.
2. Appropriateness: identifying and addressing the real cause(s) of the problem. Causal relationships and associated feedback loops are interpreted to distinguish the symptoms for the problem, reveal side effects and counterproductive actions, and recognize patterns of behavior. This allows to explain the basis for the issue and to find how to extract from the situation.
3. Inclusiveness: integrating multiple stakeholders’ perspectives and building a consensus on the change.Diverse stakeholders from different constituencies with conflicting views, contradictory goals, and different measures of success are encouraged and helped to come with a shared perspective of their reality and the overall system. A shared understanding and agreement is then built about what should be done and how they should work together to achieve something that would satisfy the needs of each of the constituent while benefiting to the system as a whole.
4. Effectiveness: identifying leverage points. Places of power and influence within a complex system, where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything, are researched. They often are not evident to find and sometimes counter-intuitive to admit.
5. Foresightedness: predicting the evolution of the system and the impact of a change to the system. Through an analysis of the causal structure or a simulation of the dynamics of the system, scenarios and policies are assessed and tested in order to foresee consequences and perform long-term planning.

Embracing Systems Thinking today
Now, you can appreciate why Systems Thinking is such a powerful approach to understand and resolve complex issues. It provides the suitable methods, tools, and patterns to deal with though, wicked problems for which we aspire to find an appropriate solution.