Developing a strategy for dealing with a situation begins with a description of the situation and the preferred state for today, not in some distant future, and the perceived implications of not doing anything.
When endeavoring to develop an understanding of the nature of something it is generally useful to create a model of some type to aid in surfacing that understanding.
If we pay close attention to our actions and the typical outcomes of those actions it would be evident that there are frequently occurring patterns that develop. And there is a relation between the patterns.
If we are to develop a strategy for dealing with a situation we must first understand what has caused the situation to be the way it is. If we don't know why it is the way it is then any action we take is little more than meddling and unlikely to produce the desired result.
There are a number of habits that one should practice to improve their Systems Thinking skills. This graphic is from the Waters Foundation Systems Thinking in Schools site.
When we're trying to understand a situation it is often very helpful to have a sense of the historical trends of several dimensions relevant to the situation.
New Learning tend to reduce Outdated Thinking, Communicating & Learning though our Outdated Thinking, Communicating & Learning inhibits new learning. The question is then how do we break this cycle. Adopted from "An Introduction to Systems Thinking with STELLA" by Barry Richmond.
The model construction process is actually a balancing loop which endeavors to employ an abstract version of real events to form a model which produces conclusions and behavior which mimic the real events.
Because our problem solving approaches in today's reality don't produce very good solutions we end up continually dealing with unintended consequences which make the original problem worse or create new problems to be dealt with.
While all things are related for a particular situation all things are not relevant. We need to develop a simplified model of reality which depicts those interactions which are responsible for the patterns of behavior and current situation. We want the simplest model which enables the requisite understanding. This is no easy task though.
Our actions are based on our beliefs and the results of those actions are the basis for our beliefs. The difficulty we create for ourselves is that we make assumptions as to how to interpret the results we select based on our beliefs. As a result we are often operating on a flawed perspective of reality.
Because our problem solving approaches in today's reality don't produce very good solutions we end up continually dealing with unintended consequences which make the original problem worse or create new problems to be dealt with.
While understanding the interacting components responsible for the situation is important it is even more important to understand the stakeholders as they are the ones responsible for the interacting components being the way they are.
If we are to develop a strategy for dealing with a situation we must first understand what has caused the situation to be the way it is. If we don't know why it is the way it is then any action we take is little more than meddling and unlikely to produce the desired result.
When the relevant interactions are identified it's appropriate to identify which elements are the responsibility of which stakeholders, which elements are part of the addressable interactions and which elements are part of the environment.
