The Elements of Systems Thinking

It has been said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The same can be said for systems thinking. Removing a leader from power

without addressing and changing the system that was in place during their rule

will only mean that the same patterns will continue to repeat themselves, and a

very similar leader will step into fill the position. A child who is taught hatred

and prejudice from a young age will grow up to practice hatred and prejudice

unless the system is improved and the cycle is broken. Talking about a system is

simply not enough. If there is little or no understanding of the system, nothing

will ever change.

The parts of a system

Systems are made up of three parts: elements, interconnections, and a function or

a purpose. The word “function” is used when talking about a non-human system,

and the word “purpose” is used for human systems.

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The elements are the actors in the system. In your circulatory system, the

elements are your heart, lungs, blood, blood vessels, arteries, and veins. They do

the work. The interconnections would be the physical flow of blood, oxygen,

and other vital nutrients through your body. The function of the circulatory

system is to allow blood, oxygen and other gases, nutrients, and hormones to

flow through the body to reach all of your cells.

A basketball team is a system made up of elements including players, coaches,

the ball, hoops, and the court. The rules for playing the game, the plays drawn up

by the coach, the talking and signals between the players, and Newton’s Laws of Motion that dictate how the ball and players move are the interconnections. The

purpose of the team is to win games, earn scholarships or a paycheck, get

exercise, or just have fun.

A school is a system, with the elements represented by teachers, students,

principals, custodians, secretaries, bus drivers, cooks, parents, and counselors.

The interconnections are the relationships between the elements, the school

rules, the schedule, and the communications between all of the people in the

school. The purpose of a school is to prepare the students for a successful future

and to help them reach their full potential.

Systems are everywhere. Companies, cities, governments, economies, animals,

and plants are all examples of systems. It is possible to have multiple smaller

systems as a part of a larger system. For example, our body is a system that is

made up of many smaller systems like the skeletal, digestive, respiratory, and

nervous systems. An ocean is a system made up of the plants and animals that

live there. The Milky Way galaxy is a system made up of our solar system, and

each planet in it is also a system of its own.

Elements are usually the easiest parts of a system to identify, because many of

them are tangible things that we can see and touch. The elements of a family

may include the parents, grandparents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, pets, etc.

Elements do not always have to be tangible, though. In a hospital, the desire to

help people and save lives is an intangible that is a very important element of

that system. In a neighborhood, a sense of pride and a feeling of community are

intangible elements that play a big role in that system. It is possible to list

countless elements of a system once you start. It is important not to get so

bogged down in individual elements that you lose sight of the system.

Interconnections are a critically important part of a system. In our example of the

circulatory system, the interconnections were the actual physical flow of blood,

oxygen and other gases, nutrients, and hormones through your body, and also the signals sent by the brain to all of the parts of the body, communicating to them

how to do their jobs and help the body function. These physical flow

interconnections tend to be the easiest ones to see.

Oftentimes, interconnections are not physical flows, but rather the flow of

information. These interconnections are usually harder to see, but if you look

deeply enough, the system will always reveal itself. For example, when I was

teaching, the single most important interconnection in determining the success of

the students in my classroom was the teacher-student relationship. Having a

good rapport with each of my students and creating a positive classroom

community was absolutely crucial if I wanted any learning to happen during the

school year.

Learning is hard. There are a lot of abstract and difficult concepts that my

students were expected to learn. If I had a good rapport with my students, they

were willing to try anything for me. When times got tough and their frustrations

rose, they would push through and persevere because they knew I cared about

them, only wanted what was best for them, and I would be with them every step

of the way. That opened their minds and made them receptive to the information

I was teaching them. Without that positive teacher-student relationship, the flow

of information would have stopped in my classroom.

The flow of information occurs when you research items before you buy them.

You consider things like your income and savings, supply of goods at home,

prices, supply of goods in stores, and the ratings of other consumers before you

decide whether or not you wish to purchase the item. A baseball team and their

coaches demonstrate a flow of information when the coaches use hand signals

from the dugout and field to communicate with the players about what type of

pitch to throw or whether they should run or stay on base. Doctors run and

analyze a series of tests to gain enough information to accurately diagnose a

patient.

A system’s purpose or function doesn’t have to be written down or spoken

aloud. It can be expressed just through the system’s operation. Watching a

system for a bit to see how it behaves is often the best way to figure out its

purpose.

A government may profess that educating children is a high priority, but if it

slashes education funding, then clearly educating children is not a primary

purpose of that government. If a cat catches a lizard, but then bats it around and

plays with it, then its primary function was not to hunt the lizard for food. We

figure out the purpose or function of a system from the way it behaves, not from

our expectations or the purpose the system says it has.

One of the biggest problems with systems is that sometimes the purposes of the

subunits of the system may combine to create a behavior no one wanted.

Creating high-stakes testing in schools was done with the best of intentions,

hoping to ensure that all students were receiving a rigorous, quality education by

having them meet a uniform set of standards. Unfortunately, some unintended

negative behaviors have occurred as a result. Consider the purposes of the actors

in this system:

Teachers feel pressure to earn good evaluations and merit pay based on

test scores, which affects their job security.

Students feel pressure to avoid remediation classes, repeating a grade, or

disappointing parents and teachers if they perform poorly on tests.

School districts want to earn the highest grades to attract students.

Businesses and realtors pressure schools to achieve high scores so that

people will want to live and work in the community, and so that an

educated workforce graduates from high school and college.

Lawmakers penalize schools who do not perform well by withdrawing

funding and imposing sanctions.

Parents want their children to earn high scores, and to attend schools with

the highest scores.

Community members are less likely to pass levies to increase school

funding or support community schools if they do not think they are

performing well enough.

In this system, the high-stakes nature of the tests cause school districts to put a

lot of pressure on their teachers to teach to the test and base their evaluations on

their test scores. Teachers feel the need to compete with one another to earn the

highest scores, as well as gain job security and an increased salary, so they no

longer share ideas with one another and they may even cheat when administering

the tests. Students feel a lot of pressure to earn high enough scores to be

promoted to the next grade or avoid remedial classes, so they may cheat on the

test. This was not the intention of putting these tests into schools, and everyone

agrees that those results are awful. Unfortunately, if the sub-purposes and the

overarching system purpose are not aligned and coexisting peacefully, a system

can’t function successfully.

What is NOT a system?

Anything that is only a collection of items without the interconnections or a

function is not a system. Taking shells that have been deposited on the beach and

making them a group doesn’t make them a system. The shells are just there, left

behind as the waves deposited them on the sand. They are simply there,

randomly and without any unifying purpose.

Think of the businesses in your community. The ones that have been established

make up a system. They have relationships with clients and other businesses that

unite them in a common purpose and make them an interconnected part of the

community. When a new business comes in and opens up, it takes time for them

to establish those same connections and relationships. They don’t instantly

realize their role in fulfilling the purpose of the group. It will take time and effort

for them to become an integral part of the system.

A system isn’t just a combination of parts. It can change and adapt as it tries to

achieve its goals and protect itself. Systems exhibit many human qualities, even

though they are often made of nonliving things. Systems can often be very

resilient in fixing themselves and evolving over time.

The most important part of a system

Perhaps the easiest way to examine how a system’s elements, interconnections,

and purposes compare in terms of importance within a system is to speculate

how the system would be impacted if each component was changed one at a

time.

The least impact on a system is usually felt when its elements are changed.

While certain elements may be very important to the system, by and large, if the

elements are changed, the system can still continue to exist in a similar form and

work to achieve its purpose or function.

In a school, teachers, administrators, and other employees may leave, transfer, or

retire. Students move away or may enter higher grade levels beyond the school.

The elements may change, but the school is still easily identified as a school, and

it still has largely the same objectives and sense of purpose.

A marching band may replace its members or even its director, but it is still a

band. It may perform better or worse than it did before, but its purpose is still the

same.

Trees may lose their leaves, animals may shed their fur, and we may replace our

cells every few weeks, but the trees and animals are still the same and our bodies

continue to function in exactly the same way as before the elements were

changed.

Systems almost always continue on, maintaining their identity and changing

only slowly and slightly, even when significant numbers of their elements are

changed, as long as the interconnections and purpose remain strong.

Changing the interconnections of a system is quite different. If the

interconnections change, the system will be impacted significantly. It may no

longer be recognizable, even if the elements remain in place.

Putting the students in charge instead of the adults in a school setting would

undoubtedly change that system dramatically. Changing the rules by telling a

marching band that they would now begin to sing instead of playing their

instruments would alter it greatly. If our respiratory system no longer distributed

oxygen throughout our bodies and removed carbon dioxide, we would be

behaving more like plants. When the interconnections of a system are changed,

the whole system is changed drastically.

Changing a system’s function or purpose also greatly impacts the entire system

and may render it unrecognizable. If our school’s main purpose is no longer

educating children, but is now to make money by recruiting students to charge

tuition, obviously the system is dramatically changed. If the marching band no

longer has the purpose of entertaining fans at football games, but now its

purpose is earning scholarships for college, the system will change significantly.

If trees and animals no longer have the purpose of surviving and reproducing

offspring, but rather only want to grow as large as they can, their systems will be

altered greatly as well. Changing the system’s purpose changes it immensely,

even if all of the elements and interconnections remain unchanged.

Every component of the system is essential. Elements, interconnections, and the

purpose or function all interact with each other and each one plays a vital role in

the system. The purpose or function of a system is often the least noticeable, but

it definitely sets how the system will behave. Interconnections are the

relationships within the system. When they are changed, the behavior of the

system is also usually altered. The elements are typically the most visible parts

of a system, but are often the least likely to cause a significant change in the

system unless changing an element impacts the purpose or interconnections as

well. Each part of the system is equally important as they work hand in hand, but changing a system's purpose has the greatest impact on the system as a whole.