Best Systems Thinking Quotes

"When you see a cell in the body that actualizes and becomes all that it can be, it doesn't just sit there. It is guided through a natural intelligence to collaborate with other cells so that together they serve the healthy function of the organ and the organism of which they're part."

"Systems thinking is a way of looking at the world as a series of interconnected webs, systems within systems within systems, all interacting with each other in interesting and counterintuitive ways."

"Systems thinking is about seeing the world from a sort of meta perspective, stepping out of your personal perspective and seeing the larger systems that constitute the functioning of our government, environments, economies, and ultimately the entire cosmos."

"Systems thinking is having a global concern rather than a local tribal concern... it integrates the whole thing, global concern for the entire species."

"Systems thinking is all about seeing situations as democratic and egalitarian and as humanistically as we can because we recognize that anything other than that is not sustainable."

"Systems thinking also means integrating multiple perspectives... every perspective has a tinge of truth to it."

"A system is a set of interconnected things... a web built of things plus the connections that connect these things in a meaningful way."

"Complexity, nuance, valuing wisdom, and lifelong learning are crucial aspects of systems thinking."

"If you really care about the goal, you'll focus on the system."

"You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems."

"We don't rise to our goals. We fall to the level of our systems."

"Learn to think in terms of systems. Develop awareness for the ecological interconnectedness of things."

"Well, it's about systems, right? Because I had, I had a sort of moment with Breath of the Wild, which I loved."

"Failure is not a failure if you learn from it and then build a system to not repeat it."

"Reliability is a systems issue, not just a theory issue."

"The way to do this is not by setting better goals for ourselves or at our organizations but by building better systems and obtaining better habits."

"No decision you make exists in isolation. No process that you affect exists in isolation."

"At the system level, we create a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts."

"It's the structure of complex systems that generates their behavior."

"We create systems to solve problems that lead to better outcomes in all domains of life."

"Everything as a system: notice the goal, the steps on how to get there, and the energy required to maintain that system without it falling apart."

"In complex systems, there is no answer as to what you are supposed to be observing."

"Michael taught me how to be a better person: be ruthless with systems, be kind with people."

"Strategists tend to become visionary leaders with the capacity to see how systems interrelate."

"Until you turn those things into a system... that doesn't mean robots or software have to do all of it but it does mean that you have a way that you've designed that it happens."

"Every step along the way, this system is interacting with the real world. In real life it’s not happening on a blank white page. It’s interacting with societies, cultures, economies, the environment."

"Having a system is key, removing emotion from decision making is key."

"In the minds of men, one thing to realize about systems is how they are controlled and we must get rid of any notions straight away that control is something imposed on the system from outside. It has to be built into it."

"Preserving the fragile systems that have been created in explicitly anti fragile ways is not necessarily the route to do."

"Everything we talk about today is going to be about systems."

"We live in the world of complex systems, no longer simplifying complex problems to simple solutions."

"It's hard to fix human systems without fixing human incentives."

"You inform systems, you go in and reconstruct realities, and you are experts at it."

"Each one is at the intersection of a whole bunch of other inputs."

"Understanding and exploiting complex systems is the key to success."

"The power of systems and the power of leverage."

"The only difference between who you are now and the you that you really want to be... is a system that you haven't yet put in place."

"You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the levels of your systems."

"Don't come up with a solution, come up with a system that creates solutions."

"Having a broad set of system thinking applied to these problems is going to be necessary to orchestrate the resources and policies behind them."

"Yellow is about seeing all perspectives, creating systems, and practical problem-solving."

"Systemic long-term thinking is so important."

"The number one thing people can do is think in terms of systems."

"Stop making bizarre wacky decisions that are just iterating iterating in systems."

"The thing that matters is the systems by which an organization runs, and if those systems are bad then people's talents will be wasted."

"It's a very different way of thinking about business as a system."

"Building a system that makes you defined and refined."

"People who focus only on results win one time. People who focus on systems win again and again."

"It actually took a really holistic whole of systems approach to draw least of their strings together to come to a story that everything seemed to sing off the same song sheet."

"Observation affects the system, we affect the solution."

"It's all about systems because most people just go with the flow."

"Life requires a lot of different pieces. It requires structure, metabolism, etc."

"I'm somewhat well known for saying that systems are better than goals."

"Our system is more important than the sum of the parts."

"We must look at how we work as a system, a living system to understand that all of our parts depend on each other."

"Make systems-level thinking sexy because these wicked problems we've got they're going to require the coordination of people and solutions across industries sectors disciplines in silos."

"Ignoring the second or third order effects of an incentive system often leads to unintended consequences."

"You want to look at your health as a system not as a goal."

"If we focus on building systems that start with, what will it take to bring the poor in? What will it take to make sure that the environment is protected? Well, then we can figure out the right kind of money and the right kind of investment to get there."

"Most successful people, it doesn't matter what field they're in, they're systems thinkers."

"In systems thinking, the coincidence is there all the time. It's not because you only see it once in a while that it happens once in a while."

"We need to put together various constellations that go way beyond the traditional ways of doing and running innovation systems."

"Systems thinking starts with personal transformation."

"When we see a systematically malfunctioning system, then the problem is likely not out there but rather it is because of the way we think and the way we see the world."

"Systems innovation really requires new ways of thinking and new ways of organizing."

"Systems thinking aims to resolve the complexity gap between theory and reality."

"Because the body is a system and it needs to be thought of like that."

"Systems thinking is the study and Analysis of systems. A system is a group of interconnected parts that work together toward a common purpose or function."

"When you pull on something you find out it's hitched to everything else."

"Creating order with lists is one of the primary things you can do in order to practice systems thinking."

"Everything in the world is really a system, so if you look at it this way, you start diagramming these things out, you can kind of see why you're getting the outputs that you're getting."

"The ability to see how when you make one change over here it impacts the whole entire rest of the system is another thing."

"Lack of systems thinking... most people are taught programming as algorithms and data structures, not as systems thinking."

"Let's trust in the dynamics of the system."

"Let's look at this like a whole system. Let's try and understand the system and let's find out where the constraint lies because that's the place to intervene."

"Plenty of things that are evolved system don't make obvious sense because their role is complicated embedded."

"Systems under which people work account for 90% of the failure, therefore the key to success in any endeavor is to perfect the system."

"You can achieve a goal without even setting it if you have the right systems in place."

"Enjoy the journey because this is the whole idea of systems; you are improving yourself every single day."

"The amazing thing about systems is it makes you be more consistent and it makes you improve anyway."

"Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it gets."

"The system you're employing is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you've achieved."

"What I call a systems way of looking at the world."

"I don't believe in specific goals; I believe in systems."

"If you create the right system, your income can be passive and you can have time and financial freedom."

"One's intellectual prowess speaks for itself, but the way that you have applied your system thinking to what is currently happening in my life and the lives of many is remarkable."

"It's all one big loop; it's all interconnected."

"Systems thinking is the fusion of analysis and synthesis."

"...systems thinking... everything is connected to everything else."

"Living systems control themselves; they can be influenced but they can't be controlled."

"We've built a system that is resilient to failure, observable, and we have a systems perspective."

"Dialogue is not people talking with each other; dialogue is the capacity of a system to see itself."

"The essence of systems thinking is the capacity of a system to sense, connect with, and see itself."

"You're only as good as your weakest link. It's a really important systems analysis approach, so always approach the weakest links."

"Rethinking the system and adopting a systems perspective seems to be very important."

"Understanding the mathematical patterns behind everything... is one of the most important keys to systems thinking."

"The heart of systems thinking is the ability to break things down into lists or procedures or checklists."

"Making the system see itself, that's systems thinking, that's kind of awareness-based systems change."

"Making the common case fast... super super useful, super super important rule of thumb to keep track of when you're trying to apply systems thinking to any problem that you're solving."

"We can understand how a system works without understanding what's happening inside the black boxes."

"What you should really do is just think of systems as continuous experiments."

"Systems create freedom, freedom creates value, value creates scale."

"A system is a set of inter-related components that work together to achieve a particular objective."

"As a systems thinker, you look for points in the system they're called leverage points... where if you shift it, all of these amazing things happen upstream and downstream."

"I'm a systems thinker, so I have a checklist of what I do."

"It is in the creation of success and our understanding of it that we can get wiser about how systems might spectacularly fail."

"Understanding this larger complex system has been the goal of ecological economics from the beginning."

"Global opportunities and threats Oxford where students are challenged to use systems thinking to address some of the most complex issues that the world faces today."

"It's not about the product; it's about the solution and the system that creates the solution."

"It's possible to use this stuff to effectively frame problems as systems problems and to think through the design of policy initiatives that generate intended effects while minimizing unintended consequences."

"Simple conversational approaches that draw from the thinking and systems skillset can be both low cost in terms of time and effort, as well as high valued."

"Human beings are systems thinkers; nature would not have created a species fundamentally inconsistent with nature."

"Every product exists in a larger system and very often designers are involved not in the creation of just that one product but the entire system as well."

"Your design system is a product, and your other teams work with this product."

"Games give you a little bit of a taste of what complex systems can be like."

"Life is seen as a layered system and each layer has its own vocabulary."

"There's a whole revolution in biology that's sometimes called systems biology; we don't just look at the molecules, we look at the logic of the systems and how they were put together to understand them best."

"Whenever we manage for the parts without managing for the whole, we eventually deplete the integrity that supports the whole and end up with unsustainable outcomes."

"We really need to think about antennas as a whole system."

"Your system is perfectly designed to produce the results you are experiencing."

"The idea of having independent parts that create a larger system does come with a few benefits."

"Just understanding how the systems work together was a very important skill."

"He called this approach systems thinking and his insights are a tremendous contribution to business and society."

"Optimize for the whole system or process, not just the local effect."

"The number one failure that we'll see as we go through this case is a failure of systems thinking, a failure to think ecologically."

"The systems approach begins when you see the world through the other's eyes."

"Explanations varying from a fundamental level with basic components to a more holistic multivariable explanation."

"Appreciation of patterns, relationships, connections, and systems."

"What we haven't noticed enough is that some of the biggest and fastest growing companies have really profited by bringing real high-level systems thinking down to the chip."

"We're going to be thinking with Jeff about systems thinking and how to make the systems we depend on work better for us all."

"Each level builds upon the previous one, forming a complex and interconnected system."

"The most important thing about when you think about a system like an organization is the interactions of the parts, not the parts themselves."

"I call myself a systems thinker, which means I tend to think of events as linked in cycles."

"When multiple elements are affected by a single root cause, those are called common cause failures."

"...if you alter one system in the ecology, it will affect another system... you could make everything work more holistically."

"It's not going to be enough in the future to just solve problems; we're going to have to recreate the system that led to the problem in the first place and understand it if we want our solution to have any chance of succeeding."

"It's very hard to create solutions that actually address the system challenges from a systems perspective."

"We ought to collectively be thinking about the solutions from a systems perspective, put those pieces of the puzzle together, talk to the people that are affected."

"It's much more holistic; we also need to understand what's going on upstream and downstream."

"Systems thinking is vital; it's an essential skill for overcoming enmeshment and for self-differentiation."

"Children are natural systems thinkers."

"Good systems default to good outcomes, bad systems default to bad outcomes."

"Education for sustainable development emphasizes long-term and systems thinking over siloed thinking and short-term immediate goals."

"The System Design and Management Program provides a systems thinking perspective that integrates management, technology, and social sciences to address rapidly accelerating complexity and change in today's global market."

"Let's learn something about systems today; number two, let's become inspired."

"A system is an interconnected set of elements coherently organized in a way that it achieves something."

"The purpose of a system is to solve problems and create desirable futures with less side effects."

"Thinking in systems allows us to build for impact, influence, output, and quality."

"It's got a whole systems thinking approach as to how to capture and intake information and knowledge process it."

"Permaculture is like... you're a supercomputer and you're just laying all these different layers over your thoughts."

"This is the practice of applying systems thinking to your life, thinking holistically, looking for cause and effect."

"Understanding how to envision and then create productive and efficient systems is one of the highest leverage life skills you can develop."

"Systems thinking allows you to identify leverage points, areas that impact how the entire system operates, so you can improve the system over time."

"Your system is perfectly designed to produce the result you're getting."

"Looking at patterns is part of that shift from looking at things as isolated objects and looking at things in relationships."

"When I'm being effective, I'm always asking myself two questions: How am I being future-oriented? And secondly, how do I utilize systems thinking?"

"We need to complement that by systems-thinking which is also taking a look at the whole."

"Abstraction is important because in complex systems, we need to be able to handle them, we need to be able to understand them."

"How do you organize your thoughts, your design, the things that you do, in order to manage complexity when you're trying to build a complicated system?"

"When you ask them to describe a system, you begin to understand really their mental view of the world, their boundaries."

"We can improve our systems thinking through experiential learning."

"What's neat for me is that, people have actually tried to create deliberate interventions to improve people's systems thinking abilities."

"Once people observe the benefits of systems thinking, they perceive that it becomes useful in some way."

"A complex system is often thought of as a system that's more than the sum of its parts."

"The most important thing that I want you to take away is that when you have a sink, you need a source, and when you have a source, you need a sink."

"The combination of those two came to be called systems thinking."

"Systems thinking is the ability to look comprehensively, holistically at how various systems interact with each other."

"Systems thinking is a valuable tool for understanding and addressing complex problems as it helps us to identify the underlying causes of problems and to devise strategies for addressing them."

"Systems are like the roof on your house; our system, however, is the foundation of our house."

"Everything is a system, so work as a system."

"Systems... should be viewed as wholes, not just as a collection of parts."

"The idea is to characterize your system—whatever that system is, a physical system, a mathematical system, a computational system, whatever it is—think about it by the way it transforms an input signal into an output signal."

"The essential properties of any system derived out of how its parts interrelate, not on how they act taken separately."

"Think about these sort of nested systems and I'm sure you'll come up with all sorts of other creative ideas."

"Recognize, evaluate, and respond to system interactions."

"Mastery, really knowing something, is analogies; it's your ability to think through in systems."

"Making sure that you learn in a systems approach, that you learn through analogies that you're thinking about in contrast, is really, really crucial."

"Change is about systems and it's about skills that you practice; it's not about willpower."

"The system as a whole is made up of micro systems, all of which must have value flowing through them and must work for the system as a whole to work."

"The point of having a goal is not the goal itself, but it is to encourage you to be thinking about systems that help you reach that goal."

"I treat things as systems, systems analysis, systems engineering."

"Medicine is changing... we used to be focused on the individual patient... but now we think more broadly in terms of systems and population-based care."

"A systems approach to managing complexity."

"If you get your head around this stuff, you find that it really clarifies how you think about interfaces and sharing and communication and composing systems."

"You've got to understand the nature of the system itself."

"Something that happens in one part of the system can influence another part, which in turn might influence the first part again."

"I want us to pay attention to how the system predicts this behavior, and if you want to really solve the problem, then I need you to engage with a systems perspective with me on this."

"I try to refer to that system of systems term better than the term microservices because that seems to imply some focus on size of things which I really think people get too much carried away with."

"If every component of your system depends on every other component, you very quickly won't be able to design anything. It will collapse under the weight of its own complexity."

"If we only pay attention to the events around us, to the action of individuals, not to the system as a whole, we'll struggle to understand why we're getting the result that we're getting."

"Focus more on the system than just getting to where exactly it is that you need to be."

"One of the first things I learned about how to build a business is first how to think in terms of systems."

"People who are deeply into research realize that you can't isolate systems; they all work together."

"All things must work in a system and really have to be designed to achieve the goal that you're trying to achieve."