Learning Systems Thinking: Essential Nonlinear Skills and Practices for Software Professionals

✍ Scribed by Diana Montalion

• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 280
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Welcome to the systems age, where software professionals are no longer building software&emdash;we're building systems of software. Change is continuously deployed across software ecosystems coordinated by responsive infrastructure.

In this world of increasing relational complexity, we need to think differently. Many of our challenges are systemic. This book shows you how systems thinking can guide you through the complexity of modern systems. Rather than relying on traditional reductionistic approaches, author Diana Montalion shows you how to expand your skill set so we can think, communicate, and act as healthy systems.

Systems thinking is a practice that improves your effectiveness and enables you to lead impactful change. Through a series of practices and real-world scenarios, you'll learn to shift your perspective in order to design, develop, and deliver better outcomes.

You'll learn:

How linear thinking limits your ability...

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
From Nowhere to Everywhere
From Software to Systems
Technology Design Is Communication Design
Conventions Used in This Book
Supplemental Material
O’Reilly Online Learning
How to Contact Us
Acknowledgments
I. A System of Thinking
1. What Is Systems Thinking?
Linear Thinking Is the Default
Systems Thinking Is Nonlinear
What Is Systems Thinking?
Systems Thinking Is a Practice
Qualities of a Systems Thinker
MAGO’s Quandary
2. Crafting Conceptual Integrity
Relationships Produce Effect
Systems Thinking Is Sociotechnical
Counterintuitiveness
A System in Flux
A System of Ideas
Time Is Always a Factor
Support for Your Practice: Riding on the Front of the Train
Your Practice: Writing as Thinking
Counterintuitive MAGO
3. Shifting Your Perspective
Five Core Practices
You Are Constantly Learning
You’re Comfortable Structuring Inquiry
You Do (or Are Willing to Do) Deep Work
You Respectfully Engage
You Stop Being Sisyphus
Modeling as a Core Practice
The Iceberg That Sinks Our Initiatives
Events
Patterns and Trends
Structure
Mental Models
The Blame Game
Your Practice: The Iceberg Model
MAGO’s Quandary: Shifting Perspective
Support for Your Practice: Shifting Perspective Is Hard
II. You Are a System of Thinking
4. Self-Awareness as a Foundational Skill
Systems Thinking: The Hard Parts
Decision Making Is a Noisy Process
Observe Your Thinking
Your Practice: Flow with Your Thinking
Alternative Practices
MAGO: Everything Is in Our Blind Spots
Model the Current System
Research Similar Systems
Listen to the Pain
Make Some Prototypes
What If We Do Nothing?
Support for Your Practice: 12 Things Self-Awareness Taught Me
5. Replace Reacting with Responding
Noticing Your Reactions
Opinion-Driven as Normal
Empathy as a Core Skill
Create Space for Your Reactions
Your Practice: Options When Reacting
“Yes, and…”
The 24-Hour Rule
Breathe
Go for a Walk
Make a Snack or Take a Nap
Write
Notice Your Triggers: They Are Clues
MAGO’s Reactions
Support for Your Practice: The Stories Don’t Have to Be the Same
6. A System of Learning
A Learning-Driven Career
Practice 1: What Motivates You?
Designing Your Learning Activities
Generate Artifacts
Observe and Inquire
Synthesize
Experience
Practice 2: Describe Your Activities
Designing Your Learning Outcomes
Practice 3: Learning Outcomes
Improve Your Ability to Shift Perspective
Increase Your Tolerance for Ambiguity
Understand Context and Relational Impact
Identify Patterns and Structures
Create Groupings and Boundaries Without Reductionism
Think Critically and Apply Sound Judgment
Develop Your Interpersonal Skills
Design Feedback Loops
Practice 4: Who Can Help Me?
One Day at a Time, Forever
MAGO: Boundless Learning Opportunities
Support for Your Practice: It’s All Interrelated
III. We Are a System of Thinking
7. Collective Systemic Reasoning
What Is Systemic Reasoning?
How Systemic Reasoning Is Collective
Systemic Reasoning Has Other Names
Systemic Reasoning Is Building an Idea
Your Practice: Create a Proposition
Identify Your Idea, Action, or Theory
Identify Your Reasons
Strengthen the Reasons
Reliable
Relevant
Cohesive
Cogent
Be Honest About Potential Pitfalls
Systemic Reasoning Is a Method of Inquiry
Systemic Reasoning Is a Worthwhile Investment
Systemic Reasoning Structures (and Frames) Ambiguity
The Top-Down Elaboration
Strengthening the Reasons
Understandable
Reliable
Relevant
Cohesive
Cogent
Your Practice: Strengthen Your Reasons
MAGO’s Proposition
Support for Your Practice: The Iceberg Model
8. Designing Feedback Loops
Building Conceptual Bridges
Mind the Gaps
Point of view blindness
Specialized language barriers
Resistance
Lack of structured transparency
The Bridges
Systems Thinking Needs Feedback Loops
Ask for the Feedback You Need
Get Feedback from People You Need
Follow the Golden Rule of Feedback
Feedback Loops Include Learning
Four Core Skills
How to Listen
Change Your Own Mind
Engage with the Reasons
Look for Fallacies
Strawman
Anecdotal
Appeal to authority
Bandwagon
Black or white
Middle ground
Burden of proof
Ad hominem
Appeal to emotion
Slippery slope
Your Practice: Get Some Feedback
MAGO: Helpful Conceptual Bridges
Support for Your Practice: Strong Conceptual Bridges
9. Pattern Thinking
What Is Pattern Thinking?
Patterns Produce Events
How Relationships Produce Effect
Same Event, Different Patterns
Where to Look for Patterns
Relationship to time
Relationship to context
Relationships to other parts
Relationship to structures
In your own thinking
Three Types of Patterns
External patterns
Patterns in the technology system
Process patterns
Seven Pattern Thinking Questions
MAGO: Looking at the Patterns
Patterns in Relationship
External, Technology System, and Process Patterns
External patterns
Technology patterns
Process patterns
Applying the Seven Questions to MAGO
Your Practice: The Seven Questions
Support for Your Practice: Pattern Thinking Outside of Technology
IV. Designing a System of Thinking
10. Modeling, Together
What Is Modeling?
A Model Doesn’t Unify—Modeling Does
Design Thinking
There’s No One Way
Start small
Link models to show relationships
Taking a Systems Perspective
What Do We Model?
The Domain
Causal Loops
The Seven Questions
MAGO from a Systems Perspective
The Problem and Solution Space
Linear and Nonlinear, Revisited
Patterns, Revisited
External patterns
Technology patterns
Process patterns
Your Practice: Go Model
Support for Your Practice: Resources
11. Systems Leadership
The Paradigm We Work In
What Systems Leadership Is Not
Management
Unique to technology
Subject matter expertise (exclusively)
Characteristics of Systems Leadership
Architecting Communication Structures
Integrative Leadership
Systems design
Finding Places to Intervene
Be like Albert and challenge paradigms
Learning Leadership
Developing Learning Heuristics
Seven Learning Heuristics
What you know is probably your blocker
Knowledge is more valuable than information
Devalue your opinion
One perspective is always insufficient
There’s always another right way
Be Missouri
Is the word in the glossary?
MAGO: Systems Leadership
Understand the Pain
Identify the System’s Highest-Value Purpose
Model the Current System
Create a Shared Space for Thinking Together
Articulate and Justify the Core Problem(s)
Recommend Pathways Toward Improving the Systems
Design a System of Communication and Encourage Thinking Well Together
Take Excellent Care of Yourself
Encourage Systems Thinking
Your Practice: A Systems Leadership Cohort
12. Redefining Success
Success Is a System
Successful Systems Have Enabling Constraints
Successful Systems Solve Root Causes
Successful Systems Equalize Impact
Successful Systems Generate Knowledge Flow
Your Practice: Success Is a Paradigm Shift
Qualities of Success
Success for MAGO
Support for Your Practice: Objectives for Systems Leaders
Objective: Cultivate Conceptual Integrity in Solution Recommendations
Objective: Improve Knowledge Stock
Objective: Improve Knowledge Flow
Dancing with Systems
Further Resources
Books
Articles
Tools & Approaches
Glossary
Index