How Integrated Systems Thinking/Being/Doing Will Help us Get Through this Global Crisis

Yesterday 80 leaders spanning the globe came together on Clubhouse to explore systems thinking, being, and doing from the perspective of integral leadership. And what a conversation it was!

While systems thinking itself is not new, the systems sciences that gave us cybernetics, computing, and much of modern science and technology, have only been around for a mere century. Those who have been trained in systems thinking tend to take it for granted once they have mastered the art, but this is not the case for the great majority of the world’s population and its leaders.

“A system is an entity with interrelated and interdependent parts; it is defined by its boundaries and it is more than the sum of its parts (subsystem). Changing one part of the system affects other parts and the whole system, with predictable patterns of behavior. Systems thinking is a stakeholder-centered design process.”

Understanding how systems work- whether our body, a family, an organization, a computer system, an ecosystem or Gaia itself, is essential to be able to improve a system or intervene in a system when it is broken. Yet the vast majority of our education systems fail to ground their students in systemic approaches, creative problem solving, or critical thinking. This has led to most of the inhabitants of planet earth trying to solve complex problems with simplistic mindsets and solutions, which fail.