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Thoughts about J. Gharajedaghi’s "System Thinking"

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This is a new rubric in my blog as I tried to avoid any posts about specific books before. I am taking some notes about the best books I have read. But those are not for the public eye. So this piece was not originally planned to be published. I just feel a need to share something with the world after I read a book in the title. Because that was a wonderful but pretty tough experience.

Before we begin, let’s make clear that:

  • It is not a review. I will not write about bad books in my blog. By default, any book which has a separate essay is worth reading. Period.
  • That will be in the form of an internal dialog.

OK. What is the full title of this book?

“System Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity: A Platform for Designing Business Architecture” by Jamshid Gharajedaghi, 3rd edition

Nice. How did you learn about this book?

A few years ago when I was listening to a podcast with a guest talking about System Thinking. He stated that the book is quite hard to read and should be considered as a final bullet after you have already read other sources. I accepted the challenge and bought the book on Amazon.

I guess you read something about System Thinking before, right?

Correct, I read a few books before. So I considered myself mature enough to have a shot at something more serious on that topic. I was too naive. Gharajedaghi’s “System Thinking” at the same time was an exciting and difficult reading experience. It took me more than a year to read those 376 pages.

Oh. Why was that so harsh?

Several reasons. First of all, the topic itself is quite complex. Secondly, it is not an introductory book. It expects that you are familiar with a lot of concepts. Third, a written language. I am not a native English speaker so I can judge only from my reading experience but it was hard to pass through some passages. I consulted with an English dictionary a lot. Some word choices and syntax constructions confused me. I will not dive into examples, but “dissemination of power” sounds weird to me. In this context, “dissemination” means “distribution”, I get it. And this is a very lightweight example.

Also, I mistakenly approached this book as non-fiction. It is neither non-fiction nor a scientific reading. It is something beyond. Two times I re-started the reading and my third attempt was successful because I changed the reading approach.

The thing is that when you stop reading for a week at least, it is difficult to jump back to the context. Just because of how deep this book goes you need to stay focused until the end or you go out. With my 3rd attempt, I started making summaries of the most complex chapters. If I stopped reading even for a few days, I did a recap of the previous chapters to dive in again. And that worked out for me.

Now tell us more about the book

Chapters 1 and 2 serve as an introduction to systems and the movement toward System Thinking. But that is not an introduction for beginners because it does not cover the basics. You will get a general idea about the whole thing, but that will not prepare you for what comes next.

Chapters 2-9 are more theoretical. It uncovers concepts of sociocultural systems and different modes of thinking to understand those systems. And this is the hardest part of the book, where I failed 2 times and had to start reading again. Some thoughts are repeated in different parts of the book, but it is absolutely necessary to read those chapters carefully.

Chapters 10-14 are the business cases from Jamshid Gharajedaghi’s outstanding consulting experience. It is more relaxing reading than the preceding theoretical part and is more about applying that theory in practice. My only concern is that those cases focus on the “TO-BE” part, skipping the “formulating the mess” and how the implementation happened (if happened). It is a big deal to design the right solution but that needs to be implemented and delivered at the end. Unfortunately, that is not fully addressed in the book, but for obvious reasons: you will need another book.

Also, some cases took place in the 1990s, and since those times some “TO-BE” suggestions are considered more like the industry standards today rather than insights. But this is a good sign actually as they have proved to be vital.

What did you learn from this book?

Not an easy question. I will definitely keep revisiting my notes and some chapters of the book. But I will try to formulate what I have so far:

  1. Most business and management concepts has been originated in the 1950-1970s. Currently, we just keep re-inventing the wheel and putting it in a new colorful package to sell as courses. It is not a new idea either, but I have just become more convinced about that.

  2. As an IT person, I approached each system as software. Then, while reading more and more about System Thinking I started considering a system as something more technically advanced: a flight or an F1 car. This book gives a wider perspective on a higher level - sociocultural systems. Each organization is a sociocultural system. And that itself is a more complex being than any piece of software.

  3. 5 Dimensions of social systems and the importance of their generation and distribution (“dissemination”): wealth, power, knowledge, beauty, value. If the first three are pretty obvious, beauty and value give me an additional perspective when now looking at social systems.

  4. Distribution without effective production can only result in equal distribution of poverty.

  5. The importance of communicating the shared image as leverage to transformation.

  6. Formulating the mess is sometimes more important than designing a solution. A quote by Russel L. Ackoff mentioned in the book: “We fail more often not because we fail to solve the problems we face but because we fail to face right problems”.

Again, that might seem pretty obvious but it is really huge. Further I keep going, and the more I keep asking myself what the hell I am doing and for what reason someone needs that (shit).

Let’s stop on those six. But there are more, definitely.

You mentioned that this book is not for beginners. What do you recommend for people who want to get acquainted with System Thinking?

“Thinking in Systems” by Donella H. Meadows. No doubt, the best introduction to this topic.

Then start looking for other materials to dive deeper - you need to have some background for Gharajedaghi’. Don’t repeat my mistakes.

Take care,

Ilya