The Systems Thinker: Essential Thinking Skills For Solving Problems, Managing Chaos, and Creating Lasting Solutions in a Complex World

The Systems Thinker #1

by Albert Rutherford

Find the optimal solutions to your problems. Gain a deep understanding of the “what, why, how, when, how much” questions of your life.
Become a Systems Thinker and discover how to approach your life from a completely new perspective.What is systems thinking? Put it simply, thinking about how things interact with one another. Why should this matter to you? Because you are a system. You are a part of smaller and larger systems – your community, your country, your species. Understanding your role within these systems and how these systems affect, hinder, or aid the fulfillment of your life can lead you to better answers about yourself and the world. Information is the most precious asset these days. Evaluating that information correctly is almost priceless. Systems thinkers are some of the bests in collecting and assessing information, as well as creating impactful solutions in any context. The Systems Thinker will help you to implement systems thinking at your workplace, human relations, and everyday thinking habits. Boost your observation and analytical skills to find the real triggers and influencing forces behind contemporary politics, economics, health, and education changes. Systems thinking clears your vision by teaching you not only to find the differences between the elements but also the similarities. This bi-directional analyzing ability will give you a more complex worldview, a deeper understanding of problems, and thus better solutions. The car stopped because its tank is empty – so it needs gas. Easy problem, easy solution, right? But could you explain just as easily why did the price of gas rose by 5% the past month? After becoming a systems thinker, you’ll be able to answer that question just as easily.
Change your thoughts, change your results.
•What are the main elements, questions, and methods of thinking in systems?• The most widely used systems archetypes, maps, models, and analytical methods. •Learn to identify and provide solutions to even the most complex system problems.• Deepen your understanding of human motivation with systems thinking. The past fifty years brought so many changes to our lives. The world has become more interconnected than ever. Old rules can’t explain the new world anymore. But systems thinking can. Embrace systems thinking and become a master of analytical, critical, and creative thinking.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Self Help, Productivity, Philosophy, Management, Science

323 pages, Paperback

Published September 23, 2018

Reviews

[Sabrina Maisel · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. The only value in this book could be found in the 3 pages of the afterword.

Any other value was otherwise deeply undercut by horrible prose, grammatical errors, and repetitive language and ideas.

Also egregious was the highly inconsistent use of citations.

[Ilknur · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about complex systems in its core but there is nothing mathematical in it. It's written for laymen who are looking to make sense of the crazy world around them. The author aims to initiate the readers to the world of "going deeper" by consciously seeking patterns such as balancing and reinforcing feedback loops and taking responsibility in the outcomes rather than placing the blame somewhere else. It also introduces a mind mapping technique based on "stocks and flows" as a tool to analyze the situations deeper than just a sequential cause and effect way of analysis. I purchased the kindle version and it was quite cheap, but the diagrams were of bad quality and hard to read.

I also have to mention that some of the concepts in this book seem to be taken from Donella Maedows' Thinking in Systems: A Primer book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Syste...

[Nabil Brian Kazerouni · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book cover to cover and my enthusiasm for it faded until I finally regretted picking it up at all. There are other books on the subject that are better primers on the subject of systems thinking. This one will touch general concepts but doesn’t add to the field and lacks editing.

Why the poor rating?

1. The content - adds nothing new to the field and takes a similar format to other books. One of which is “Thinking in Systems” which is a much better primer on the subject.

2. The editing - It is so bad that towards the end of the book your confidence in the author is left shaken. Sometimes sentences are left unfinished and new ones started. In a few instances he references fields that I’m professionally familiar with and they are blatantly wrong (pest management example). The exhaustive examples create so much space between the real content that you can lose track of the real points.

Save yourself the time. Skip this one.

[David Benkert · Rating 4 out of 5]

It makes sense...

It hasnt been as eye-opening as I have expected in terms of how useful or the new way of processing thoughts. Nonetheless it does offer multiple useful and insightful thoughts and stories. Worth a read because it isnt a long book.

[Massimo Curatella · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good introduction to Systems Thinking using and quoting abundantly the classics in the field. The advantage for the beginner is the one of having a more digestible, summarized and organized set of key concepts on Systems Thinking which could provide an appropriate jump start.
There is a bit of redundancy in the writing styles that could have been avoided by a more careful editing work. Examples tend to be in the education and government fields.
Recommended for who wants to have a quite good initial overview of the Systems Thinking discipline while collecting a useful set of references and further sources to study.

[Chris Boutté · Rating 5 out of 5]

Albert Rutherford is awesome and has written a ton of short, easy-to-read books on becoming a better thinker and decision-maker. Systems thinking is one of the most important skills we can acquire because it’s extremely rare that our decisions won’t affect something else. Rutherford gives you strategies and tools to look at the bigger picture and analyze situations to take the entire system into consideration. After laying the foundation, he dives into different cognitive errors that may mess with our systems thinking and gives some practical examples. It’s a short book and worth the read as are his many other books.

[Jesse Ofner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think Differently

This quick read provides a very good overview of systems thinking. It helps one get familiar with the vocabulary and model types that are necessary for building a good foundation of knowledge. It’s a great jumping off point and I found myself constantly highlighting passages and ideas to come back to.

[Prakash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Needs more polish

Material can benefit from better organization, explanation and uniform treatment. Also, looks a bit raw, draft like with most of the pictures compressed horizontally and turned upside down. Expected better for the price.

[Lewis Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Equivalent of taking an introductory module in complex systems at university. Lays out the basics very well, useful if you're not coming from a scientific background.

[Bob Wallner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought that this relatively small audiobook, a little bit over 4 hours, was a pretty fair introduction to the world of systems thinking.

I thought that the author used decent examples of systems thinking to demonstrate what he was trying to convey. It was clear that he was not trying to teach someone how to be a systems thinker, as he referenced many resources that would actually do that. In particular the system thinkers handbook.

I appreciate how he brought the theories of one of my favorite systems thinkers, Dr goldratt, into the book. He talks very specifically how the theory of constraints, and constraints in general, are things that a systems thinker must take into consideration.

All in all with this audiobook transform someone from a single point thinker to a systems thinker, probably not. But for someone who is never thought about thinking outside of their small world this is a very good introduction.

[Phil Scheuerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful information but

This book provides a useful straightforward description (with examples) of Systems Thinking. However, the examples reflect the author’s social and political views. A more diverse collection of examples would have made the example more useful. If the author wishes to express his views using a systems approach he should write a book specially titled and described as doing so. I would read such a book, but my purpose for reading this book was not to learn his views and his support for those views. There are many typographical and grammatical errors.

[Patrice Kerremans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Systems thinking is like architecture done right

Interesting read. I was hoping to learn a bit more how to apply it in my job as an enterprise architecture, where the system is the ... enterprise. A lot of the examples and cases are very recognizable. And a lot of the suggestions are applicable. What I fail to see is the difference between architecture and systems thinking. But that’s probably me :)

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book to begin with

This book was an interesting overview and introduction to the “what” of systems thinking - rather than the “how”.

I think it’s a great place to start and the reference section looks to be a rich resource for future study (there are a lot of references and in the Kindle edition they are hyperlinked).

Some of the diagrams seemed a little off and could have been walked through a bit more.

Over-all I recommend this one.

[Ilene Skeen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beginners Book on How to Think about Systems

This book makes some good points on systems thinking. It is written for newbies. A person new to systems thinking would learn more on an actual job than from the book, but the book and a good course might help the person land that job. A professional, experienced systems person would find it rudimentary, but might recommend it a new assistant.

[William · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book itself (at least the kindle version) has some formatting issues like graphic figures being upside down. I kept reading because the principles presented were valuable. about 2/3 through, the author then began ab-using the systems approach to justify socio-political ideals.
That's where I stopped reading. Sorry, but without finding the root-cause issues, no solution will work.

[Brianskellenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first step to a new Government

We will need to work hard to find an equilibrium between the working class to then obtain Representation in our Government. I personally prefer individual sovereignty and projects through the groups I choose and this book is helpful advancing all of those agendas for myself, a working man who understands freedom is expensive.

[Gerardo Suarez · Rating 2 out of 5]

it's a decent book, that explains some visual techniques to think about complex issues, it does not go into too much detail, it's meant for the general book

I can see the value of the book, but if you come from STEM, you know the techniques, it is nice to work on them with the exercises and it does give nice examples but there's not much else you can gain from It

[Raza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Systems thinking

As a systems analyst I always like to read about systems thinking. This book is well researched and documented and contains a few good examples of thinking in systems from various industries.

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok text bad graphics

There was some interesting content in this book, but the figures were bad. I read it on kindle and the figures were blurry and upside down. Even if they had been right side up, they weren’t very informative. Overall the book was disappointing.

[Nagma · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are a lot of ideas presented in this book that are better explained by other books. It does not dive deep enough, and reads like a summary of other books. Writing style was also not super engaging. You’re better off reading more in-depth books on each of the areas this book covers.

[Patrick Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read

I picked this book up to understand some underpinning concepts in economics and business. It did not disappoint. I feel ready to advance my understanding of larger concepts and ideas because of it.

[Andrei · Rating 1 out of 5]

Same topics as "Thinking in Systems: A Primer" but the content is of lower quality. Some diagrams are wrong (eg. incorrect labels) and the text is generally disjointed.

[Bulat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Total trash.

[Said AlMaskery · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good intro

A nice deep intro into systems thinking. The book was light to read and easy to understand.
However, could have been made better by more visual examples...

[Nestor Echave · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent book

[Mise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book for an 18-year old looking to to become more responsible

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some pretty obvious typos, and the writing felt a little disjointed and scattered.
Good information, adequate presentation.

[Nikolai Maksimov · Rating 1 out of 5]

Way too basic

[Alice · Rating 1 out of 5]

dnf