Systems Thinking Basics: From Concepts to Causal Loops

Touted as a 'basics' book, this lives up to its promise. Each chapter has some instructional text, super graphics, tables, and/or figures that augment the text, and activities that include examples. The book's organization walks you through key concepts including:What Are Systems?What is Systems Thinking?Uncovering systemic Structures: Drawing Behavior Over Time GraphsUncovering Systemic Structures: Building Causal Loop DiagramsComplex SystemsFrom Loops to Leverage: Applying and Practicing Systems ThinkingThe Appendices are practical also including:Additional learning activitiesKey PointsSystems Thinking ToolsSystems ArchetypesGlossaryAdditional ResourcesFor the practical, read this book. For additional background and a more theoretical treatment, read:Checkland, P. (1999). Systems thinking, systems practice includes a 30-year retrospective. Chichester [Sussex]: J. Wiley.

This is a guide for the professional wanting a concise course in modeling organizations. It is the best hands on, self guided, blending of book and workbook I've ever seen on the topic. If you want to learn hands on systems thinking and modeling, then this text is for you. It's outstanding for graduate students and very thoughtful leaders. There's nothing else like it and its willing to be "that different" is what makes it a great text.

Me agrado la simpleza y explicaciones prácticas para introducir los concepto se sistemas tanto en la enseñanza de este tema como la utilización en la empresa.

This book is a quick and easy read...packed full of great ideas. Reading it got me to apply organizational behavior knowledge I already had in a different way. Lots of ah ha moments while reading. I'd recommend this to people who are responsible for analyzing/solving problems in an organization. I've already recommended this to others I know.

Useful workbook. Could use a little more clarification with some of the exercises and examples.

All of the pages are falling out if this book and it was filthy on the outside. I had to wipe it down with Clorox wipes.

Fairly good text book, while it explained the use and need for CLD's it fails to provide a first reader on how to actually draw the loops! It does not guide or recoomend what software to use in doing the drawing... we are all not technical drawers.....

This has been a vital tool in helping to communicate visions and experiences. I have been looking for such a tool to help process and express plans, ideas, and areas of tension/conflict. Glad I found this!

The topic is sophisticated. Not easy as its needing a lot of studying. But the book is explaining all the relevant details needed to get the ideas. And the excercises is to help to implement in reality to be able to apply.As later, when you get back to study a problem or an issue or to investigate something, you will need to apply what you really been studying out from this book. To be able to figure out whats going on.As what is practiced in managerial consultations or making various investigations usually. So, the topic helps sometimes and overlaps with any various problem solving approaches sometimes to declare something during case analysis or investigations.I love this book. Its very good.

You'll go though this book in an afternoon. It only touches on very basic concepts, and it is so dragged out that it could be summarised into a couple of pages without missing any useful information.

This book was recommended by a prof I had in grad school for a systems modelling project I was working on. I've done a number of other modelling activities before so the topic was not new for me. The book is laid out with a short explanation of a page or two of some basic concept then a bunch of pages of questions and a few diagrams to help you to draw a model. To be honest it didn't take much effort to draw a model based on my prior experience and the book was therefore only partially useful. I used about 5 pages of it for a major project and the rest was not that useful. Some of it is really basic stuff such as drawing behavior over time. Other parts are casual loops. The archetype false fixes portion I did find useful.The professor recommended I do a bunch of the activities in the book in prep for a large project but I found that there were only about 5 pages that worked for me.This book would be better done if explanations and examples were more detailed and would work for a keen 3rd year, 4th year, or masters grad student with no systems design experience or as supplementary material for an instructor led course or to accompany a more detailed book with this book being the assignments. For a self study person it may not be as beneficial as other books (although I have nothing at the moment to compare it to). For an experienced person or an engineer the benefit of this book may be limited as it provides a basic view of systems.