A topic my brother and I have discussed at length is that of systems theory as applied to business. He has a book written by John Sterman, a very dense tome called Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. This is not as dry as it sounds, especially when one can apply the ideas to one’s real life.

Accelerating economic, technological, social, and environmental change challenge managers and policy makers to learn at increasing rates, while at the same time the complexity of the systems in which we live is growing. Many of the problems we now face arise as unanticipated side effects of our own past actions. All too often the policies we implement to solve important problems fail, make the problem worse, or create new problems.

Effective decision making and learning in a world of growing dynamic complexity requires us to become systems thinkers–to expand the boundaries of our mental models and develop tools to understand how the structure of complex systems creates their behavior.

Systems analysis can be applied to many problems: traffic flow, economic cycles, world hunger, delivery of crisis aid, customer service, human relations. What makes this fascinating is the multi-faceted approach to dealing with the situation. It’s related to gestalt theory, in that one attempts to work with the whole, not the parts. But the difference is that in order to understand and work with that whole, one needs to understand the functions and impact that the parts have. This site on Gestalt and perception also provides some interesting possibilities. I’m just beginning to explore this–still at the dilettante level with it.