Systems Thinking: Using the Iceberg Model of Systems Thinking

Systems thinking foregrounds looking at the big picture over making minor fixes to small details. In this approach, you take a hard, long, and holistic look at the whole before breaking it down into its subsequent parts. The basic premise is simple: The more you understand how an entire system functions, the better you’ll be able to implement changes to independent parts of that system.

For instance, think of something like climate change. You might feel it’s necessary to overhaul one element of environmental policy at a time, but this approach can have unintended consequences. In your myopic focus on a specific part of the climate, you might worsen another element of the ecosystem. Suppose you successfully remove all gas-powered vehicles from the road but then increase reliance on fossil fuels for the electrical grid itself. By applying systems thinking, you could have seen this problem ahead of time and come up with a solution amenable to both circumstances.

Systems thinking focuses on improving the entirety of a holistic system, while design thinking revolves around foregrounding a positive design experience for users. The former also derives from systems theory in the abstract, while the latter comes from a desire to make intuitive and helpful improvements to systemic design in particular.

Both design and systems models can intersect in positive ways. In short, while systems thinking likely involves design thinking, design thinking is just one aspect of systems thinking.

Systems thinking has an almost limitless range of applications for problem-solving. By implementing systems theory, you can achieve greater efficiency, success, and sustainability as well. It can help you better understand patterns of behavior among coworkers, issues with project management, or areas of concern with your manufacturing process. Any time you see an opportunity to look at things from a wide-angle view, you can likely benefit from applying systems thinking.

Systems thinking emanates from the idea that various moving parts always add to a functional or dysfunctional whole. These are just a few key concepts in the discipline:

• Cause and effect: Strive to see how every part of a system affects the others. To do so, start from the widest possible view. Ask yourself what you hope the ultimate effect of the entire system will be and work back from there. Consider using causal loop diagrams and other charts to help you better visualize this process.
• Holistic awareness: In the systems approach, you aim for holistic awareness before you home in on specific expertise. Complex systems require a great deal of analysis—you need to be able to see them from every possible angle. The greater understanding you have of a totality, the easier it’ll be to develop an accurate view of the problems each part of that whole faces.
• Interdependence: In systems science and theory, every element somehow connects to each of its component parts. When you see how an entire system works at once, you can reach for specific leverage points to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

The iceberg methodology is a mental model you can use to jumpstart your systems thinking. Start with a specific event or problem your organization faces. This is the tip of the iceberg. Now analyze the patterns and trends related to that issue. As you move deeper into your analysis, consider the underlying structures and mental models that led to these patterns. This will bring you greater clarity about why something happened than if you had just examined it in a vacuum.

Systems thinkers will also benefit from moving up the bottom of the iceberg to the top as well. This helps you prevent negative events from occurring in the first place since you already know what leads to them on a deeper level. Flow diagrams and other systems thinking tools can also prove useful on this front.

Systems thinking is a tool you can use to understand your own organization and the complex world around you. Here are just a few tips to consider when implementing it yourself:

• Address underlying structures. Start by looking at the big picture of your organization from a systems perspective. The better you understand the underlying parts of the entire system, the better you’ll be able to sidestep or preemptively solve problems arising from them. A house needs a firm foundation so all the other building blocks can sit atop it.
• Ask the right questions. Approach your business with system dynamics in mind. Ask customers or coworkers for feedback so you can start to put case studies together. These will help you get a fuller picture of your organization. Build an iceberg model with this information in mind and base your decision-making on that.
• Work as a team. Reach out to all relevant stakeholders to get a holistic picture of your organization as a system. The more different perspectives you collect, the more colorful your comprehension will be of how you all work together.

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