Applied Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is a powerful, comprehensive approach to assessing systems and problem situations. Whereas traditional analysis focuses on understanding individual components of a system, systems thinking emphasizes identifying and understanding the interactions and feedbacks between these same system components to gain insight into the systemic behavior they produce. Practitioners of applied systems thinking leverage both soft methods (methods that provide considerable insight into qualitative aspects of a problem) and hard methods (methods that provide a means for quantitative evaluation), to assess root causes of problems and the high leverage solutions that will solve them.