Social Systems Thinking

A workbook in the use of tools for thinking about social systems

Two loops of text boxes joined by arrows. One going from Monitor, Analyse, Plan, Execute back to Monitor and the second from the Plan box to Design then back to Plan
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Understanding Social Systems

A workbook in the use of tools for thinking about social systems

This site is the web version of a workbook to develop tools which aid in understanding human social systems, such as countries, democracies and the economy1.

I also provide some ideas that may be useful in changing them to implement a better future than the one we seem to be headed towards.

I am publishing it in this form because it is changing rapidly and I hope I might get some feedback.

The rapid change is mostly because the act of writing exposes gaps in my thinking, on the principle of “How do I know what I think until I see what I write”2 and it exposes gaps in the thinking of other experts in this field.

It is also a deliberate illustration of my use of two linked cycles in my approach to systems thinking. One is the loop in the diagram in the site header, which is a longer term process for understanding and changing systems; the other is the loop in each workshop, in which lessons learned lead to improving the tools, which may require some changes in other workshops.

As I do this, I am updating the book frequently and showing my work in the form of a blog, which will mostly be an application of the ideas in the workbook to current news items, which would become dated too quickly to put in the main workbook. It will also include philosophical thoughts, miscellaneous STEM thoughts and perhaps some random photos from my garden and neighbourhood, just to stop you from getting too bored.

The About me section is intended to give some sense of who I am so that you know a little about why I have the perspectives that I do. I’m not sure that I will get round to a lot of detail, but I will probably put some anecdotes in the blog.

I am also hoping that perhaps someone else will have some interest in following along, both to learn something and perhaps offer some helpful guidance or criticism. Feel free to give suggestions on this, too.

I welcome constructive input. It’s on my “to-do” list to add a comments feature directly on this site but it’s not easy so for now, please respond to my social media posts as I add each chapter.

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  1. I am only looking at eurocentric systems. Some of the tools may be useful for other systems, but that is not in my lane. ↩

  2. Adapted from E.M. Forster “How do I know what I think until I see what I say? ” ↩

Page updated: February 6, 2023