Systems Thinking for a Complex World?
I finished the final draft of my third book on AI yesterday and sent it off to my publisher. (My Amazon author’s page: bit.ly/44RbTA9.) I then had some free time, so I started reading on Substack.
I came across a new term for me, “linear logic models”. Having studied philosophy for my undergraduate degree, I have always been interested in logic and its application. (For me, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem is a noteworthy example.) Linear logic models are “representations of a project or program’s logical progression — typically depicted as a chain from inputs to outputs to outcomes”.[1] This description is exactly how I think about systems thinking, as the same step-by-step process. The systems thinking fraternity would criticize this definition because it fails to consider feedback loops, interconnectedness and adaptability. I address this issue by simply including feedback loops as a feature of my linear logic approach to systems thinking. This provides a dynamic quality to the more causal linear logic model, effectively making it non-deterministic. (This approach is starting to look a lot like agent-based modeling, which can be computerized.)
Richard Rumelt [2], a noted authority on strategy and leadership, writes about the military use of After-Action reporting.[3] After a mission, the combatants debrief to identify what they did right and what they did wrong, so that their learnings can be adopted in future missions. This process mirrors the feedback loop concept in my simple systems thinking approach. Rumelt uses this after-action concept to illustrate how strategies can and should be a process of continuous updates and adaptation.
This approach to strategy Henry Mintzberg called Emergent Strategy. To quote Mintzberg, “Emergent strategy is a set of actions, or behavior, consistent over time, ‘a realized pattern that was not expressly intended’ in the original planning of strategy.”[4] In simpler terms, for both Mintzberg and Rumelt, strategy is a continuously iterative process.
With the increasing uncertainty and complexity of the modern world, with environmental and geopolitical risk nearing all time highs, strategic planning becomes more challenging. Scenario planning is one alternative, but I think the “emergent” strategy of Rumelt and Mintzberg is a better choice and a systems thinking approach combining linear logic models and feedback loops might even be better. I prefer the linear logic, step-by-step approach because it works both bottom-up and top-down. For very difficult problems, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk recommend starting with the desired solution and working backwards to the present (top down). This additional insight of working (logically) backwards further refines my proposed approach of linear logic models + feedback loops.
[1] https://cere.olemiss.edu/logic-models-vs-theories-of-change/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rumelt
[3] https://strategeion.substack.com/
[4] Henry Mintzberg & James A. Waters, 1985. “Of strategies, deliberate and emergent,” Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(3), pages 257–272, July.
