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What Systems Thinking is and the advantages it offers for good policy making
Posted on September 13, 2022 9:30 AM by Peter Tuddenham
Interesting to see this "promotion" of systems thinking from the United Kingdom Government in a You Tube video dated April 2022.
 
Tamara Finkelstein, Permanent Secretary for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Sir Patrick Vallance, Government Chief Scientific Adviser, set out what Systems Thinking is and the advantages it offers for good policy making. They also offer advice to those getting started with a systems thinking approach.
 
 
 
 
Systems Thinking was the title of a book by F.E. Emery published in 1970
Comments
Comment By: Shann Turnbull
Posted on October 2, 2022 8:26 AM
I posted the following feedback on the video as follows: The video is counter-productive because it: 1. accepts the current toxic system of centralised command and control authority system of governments that lack distributed and so contestable decision making required make corrections, adaptations, and refinements; 2. Recommends identifying boundaries for their analysis to deny external sources of knowledge to verify known knowns, access data on known unknowns with exposure to discovering about unknown unknowns; 3. Seems to ignore who is responsible and accountable for risks, harms, costs, unintended consequential problems of imperfect decision-making; reinforces toxic undemocratic forms of arrogant bureaucratic exercise of power by denying any mention of citizens and/or stakeholders holding imperfect data collection, decision-making or controllers to account
Comment By: Peter Tuddenham
Posted on October 2, 2022 12:22 PM
Thanks Shann for your comments. Unfortunately the two words "systems thinking" have multiple meanings, not all of them as systemic as we might like.
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