Take a look at the picture in Figure 2. What will happen when the girl pushes the domino closest to her?
Figure 2 Dominoes
It’s not a trick question! The dominoes will fall over in turn and unless the girl realises this and gets out of the way she is in for a nasty shock. Seeing the system (the dominoes and the way they inter-relate with each other) from where we’re standing this is obvious. But maybe things look different from her stand-point? Maybe she sees the two dominoes close by but doesn’t see the others or indeed how they could affect each other.
The key learning in this example is that the structure of a system (the component parts and how they inter-relate and affect each other) affects the behaviour of that system. This means that to influence the behaviour we must understand the structure of the system. What affects what, when and by how much. To do this we need to stand back and see the bigger picture. If we understand the structure we can think through what might happen when we pursue a course of action. In that way we can make better informed choices about which course of action to take. It follows that to make better decisions for the longer term, we need to be able to understand cause and effect relationships which are further apart in time and space.
The skill I am talking about here is thinking. This is what differentiates the human from other animals endowed with less good brains. Our horse and our dog understand cause and effect but only when closely connected. We exploit this when we train him “in the moment” by repetition. We can use our brain to think through and understand cause and effect over much greater expanses of space and time. It is this that we must exploit in ourselves as we seek to become better trainers.
If we see life as a stream of random events we are left feeling out of control and our only option is to react.
If we start to see patterns of events we can start to modify our behaviour and prepare. We are no longer caught unawares but we still don’t feel in control.
When we understand the structure of cause and effect behind the patterns…then we know…and we can act confidently and in control.
Often we don’t know with certainty what will happen when we change something. In fact I don’t believe we can be 100% confident of anything! That doesn’t mean we can’t improve. We can make an educated guess and then establish experiments to understand further what happens if………
Just as we use exercises to improve the strength of our bodies so we must use exercises to improve the strength of our brains. Systems Thinking is a technique which can help us to harness and exercise this strength.
The good news is that Systems Thinking is not complicated to learn. It is relatively simple. But its power, when used properly, is immense.