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If you are a systems thinker, you might sometimes feel you are going a little crazy. We still live in command-and-control land and our assumptions haven't caught up to the realities of the world. If you have begun to act and talk like a systems thinker, you may be treated a little like the court jester. Actually, I'd say it was closer to the boy who declared the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. Nonetheless, this is what it's like being a systems thinker. You see and say things that others think are a little crazy. Alternatively, people hear your words, but you realise after a while that they are processing them with an analytical mindset and so misunderstand the whole thrust of thinking systemically. We are all prisoners of our own flat-earthisms, after all. So you are either side-lined because your ideas seem a little far-fetched ("If there is no hierarchy, how do you control people????") or what they think they understand is not what you intended.

I love systems thinking - it's one of the best tools we have to develop a more detailed, dynamic and divergent perspective of the way the world works. I hope that these words and insights from my years of working with and teaching systems, sustainability and design can help you develop a systems mindset as well.

URBN DSGN is a collaboration between professionals and community leaders, doers and thinkers, and every day citizens. We function in pursuit of better cities.

Inspired by the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor, the Roosevelt Institute reimagines America as it should be: a place where hard work is rewarded, everyone participates, and everyone enjoys a fair share of our collective prosperity. We believe that when the rules work against this vision, it's our responsibility to recreate them. We bring together thousands of thinkers and doers-from a new generation of leaders in every state to Nobel laureate economists-working to redefine the rules that guide our social and economic realities. We rethink and reshape everything from local policy to federal legislation, orienting toward a new economic and political system: one built by many for the good of all.

Heartland Democracy engages directly with Midwestern youth, independent thinkers, centrists, and folks who are uninvolved in their community and politics.  Using shared values and critical issues as the bases and sparks for discussion, Heartland Democracy targets specific participants, institutions, demographic segments, and geographic areas for exchanges in which we weave together a coherent set of values, stories, history, facts, and ideas to reach the emotional factors so decisive in the shaping of mindsets. 

"The Habits of a Systems Thinker help learners understand how systems work and how actions taken can impact results seen over time. They encompass a spectrum of strategies that foster problem-solving and encourage questioning. The Thinking Tools Studio contains a course for each of the Habits. "

The Hamilton Project seeks to advance America's promise of opportunity, prosperity, and growth. The Project's economic strategy reflects a judgment that long-term prosperity is best achieved by fostering economic growth and broad participation in that growth, by enhancing individual economic security, and by embracing a role for effective government in making needed public investments. We believe that today's increasingly competitive global economy requires public policy ideas commensurate with the challenges of the 21st Century. Our strategy calls for combining increased public investments in key growth-enhancing areas, a secure social safety net, and fiscal discipline. In that framework, the Project puts forward innovative proposals from leading economic thinkers-based on credible evidence and experience, not ideology or doctrine to introduce new and effective policy options into the national debate.