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Mapping a system means writing down what comes in, what comes out, and what the levers are, including whether each one is bimodal or normally distributed. Even a spreadsheet that goes nowhere beyond a shared drive can be very clarifying. The underrated skill in systems thinking is a mathematical background that lets someone communicate how a system works.
The famous five whys method, which came out of Toyota, is apparently just asking why five times until a first principle surfaces. A lot of people who call themselves systems thinkers are doing about that much. A deeper tradition is Jay Forrester's system dynamics, from manufacturing in the 1970s, which models a system the way a spreadsheet would.
How did Toyota's five whys work?
Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota's parent company, developed the method, and Taiichi Ohno made it a core of the Toyota Production System. Ohno gave an example in his writing. A machine stopped because of an overload, the overload came from a bearing without enough lubrication, the lubrication pump was not drawing enough oil, and the pump shaft was worn. The worn shaft traced back to metal scrap getting in because the pump had no strainer.
Why does a bathtub explain stocks and flows?
In her 2008 book Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows used a bathtub as the basic picture. The water level in the tub is the stock, the tap is an inflow, and the drain is an outflow. The level rises only when the inflow exceeds the outflow. The same structure describes bank balances, populations, and inventories.
What did Jay Forrester's models describe?
Jay Forrester, a professor at MIT, applied feedback-loop thinking from engineering to companies and then to cities. His 1969 book Urban Dynamics modeled how a city's housing, jobs, and population affect one another. In 1971 he published World Dynamics, a model of the global economy. A team led by his student Donella Meadows then built on it for the 1972 book The Limits to Growth.
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