The Fifth Discipline - Systems Thinking

This book took almost an entire month for me. Partly because I was struggling to even finish my work on time. And partly because the book is really dense. There is a wealth of information within - much of which I can't quite relate to nor internalise given my paltry experience with running huge projects and teams.

Nonetheless, this book has already opened my eyes to this brand new subject on systems thinking. And it has very much piqued my interest too! The engineer inside me finally finds a bridge into this whole world of business and leadership which had seemed so alien just a while ago.

(I might have to either make this a living blog entry, or split this up into many many short posts. It is almost futile to summarise a subject as huge as systems thinking into a single entry.)

So here's my first post on this big hairy animal.

One should look past the seemingly random or human-induced processes and outcomes in the world, and think one level deeper as to why these things are the way they are. It is almost certain that one will find a system at work, which can be understood by simple logic. Developing this ability takes practice, and one would need to have a good grasp of how certain typical system archetypes work. However, the rewards are tremendous - being able to see the crux of an issue quickly and more importantly, knowing the point of greatest leverage to execute a solution. I shall attempt from today onwards to figure out the systems underlying the everyday processes that I see!

Another concept that was preached in the book is mental models. Through our experiences and the conclusions / learnings that we reap from them, we gradually develop mental models about the way the world works. These models provide a very convenient and efficient way for us to deal with the world, and allows us to spend more resources dealing with the other things in our life. For e.g., after I develop the mental model that "to improve in anything, i will just have to work harder at it", I have a template that is easily applied to many areas of my life. At work, I would subconsciously throw more and more time at my assignments to improve on my performance. However, this may be a faulty view that is actually limiting me from seeing that my work processes may not be optimal, or that the marginal gains from each extra hour of work decreases so dramatically that I may be better off chewing gum or taking a nap. This is related to a podcast that I listened to recently, which said that we should always remain a little skeptical about all our beliefs. (it gets harder the older we get though)

That's the main takeaways for now. Enough to keep me occupied for a long time to come.
Another good thing about finishing this book is that I'm now in time to buy a new one on my payday tomorrow!

Ahhh - the little things in life.