The Systems Thinker – A Lifetime of Systems Thinking - The Systems Thinker

I have no interest in forecasting the future, only in creating it by acting appropriately in the present.

The best thing that can be done to a problem is to solve it. False. The best thing that can be done to a problem is to dissolve it, to redesign the entity that has it or its environment so as to eliminate the problem.

The most valuable and least replaceable resource is time.

First, disciplines do not constitute different parts of reality; they are different aspects of reality, different points of view. Any part of reality can be viewed from any of these aspects. The whole can be understood only by viewing it from all the perspectives simultaneously.

Corporations tend to collect activities that they do not have the competence or even the inclination to run well.

Managers fail to diagnose the failures of the fads they adopt; they do not understand them.

Science, I believe, consists of the search for similarities among things that are apparently different; the humanities consist of the search for differences among things that are apparently similar. Science and the humanities are the head and tail of reality—viewable separately, but not separable. It is for this reason that I have come to refer to ... See more

Improving the performance of the parts of a system taken separately will necessarily improve the performance of the whole. False. In fact, it can destroy an organization.

I have very much enjoyed denying the obvious and exploring the consequences of doing so. In most cases, I have found the obvious to be wrong. The obvious, I discovered, is not what needs no proof, but what people do not want to prove.