Obvious and complicated contexts assume that the universe is ordered, that you can see cause and effect relationships and there will be a right answer or answers.

It’s a discovery process; you are looking to find out what is out there, what could potentially occur.

For, as futurist author William Gibson said, “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”19

The order in which the parts are assembled or arranged affects the system’s performance (if parts aren’t connected properly to the motherboard, the system won’t work)

Mapping is a tool to capture what happens during this experimentation and enabling you to respond to the feedback as it happens.

Snowden differentiates between complex contexts where cause and effect are difficult to see and perhaps can only be seen in retrospect and chaotic contexts where cause and effect are constantly shifting.

Rather, it is what is termed a wicked problem, where no definition can be agreed between stakeholders and which cannot be completely ‘solved’.

Patterns are what you might notice if you look at all the events together.

Systems thinking is a discipline, and it has its own vocabulary and maps. It is one of several frameworks that have been developed to help people work effectively with systems, understanding the implications of interdependent parts and enabling them to make robust decisions in uncertain, emerging and unclear space.