Transcripts
1. Introduction: Systems thinking,
otherwise known as big-picture thinking,
is important. It's important because nowadays things are no longer in
islands of themselves. Instead, things are
interconnected. When the computer was
first becoming a thing. That was great news. It's like, wow, Can you believe
that there's this device that can do all these different
types of calculations. Great. But for great, to
become even greater, the computer had to go from a computational device into
a communications device. And that's how we ended
up with the Internet. It doesn't just stop
with the computer. Many things nowadays are being intertwined in unique ways. And different fields are
merging, whether it's politics, Information Systems
at journalism, and much more, are
combining into one. And you, as the systems thinker, needs to be able to see
the bigger picture. You're capable of
making smart decisions. And not only are you capable
of making smart decisions, That's what creativity is about. The creative person sees
the entire picture, while others are simply
seeing the pixels. In this beginner's class, you're going to understand what exactly is
systems thinking. Why systems thinking
is important? How to get better
at systems thinking with understanding
the fundamentals. And in the end, I'm going to give you a
final project that will help you understand
this new paradigm. And by understanding
this paradigm, you will see connections that
others are simply blind to.
2. What is Systems Thinking?: Systems thinking is the ability
to spot the systems and the interconnection
among different systems within a certain boundary. So let me give you a funny
example and then we may get more serious
throughout this clip. When I was a little
kid, there was a certain period when I
was taking art class. Ms. Tucson was her name
and she loved drawing. Well, there was one day when
I ended up getting very sick and I ended up missing
the entire week in class. And by the next week when I
was supposed to come back, one of my friends calls
me and he's like harmony. Ms. Tucson, to bring a
picture of yourself. I was like, okay. So by the time that
I get back to class, I see a bunch of
these different kids are getting the pictures that they bought themselves
and they're drawing it. I was like, I could easily
do something like that. So I began drawing this picture. I start off with one little. I. And I was over here
making this all detailed, making it look beautiful. And then I moved on to the next time,
repeating the process. Eventually, I moved to the nose, and then eventually
I moved to the lips. As soon enough my
picture was complete. Once I looked at this picture,
I couldn't believe it. It was hideous. Why was it so ugly Ford though? Because I did everything
that I was supposed to do. I was taking my time with
each of the individual parts. What gives so by the time that Ms. Tucson came to my desk, she's like, how's it going? I was like, It's
going off on this Tucson this picture,
it looks so ugly. And that's what she was like. Wait a minute. I completely forgot that you
missed the entire last week. Here's what you're
supposed to do or money. Instead of starting off
with a tiny parts first, what you need to do is
draw an upside down egg. I was like, Why? She's like an upside down egg, roughly resembles
the human head. And once you have the big
picture understanding, then you put a slight line right down the middle of
the face, one and-a-half. And then you just
place your eyes, your nose, and your lips. It pretty much just becomes
plug-and-play at that point. And I was like, alright, so I tried Miss
Tucson strategy and that picture ended up looking better than
the first picture. Now what's the lesson
from all of this? The lesson is that a lot of times we are trained
into reductionism, where we're just breaking things apart to his tiny pieces. And we're thinking that, okay, if we understand
the tiny pieces, then we're going to understand
the bigger picture. But my encounter with drawing the portrait showed me something
drastically different. It's much better in certain situations to do your best to understand
the bigger picture. So the rest of the tiny
details become plug and play. This can happen in a
multitude of different ways. One example is the palm. What do you really
see when I do this? Technically, you could give
me two answers right now. You could be like,
well, there's skin, There's bones, There's
a fingernails and such. Or you could just
say it's a palm. Once you make that
assumption that, boom, this is a palm. Now the other different
parts make a lot more sense. The unique thing, if you
understand the palm, is that each of these unique fingers are
little systems of themselves. They have their unique parts. But if you do not
understand the context of what these parts
are involved in, then you're just
going to be like me, that guy that's over
here drawing the eye, drawn the nose, the lips, hoping for something, but
you're not seeing it. So systems thinking
is the ability to see the bigger picture
and seeing how the details fall among
the bigger picture. And what useful
value does it serve?
3. Why Learn Systems Thinking: The reason that
systems thinking is important is because
it allows you to make smarter decisions and evaluate the situation much
more appropriately. You ever see one of
those commercials for weight-loss pills? It's like the person
that's over here hyping up these pills are
really amping it up. You could tell that the owner of the pill hired a salesman
in order to sell it. But what's really sad about this situation is that there's a consumer that's like, okay, well if I did this pill, then it's going to
solve my entire issue with my weight problems. But that's not
typically what happens. Instead, these people get the pill and eventually
what happens is that they end up
getting more weight. The reason why is because
they're not seeing the bigger picture for them. They're looking for some
sort of magical solution, which is causing them
to look for shortcuts. But if they had a
bigger perspective than they could be like, wait a minute, I'm
not eating properly, I'm not working out properly. I'm not sleeping properly. I'm highly stressed. There's like all these
different variables that there are now
capable of seeing. The reason that systems thinking
is important is because a lot of different fields nowadays are becoming
interconnected. And if you can spot the interconnections and you cannot see the bigger picture, what's going to happen
is that you're going to make a lot of foolish decisions. And the person that's over here getting the
weight-loss pill, it's not like they're
a bad person. It's just that they
don't know any better. When you don't know any better, you're doing your best with the information that
you have at hand. So systems thinking is
very important because it just allows us to make
smarter decisions. Others that are
reductions thinkers. They need a lot of mental
bandwidth in order to reach the same conclusions that a systems thinker just
intuitively gets. That just shows you the power of giving someone
the bigger picture. Once you're capable of better utilizing systems
thinking in your life. Now it's much better to
communicate with other people. Because what is good
communication really about? What is good leadership
really about? Thinking about the last time
you heard an amazing speech. Why did you view it as amazing? You viewed it as amazing
because this person ended up shifting your
perspective in a certain way. When you're capable of
seeing the bigger picture, you're capable of
approaching issues from unique ways that allows others to have their
perspective shifted. So systems thinking
is very important, not only for others, but mainly for yourself. It allows you to make
much better decisions.
4. Nodes and Links: So system is broken down
into nodes and links. For the next two videos, we're going to be breaking down nodes and links and detail.
5. Nodes Explained: So nodes are points
of connections. And this is a very
general description. So let's do our best to
zone in with some examples. One example is the Internet. Whenever someone
sticking of the Internet there over here
thinking that there's this magical building in space that people are
just logging into. While in reality,
that's not the case. The Internet is pretty
much a collection of computers,
servers and routers. These computers, servers
and routers are the nodes, aka the point of connections, where communication is
capable of flowing through. Notice something. Imagine that you have a crummy computer. Imagine that you
have a crummy router and a crummy server. Are you capable of having good communication among
these different parts? Not really. So
it's imperative to understand that the nodes
should be functioning properly. It shouldn't be just
something that we're slapping together and
hoping that they talk. Instead. The nodes are a beautiful
equipment on its own. Let me give you another example. Imagine that you have three people that are over here communicating
with each other. But they're very
snake-like individuals. They gossip about each other. They don't have any purpose. They're highly distracted. Now you put them together. Are you going to get a beautiful
flow of communication? Not really. They're probably just going
to be backstabbing one another and it's just
gonna be one big mess. But flip it. Imagine
that these individuals are all unique in
their own right. They're subject matter
experts in their own field, the pursuing excellence within their own field and their stand-up individuals
with great character. Now you place them together
and what's going to happen? They are capable of transmitting ideas
in a beautiful way. They create synergy. This beautiful system that the unique parts by themselves
could not have created. The main thing that you
want to get out of this is that nodes are simply a part. But the part must not
be a sub-optimal. The part should be
functioning on its own. Once it's capable of being specialized and
functioning on its own. That's when you
interconnected in a unique way to make
it even more powerful.
6. Links Explained: The links are the
interconnections among the nodes. Now at first, this
may be like, okay, so I could just
connect the nodes however I see fit, right? Incorrect. So this is
where systems thinking at times merges with the world of philosophy and metaphysics. Now you begin to
ask the question, why or better yet, how? How should we connect the
nodes in a unique way? When you're consistently
asking that question, you're like, why are we
connecting it in the first place? Every system out there has a purpose. Think
about it like this. Imagine someone
gives you a book and the book has the chapters
all out-of-order. Now, I know about those anthology books where the chapters don't
need to be in order. But this is a novel. This is one of those
suspense novels where you're being guided
from beginning to end. And now chapter four is where Chapter 40 should
be and vice versa. This is not smart. This is not smart because the
purpose of this book is to give the reader an
experience of this thriller. But now this thing
is out of whack. The nodes within
this book or what? The chapters, the chapters
need to be interlinked in a certain way that gives the reader the thrill
like experience. So when you're
thinking like this, It's like I can't just
aimlessly link things together. There needs to be
intent behind my moves. The more that I'm capable of spreading
the appropriate links. It really comes down to the metaphysical
questions of why. Why does this system
exists in the first place? When you are capable of
answering that question. Why? That's when the how and
the what just falls out with systems thinking. In order to link the
nodes effectively, you need to know the why. You're not just randomly
linking things together. Willy-nilly, you have
to know what sort of useful function is this
system capable of producing?
7. Storytelling: So I'm going to give
you a hack right now. As you're watching this class, some people may be like, Okay, well, I'm
getting a lot of it. And some people are like, I have no clue what the heck
you're talking about. That's completely normal. Because what systems thinking is not about theorizing too much. It's actually about building. The more that you build, the
more that your intuitively understanding what
systems thinking is like an order to
build something. You don't really need to
just go build a building or something like that,
something physical. Instead, it could be something
more soft in nature, aka a story. What is the story? Now whenever we're thinking
of stories, someone's like, oh well, it's one of those
things with once upon a time. And then they're talking
about a prince and princess, a dragon and such. No, a story is simply an
interconnection of ideas that are delivered to
provide useful value. Okay? So with this definition, it's like wait a minute and
interconnection of ideas. So that means the ideas or
the nodes in this situation. Or the interconnection
means the link and me interconnecting them
creates the story. And the story is
what's capable of producing the useful value. The story, in this
case, is a system. So storytelling is a
very powerful way in order for you to just prime your mind into systems thinking. You're capable of
seeing systems all around you and you
want to get started. I want you to do the following. I want you to choose three meaningful moments
from your life right now. One from your childhood, one from your teens, and one from, let's
say your adulthood. And you have those
three memories. Now, how do you want to
connect those three memories? You have a lot of
different options. Let's just say that when you're a little kid, you
almost drowned. When you were a teenager. You're bullied for
your fashion sense. And when you're adult, you started a business
that you scale to $1 million revenue per year. Three different ideas. Your main goal is
to connect them in a certain way that
you best see fit. And that process of connecting these three disparate ideas. You starting to connect
different parts of your brain. You're starting to
see what it's like to transition among
different ideas. Or you're trying
to see how can I make this idea relate
with this idea. And in this process
you're just like, whoa, maybe the story is
going to have value or not. But at least in the process of building a system,
I'm learning a lot. Let me reiterate.
Storytelling is pretty much priming your
mind for systems thinking.
8. Final Project: Congratulations on making
it to the end of the class. So for the final project, I am going to give you your notes and your
goal is to connect them in a useful way to provide value to at
least one person. And it's good if that
value is to yourself. The value can be
through educating, through entertaining, or
a little bit of both. So here are your notes
for the project. Dog, caffeine pills,
Internet connection. So find a different
way in order to combine these different
notes that I just gave you into a story that's either educational,
entertaining, both. And once you're done, go ahead and post that story on the final project
section down below. I look forward to reading it. The main takeaway I want you to get is that in that process of connecting is where
creative geniuses are born, where systems thinking
is being exercised. And once you keep exercising
systems thinking, human friend will see
the bigger picture. By seeing the bigger picture, you will see answers that others are intellectually
trying to solve. Being presented straight-up
to you is because you are at this point drawing
that face or the up, side down egg first
rather than the eyes, nose and the lips individually. See the big picture first and the small details just
falls out of that. If you enjoyed this
beginner's class on systems thinking and want to learn
more about soft skills. Be sure to check out my
website, our money talks.com. Within this website, you will learn more about
public speaking, social skills, emotional
resilience, and much more. Money talks.com, go
on and check it out.
Arman Chowdhury, Confidence thru Communication
