I’m working on a couple of projects where I wanted to review some thoughts on systems design so I went to my bookshelf and re-read sections of Jamshid Gharajedaghi’s book, Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity: A Platform for Designing Business Architecture.
In both hindsight (evaluation) and foresight (analysis), this advice resonated with me:
There is a need to deal with the problem independent of the solutions at hand. We have a tendency to define the problem in terms of the solutions we already have. We fail most often not because we fail to solve the problem we face, but because we fail to face the right problem. Rather than doing what we should, we do what we can. In the systems view, it is the solution that has to fit the problem, not vice versa.
This book can be a tough slog because it breaks new ground on almost every page, but after three years I still value the methods and the case studies contained within it.
