Marcus

Instead of looking at the surface of things, systems thinking asks that you look deeper into how these structures are created and how they interact with one another.

Fourth, to harness the energies of a system, you must get to know how feedback loops work. Top-down styles of thinking and of management no longer respond nimbly and successfully to challenges: if the communication is only going in one direction, then the system gets bogged down in routines, misinformation, and mistrust. Feedback loops can occasionally work against us, as in a reinforcing loop. This is like a recording getting stuck, repeating the same line over and over again. If we are only telling ourselves one story, then it becomes dominant, and the system gets out of balance.

James Webb Young (1960) identified a five-step creative process to develop new ideas.
1. Gather materials
2. Digest the information
3. Ignore the information – let it incubate (e.g., go for a walk, go to a movie)
4. An idea will appear out of nowhere
5. Apply the idea to the real world
Graham Wallas (2014) identified a similar process.
1. Preparation
2. Incubation
3. Illumination
4. Verification