Talking About Systems: looking for systems in the news (and not)

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Thinking About Systems
Living systems are everywhere. 
These systems elements and processes interacting to form a whole shape us and surround us.


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When we look closely, we see living systems on all scales, from the smallest plankton, to our own body, to the planet as a whole.

When we understand what constitutes a living system, we also see that our watersheds, families, communities, organizations, and nations are all living systems.

Explore my latest work

Showcasing 5 Projects

The Systems Thinking Playbook

by Linda Booth Sweeney and Dennis Meadows (2001). The Systems Thinking Playbook has become a favorite of K-12 teachers, university faculty, and organizational consultants. The book provides 30 short gaming exercises, classified by areas of learning Mental Models, Team Learning, Systems Thinking, Shared Vision, and Personal Mastery. The companion DVD shows the authors illustrating good practice introducing and running the 30 games. The DVD is available separately for those who already own the book. The book is available through Chelsea Green Publishers. For an educators discount, contact me: linda@lindaboothsweeney.net.


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When a Butterfly Sneezes

by Linda Booth Sweeney (2001), Pegasus Communications.
A Guide for Helping Kids Explore Interconnections in Our World Through Favorite Stories. This book highlights 12 favorite childrens stories that illustrate key systems thinking principles, and shows you how to use these stories with children of all ages. Each chapter focuses on one favorite picture book and reveals the systems principles inherent in the story, general points for discussion, illustrations of key concepts, and questions to spark conversation for both younger and older readers. Purchase


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Connected Wisdom: Living Stories about Living Systems

by Linda Booth Sweeney (2008). How do we learn to live sustainably or within the means of nature? Through this book, readers from 10 to 110 explore, through 12 timeless folktales and modern examples, how the laws that guide living systems can also guide how we live and learn. The book was designed by renowned graphic artist Milton Glaser, recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, and illustrated by award-winning artist Guy Billout. To purchase, contact Chelsea Green Publishers. There is a CD as well.


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The Climate Change Playbook

22 Systems Thinking Games for More Effective Communication about Climate Change. By Linda Booth Sweeney, Dennis Meadows and Gillian Martin-Mehers (Chelsea Green 2016). These simple, interactive exercises in The Climate Change Playbook can help citizens better understand climate change, diagnose its causes, anticipate its future consequences, and effect constructive change. Purchase


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PBS Systems Literacy Collection

Working with Ted Sicker at PBS Learning Media, we launched a pilot Systems Literacy collection for students in grades K-12. The current collection includes six PBS resources that have been repurposed to teach about complex systems.

The collection also includes two short videos:

What is a system?

To learn more about collection, watch the Becoming Systems Literate webinar recording http://tinyurl.com/l92avev. As part of this effort, hosting a SYSTEMS LITERACY google hangout, sponsored by WGBH. Come join in a conversation with others who are looking to foster understanding of complex systems in K-12 and beyond.


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Linda Booth Sweeny

As a systems educator and award-winning author, Linda works with people of all ages to develop systems literacy, or a deeper understanding of living systems. In much of her work, Linda translates complex systems theory into accessible materials and programs for innovation in organizations, schools, museums, public television and communities.

Combining complex systems theory + systems mapping + story telling, Linda also works with organizations to move beyond bullet points and matrices, to language and visuals that more closely match the interdependent, dynamic, complex reality of their work.



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Publications and Research

To think about systems means we pay attention to interrelationships, patterns, and dynamics as well as to the parts.

The field of systems thinking has evolved over the past 50 years as a set of methods and tools that focus on systems rather than fragments as the context for defining and solving complex problems, and for fostering more effective learning and design. At its best, the practice of systems thinking helps us to stop operating from crisis to crisis, and to think in a less fragmented, more integrated way.

Thinking About Systems

Here’s the good news: you already think about systems. And you have some good intuitions about them. For instance, when someone says “we’re on a roll!” (an indicator of reinforcing feedback at work), you know there will likely be some built-in limit that ends the growth (that’s a systems pattern known as limits to growth). And you also get it when someone says, in reference to a family or a high performing team, that “1 + 1 = 3” or “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (that’s the concept of emergence).


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Working with Systems

Given the complex and highly interdependent nature of most work settings, even the most brilliant leaders can benefit from opportunities to reflect on and more effectively work with the systemic nature of their professional and personal environments.
Dr. Booth Sweeney works with organizational leaders, educators, and students to custom design programs that foster systems thinking capabilities in themselves and in their organizations.


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Learning About Systems

Learning about systems isn’t always easy. We can’t actually see most systems. Instead, we have to imagine the interconnections and processes that give a system integrity. The English language, with its emphasis on nouns and objects over verbs and processes, can limit our awareness of the living systems in our daily lives. Our everyday artifacts – newspapers, magazines, books, and textbooks — even the signage in some museums and nature centers – often direct our attention to isolated events and fragmented information, rather than to interrelationships, patterns, and trends.


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Systems Resource Room

Over the past eighty years, a family of systems frameworks has emerged. Some have their roots in general systems theory, while other hail from system dynamics, systems ecology, cybernetics, complexitytheory, and more.
Although they may not see each other as kin, they all view systems as the context for defining, understanding, and solving complex challenges and designing human systems.


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See the full collection