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Systems Literacy: How to Think in Systems

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The Corporate Energy Strategist’s Handbook
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Abstract

System thinkers are those who are able to synthesize the connectedness of components, flows, and processes that become part of the greater whole. They are holistic in their approach to a problem and able to visualize possibilities of the system, not just the expected outcomes. Novices to systems thinking sometimes use the interconnectedness of the components as an excuse to not take any action. Thinking in systems is to think in boundary conditions to predict how a system will behave under normal circumstances and when under stress, and under what conditions it will break. Energy strategists will be called upon to make decisions about scenarios that are beyond our experiences to manage. A leader needs to quickly understand the situation they are in and respond appropriately.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Many of these lecture notes have been open sourced and can be found in my GitHub repository: https://github.com/JJia/Master-Lecture-Slides

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Jia, J.Y. (2020). Systems Literacy: How to Think in Systems. In: The Corporate Energy Strategist’s Handbook. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36838-8_9

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