A system is a whole that cannot be divided into independent parts or subgroups of parts.

Russell Ackoff

Reality is made up of circles but we see straight lines. Herein lies the beginnings of our limitation as systems thinkers.

Peter Senge

A ‘mess’ is a set of strongly interacting problems. It is standard practice to reduce messes to aggregations of problems: to prioritize and treat them separately, as self-contained entities. Managers do not generally know how to deal effectively with any system, let alone messes.

Russell Ackoff

When you are dealing with a complex social system…with things about it that you are dissatisfied with and eager to fix, you cannot just step in and set about fixing with much hope of helping. This realization is one of the sore discouragement’s of this century.

Lewis Thomas

Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things…

Peter Senge

In essence, the systems approach postulates that since every problem humans face is complicated, they must be perceived as such, that is, their complexity must be recognized, if they are to be managed properly.

Ian Mitroff

Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes…

Peter Senge

Fragmentation is now very widespread, not only throughout society, but also in each individual; and this is leading to a kind of general confusion of the mind, which creates an endless series of problems and interferes with our clarity of perception so seriously as to prevent us from being able to solve most of them.

David Bohm

The art of systems thinking lies in seeing through complexity to the underlying structures generating change…it means organizing complexity into a coherent story than illuminates the causes of problems and how they can be remedied in enduring ways.

Peter Senge

System is more than just a concept. It is an intellectual way of life, a worldview, a concept of the nature of reality and how to investigate it – a weltanschauung.

Russell Ackoff

Changing the system will change what people do. Changing what people do will not change the system.

Peter Scholtes

Keiner denkt mehr frei, der ein Systeem hat.

Johann P.F. Richter

Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.

Herbert Simon

Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment.

Herbert Simon

A system of local optimums is not an optimum system at all.

Eliyahu M. Goldratt

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

H.L. Mencken

Reality is made up of circles but we see straight lines. Herein lies the beginnings of our limitation as systems thinkers.

Peter Senge

Management works in the system; Leadership works on the system.

Stephen Covey

...economists don’t study the working of the economic system. That is to say, they don’t think they’re studying any system with all its interrelationships.  It is as if a biologist studied the circulation of the blood without the body.

Ronald Coase

A leader must understand that the system is composed of people, not mere machinery, nor activities, nor organisation charts.

William Edwards Deming

A tester's job is to adjudicate what a system does and what it should do. The system should help the businesss accomplish a goal, so what the system actually does should be compared with those goals.

Dorothy Graham

Bewaren