The Systems Thinker Series

The second edition is now available!   Find the optimal solutions to your problems. Gain a deep understanding of the "what, why, how, when, how much" questions of your life.  Become a Systems Thinker and discover how to approach your life from a completely new perspective. What is systems thinking? Put it simply, thinking about how things interact with one another.  Why should this matter to you? Because you are a system. You are a part of smaller and larger systems – your community, your country, your species. Understanding your role within these systems and how these systems affect, hinder, or aid the fulfillment of your life can lead you to better answers about yourself and the world. Information is the most precious asset these days. Evaluating that information correctly is almost priceless. Systems thinkers are some of the bests in collecting and assessing information, as well as creating impactful solutions in any context. The Systems Thinker will help you to implement systems thinking at your workplace, human relations, and everyday thinking habits.  Boost your observation and analytical skills to find the real triggers and influencing forces behind contemporary politics, economics, health, and education changes.  Systems thinking clears your vision by teaching you not only to find the differences between the elements but also the similarities. This bi-directional analyzing ability will give you a more complex worldview, deeper understanding of problems, and thus better solutions. The car stopped because its tank is empty – so it needs gas. Easy problem, easy solution, right? But could you explain just as easily why did the price of gas raise with 5% the past month? After becoming a systems thinker, you'll be able to answer that question just as easily.   Change your thoughts, change your results. •What are the main elements, questions and methods of thinking in systems? •The most widely used systems archetypes, maps, models, and analytical methods. •Learn to identify and provide solutions even the most complex system problems. •Deepen your understanding about human motivation with systems thinking. The past fifty years brought so many changes in our lives. The world has become more interconnected than ever. Old rules can't explain the new world anymore. But systems thinking can. Embrace systems thinking and become a master of analytical, critical, and creative thinking.

Enhance your logic, reason, judgment, and wisdom. Increase your ability to create concise and reasoned arguments using data and evidence, to get a genuine conclusion. The Systems Thinker – Analytical Skills aims to raise the level of your mental performance by focusing on the fundamentals of how to use your mind effectively. This book will show you how to: •Increase your ability to analyze problems and to comprehend what you read, hear, experience in a logical manner.  •Examine the logical structure of good and bad reasoning.  •Look at what type of evidence are decisions commonly based on. •Detect common fallacies and rhetorical and psychological factors that can influence your thinking.  The book presents the methods that good problem solvers use in understanding complex ideas. It provides practice in applying these methods to a variety of comprehension, analytical, and reasoning questions. It also includes a number of logical thinking problems to hone your logical thinking skills.   Use these intellectual skills to analyze anything you might think about - questions, problems, disciplines. •The most widely used forms of analysis. •Guidance and practice to monitor your thoughts with the help of intellectual tools. •Learn to question purposes, problems, information, and concepts. •Interdisciplinary analytical tools to understand and assess your own reasoning, be it about a highly technical question or your everyday life.  The Systems Thinker – Analytical Skills helps you to find the most fundamental logic of any discipline, problem, or thesis. Transfer your knowledge between and among subjects and fields of observation.  •Learn four types of profound analysis. •Learn to read and create statistical charts. •Learn and correct the most frequent errors in reasoning. •Learn to complement your analytical thinking tools with synthetic, systemic, critical, and creative thinking tools. Good analytical thinking skills are deeply necessary if you are working in business, education, law, politics, and economics. Understanding the underlying structure of a problem can help you come up with the best solution.  Adopt analytical thinking skills to make better decisions, assess situations more accurately, and persuade other people with more success to consider your point of view. This book serves as a springboard toward analytic proficiency.

Regain focus. Select relevant information. Make quick and clear decisions.  We are dealing with too many options, too much information, conflicting advice on general choices like what diet to choose, or who to choose as a mate. It's hard to maintain focus and be confident in our decisions under such conditions.  The Systems Thinker –Mental Models helps you make decisions based on your relevant thought patterns and true values. Finding the most relevant information to YOU, the best decision to YOU is a matter of exploring YOUR thoughts and wants.  Mental models are cognitive frameworks that you can use to make order in your head, tune out the noise, and focus on what's important – without getting overwhelmed. Mental models provide transparency, order, deeper understanding, context, and most importantly, a clear solution or conclusion about problems. Using systems thinking as your leading cognitive tool will provide depth AND width to your mental analysis.   Learn how corporate executives, economists, and policy makers analyze big data and make decisions based on it. •Discover 12 powerful thinking tools to facilitate your though processes •Understanding and model dynamic systems •Learn to use mental models through real-life examples   Mental models are so much more than a cognitive tool; they help with productivity, enhance understanding, boost critical thinking, and analytical skills. •Understand how corporations make multidimensional decisions  •Learn to design your own mental models to map out your real priorities •Learn to include soft variables such as emotions into your analysis  •Shift your mindset from blaming to accountability and resolve conflicts easier.

Learn to be comfortable with change. Increase your tolerance for uncertainty.  Chaos and unpredictability dominate our world- affecting even the smallest of events. We often cannot predict how seemingly insignificant actions will alter our lives. This may lead us into rash decisions driven by the urge to regain control and quickly fix problems. But poorly considered decisions often create more problems for us than they solve.   If you can't fight something, get to know it and use it to your advantage. This book is a primer on nonlinear system dynamics and chaos; how these forces shape our world and how to overcome their adverse effects. Reading this book will teach you to prepare for unpredictable events, and give you the tools to navigate the challenges of a chaotic world.   The Systems Thinker – Dynamic Systems sheds light on why sometimes life sometimes unfolds counterintuitively to expectations, how small changes can lead to tremendously big ones over time. - Learn the difference between linear and nonlinear systems and their effect on your life. - Deepen your knowledge about the additivity and homogeneity principle. - How to use synergy and interference in real life? - What are feedback loops and how can they generate equilibrium?   Explore and fix the "problems that never seem to go away". - Detailed introduction to chaos theory and the butterfly effect. - Learn the importance of exponentials, power laws, long-tail distribution, phase transitions, bifurcation, and strange attractors. - Discover the world of fractals. Get introduced to the world of chaos. Learn about the Raleigh-Benard instability, Metcalf's Law, Edward Lorenz's discovery of the Butterfly Effect, Benoit Mandelbrot's concept of fractals, the Koch snowflake and others.  Incorporate the concept of chaos and unpredictability into your life to –counterintuitively – find more peace and predictability.

Would you like to have better solutions to your problems? Struggling to understand why things went wrong when you did everything right?  Learn to Think in Systems can help you with these problems.  Systems surround us and we might not even be aware of it. Your household is a system. The bakery on the corner is a system. Your class at school, your department at work, and your weekend soccer team made of wholehearted dads is a system too. You are a vital part of more complex systems like your country, the economy, or the world; learn about their changing nature, and find optimal solutions to problems related to them.  The world is more connected than ever thanks to innovations like telephone, television, computers, and internet. The way we sense reality changed significantly. Using conventional thinking to understand the world as it functions today is not enough. We need to know the elements of systems thinking to see beyond simple cause-effect connections. This book will help you to find strategic solutions to every complex, modern problem. Learn To Think in Systems focuses on the nine fundamental system archetypes; our mental models related to them, and the step-by-step implication methods to fix them. Learn to use systems archetypes to solve your problems at work, in your business, in your relationship, and social connections.  See through the motivations and understand the drives of contemporary politics, economics, and education. Widen your perspective, think critically, analyze deeply, clear your vision, be more logical and rational just by applying systems thinking.    Think differently and get different results.  •Learn the language of systems thinking. •Apply the best systems thinking ideas, models, and frameworks in your cognitive and decision-making process.  •Learn to understand, design, and find solutions to the main system problems called 'archetypes.' Complexity, organizational pathways, and networks gain more and more importance in our interconnected world. Learn To Think in Systems gives you real-life examples to make the adoption process of this type of thinking smooth.  Define your problems more accurately, find better, long-lasting solutions to your problems, learn to create strategic plans using systems diagrams, and understand your place and power over the world.

How did the world's greatest systems thinkers handled crises, invented revolutionary ideas, and solved complex problems? How did the field of systems thinking develop? Who were the pioneers in the field?   Learn about the answers in Lessons from Systems Thinkers. Norbert Wiener's pioneering contribution on positive and negative feedback. Warren McCulloch's research on feedback mechanisms in neurology. The 14 points of quality management by Edward Deming. Gregory Bateson's double bind and how it affects family relationships. Margaret Mead's systems approach to cultural anthropology. Find optimal solutions to your problems.   Information is the most precious asset these days. Evaluating information correctly is almost priceless. Systems thinkers are some of the bests in collecting and assessing data, as well as creating impactful solutions in any context. Systems thinking helps you to find not only differences but also similarities in seemingly unrelated factors. This bi-directional analyzing ability will give you a more complex worldview, a more profound understanding of problems, and leads you to better solutions.   Change your thinking, change your results. Albert Rutherford is an internationally bestselling author and a retired corporate executive. His books draw on various sources, from corporate system building, organizational behavior analysis, scientific research, and his life experience. He has been building and improving systems his whole adult life and brings his proven strategies to you. 

Think with clarity, depth, and speed. Become an effective problem solver and decision-maker.    We often have blind spots for the actual reasons that cause problems in our lives. So we try to fix our issues based on assumptions, false analysis, and mistaken deductions. This can bring a lot of misunderstanding, anxiety, and frustration into our personal and work relationships.   Tools of Systems Thinkers shares powerful strategies to organize your thoughts into transparent patterns and find the real roots of your problems and fix them once and for all.   Notice details others miss. See through complexity.    Resist jumping to conclusions prematurely. Evaluate information correctly and consistently to make better decisions. Stop sabotaging your self-interest. Overwrite your autopilot with logical and analytical tools. This unique book will give them to you. Learn to utilize mental models and system maps to your greatest advantage. Mental models provide transparency, order, deeper understanding, and context to your problem. System maps can become your leading cognitive tool to find a clear solution that lasts.    Change your thinking, change your results.   Albert Rutherford is an internationally bestselling author and a retired corporate executive. His books draw on various sources, from corporate system building, organizational behavior analysis, scientific research, and his life experience. He has been building and improving systems his whole adult life and brings his proven strategies to you.      Regain focus. Discover relevant information.  •Find out the 5 most powerful mental models and system maps. •Learn to create a visual representation of complex problems with the help of dynamic systems. •Use system tools to fix your everyday problems. •Find real-life examples and exercises to deepen your knowledge at the end of each chapter.     Make smart and clear decisions.    Change your way of thinking. Master analytical, critical, and creative thinking. Become a systems thinker and discover how to approach your life from an entirely new perspective.