Element Scope
Description
A problem is a system whose behaviour we want to change. A system is a collection of elements that can affect other elements in the system. In general, the greater the number of elements in the system, the harder it is to determine the behaviour of the system. This is even more difficult if the elements are of different types (e.g., dollars, emotions, friends).
Examples
Government Budget
A government budget can contain tens of thousands of financial items. Because there is only a limited amount of money, every item influences at least one other item: an increase in one place need to be compensated for elsewhere. All of the items in a budget are of the same kind: they are expressed in terms of dollars.
The scope of the system gets even bigger when we consider that the budget is only money. The practical effect of the budget is on the things that it buys (e.g., health, security, education) and the ways in which it obtains funds (e.g., taxes, debt). The compromises that must be made in the budget system therefore correspond to genuine quality-of-life decisions, such as the “guns versus butter” trade-off. When we expand the budget system like this, not only do we add even more elements, but the new elements are expressed in terms of different things (e.g., health, quality of life).
Global Warming
Representing the possible impact of human activity on the climate also requires a large number of elements of different types. Ideally, every human would be represented as an element in the system, because every human behaves differently. However, that's not feasible, so human behaviour would need to be aggregated into a smaller number of elements. The system would also have to represent decisions about forms of energy production and transportation, eating habits, the impacts of other living things (both animals and plants), geographic and oceanographic features, etc.
Related Issues
This section describes similarities and differences between this issue and related problem factors and thinking traps.
Action and Outcome Scopes
Since we're considering actions and outcomes to be types of elements, a system with many actions and/or outcomes must also have many elements (and probably many more).
Relationship Scope
A system with many elements probably also has many relationships between its elements.
Time Scope
Element scope refers to the number of 'moving parts' within the system. Time scope refers to the time dimension: the duration for which the parts' movements need to be considered.
Complex Behaviour
A system with many elements has a type of complexity (specifically, detail complexity). This can result in complex behaviour.
Busy and Reductionism
A system with many elements tempts us to consider only a part of the system. This is called reductionism. This is especially true if we're busy.
Related Engine Processes
Later, we will describe a thinking framework that comprises multiple processes. This section points forward to the processes that deal with this page's topic.
Problem Assessment
When we describe a large problem such as global warming, we need to decide whether we want to work out what the individual problem-solver should do, or what the whole of humanity should do. For most of us, the individual problem-solver can only control their own actions, rather than the actions of everybody else. Therefore, working out what I should do, rather than what we should do, won't require such a large system to be considered. This obviously makes the problem easier to consider. However, there can still be benefits in contemplating what the whole of humanity should do, since that can influence individual decisions such as voting.
Priorities
One or more of the elements in the system will represent something you care about. (If you didn't care about anything in the system, it wouldn't represent a problem to you.) Such elements correspond to your personal priorities; e.g., health, possessions, values.
Systems Thinking
Systems thinking involves working out how to represent the problem as a system, and working out how that system behaves.
Further Reading
Senge ('detail complexity').
To Do
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Murdered Darlings
Probability qv, and especially uncertainty, encourage conservative(??) approaches to deal with a problem. However, this takes resources away from other problem areas(??), so can be sub-optimal.
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