How to get through chaos?

By befriending my best friend…

I think it was fifteen years ago, on a chilly December night, the first time I heard of her. I was scrolling through USA university websites to find a summer internship program and there she was, all highlighted in the curriculum of this remarkably advanced summer school. Systems Thinking… I spent a good amount of the next few hours getting to know of her and the more I read about her, the more I was convinced that she is interesting, different and more realistic than any other concept that I heard of so far. Today? Well, it is even more true. There is not even a day passing, I don’t take her to a meeting where I need to understand, clarify and discuss the possibilities…Literally about anything. Thus here I am, recreating this same December night for the ones who haven’t heard of her before, hoping that you would think of bringing her in in your next encounter with complexity, ambiguity and chaos. But first, let me start with introducing her family, particularly, her evil sister: Flat Thinking. And yes, they do not get along well.

Flat thinking is, actually, one of the pillars of modern (western) education systems, also known as the reasoning concept. A reason drives a result. A problem needs a solution. A goal requires a set of steps to be achieved. One thing leads to another -and if it is a complicated situation- this might even lead to another thing. In essence, it refers that thinking follows a line from one place to another, leaving a trail of connections in isolation from the ecosystem they belong…