[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# A World of Systems Thinkers?

## Details

**Authors** Berg Wig, Bjarne

**Year** 2021

**Publisher** Medium (self-published)

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Business & Management

**Secondary disciplines** Cognitive Science

**Kind of engagement** public

**Applied** false

[Read it](https://bjarnebergwig.medium.com/a-world-of-systems-thinkers-84fbd4ccca11)

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

Berg Wig argues that most people, in Norway and elsewhere, do not think in systems, and that the obstacle is the belief that systems thinking is complicated rather than complex. He sets out to show that it can be practiced daily.

### How they did it (methods)

An argumentative essay of about eight sections. It opens on the difference between problem handling and problem solving, using yo-yo dieting as the image for symptom-focused fixes, then defines systems through weather, cross-country skiing and the family, with an iceberg figure for hidden factors. It moves through Deming's introduction of systems thinking to Japanese leaders in the 1950s and the removal of underlying causes of variation, Heraclitus and dialectical thinking, and Kahneman and Tversky's System 1 and System 2, before presenting the four simple rules, a self-directed exercise built on them, a learning loop the author developed with colleagues at LOS Norge, and a closing section on Lean and the role of the sensei.

### What they found (results)

Berg Wig concludes that systems thinking is a thinking muscle that strengthens with practice and that the brain already uses the four rules. He states them as: any idea or thing can be separated from other ideas or things; every idea or thing must be seen as part of a whole system; every idea or thing can be related to other ideas or things; any idea or thing can be seen from different perspectives. His exercise asks the reader to write down a current mental model of a problem and then ask what it is and what it is not, what larger system it is part of, what relationships and cause-effect links are present, and how it looks from other angles, observing the problem as directly as possible while asking. He proposes a loop of visible information, dialogue and practice as the 'DNA code' of a learning organization, and argues that Lean is a system for learning in which a sensei teaches leaders to think better rather than installing methods.

## Commentary

### In short

Berg Wig treats DSRP as a daily practice rather than a theory to be assessed, and his one-line statements of the four rules are accurate. What he adds is the pairing with two other bodies of work: he places the rules as the System 2 labor that has to override System 1's filtering of unfamiliar ideas, and he reads Deming's insistence on seeing the whole value chain as one system as the systems rule applied to production. Both are fair uses. His exercise is metacognition in the sense the theory intends, since it works on a written-down mental model rather than on the problem directly. It also thins the framework in one respect: the identity-other pair survives in the distinction question, but systems, relationships and perspectives each reduce to a single prompt, so part and whole, action and reaction, and point and view do not appear as paired elements. A reader who practiced only this exercise would get the four patterns without the structure inside each one.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**Added** 2026-10-09

**How to cite this** Berg Wig, Bjarne (2021). A World of Systems Thinkers?. Medium (self-published).