week one

I've always been most comfortable with big picture thinking. Noticing trends, perceiving challenges before they arise, understanding how a subtle shift can have a huge impact over time, these are some of the tools that I like to use both in my personal life and in a wrok situation. I have some experience with systems thinking, though we didn't call it systems thinking when we studied it. We called it the Science of Creative Intelligence. Already having a language in which I can speak about systems certainly has it's pros and cons. For example, reading The Web Of Life was very difficult for me. I found the authors wordplay to be overly philosophical and to me indicated a general lack of true understanding. When he said "physics has now lost its role as the science providing the most fundamental description of reality" it clashed with my experience that all fields of knowledge have the potential to present us with the most fundamental description of reality. Also, for someone claiming to be a leader in thinking, it bothers me that he would lean on someone else's definition of sustainability, "a sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations," which to me is only a very partial definition as it completely fails to define what those "needs" might be. The author seemed to enjoy defining his use of words, in particular his use of holistic and ecological (which I found to be just plain backwards), and I'm disappointed that he didn't do so here. Defining "needs" is the crux of sustainability, and to just say that there are needs is lazy. I'm sure that there must be some nuggets of good information in this book, but I would likely stop reading at this point were it not required for the class.

The study of what we called the Science of Creative Intelligence at my undergraduate university helped us recognize common patterns that exist across all fields of knowledge and our own personal life experiences. I have not had much opportunity to explore how life's fundamental patterns can be applied to business, but I'm excited to do so in this class.