Boon Yew Chew on Systems Thinking as a Relational Tool

Boon Yew Chew is senior principal UX designer at Elsevier and an IxDA local leader and board alumn. He will be a speaker at the upcoming 2023 Enterprise UX Conference on June 6th and 7th, delivering a session on “Making Sense of Systems – and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise.” Systems thinking can seem abstract and theoretical, but Boon reveals some unexpected ways that systems thinking can have a profound impact on individuals and relationships within organizations. Who knew that systems thinking could be an emotional intelligence tool? Lou and Boon begin today’s episode by discussing the history of systems thinking and how it developed in the ‘40s and ‘50s, mostly within scientific communities, and grew into other fields and disciplines. It offered a new way of thinking about how things develop and change over time. Boon goes on to describe his path into systems thinking and how, with its holistic, big-picture perspective, there is little room for blaming individuals when problems are viewed through a systems thinking lens. A system can give context to the behavior or clashes within an organization and alleviate frustration. Believe it or not, systems thinking can be a relationally lubricating tool. Systems thinking can help us answer the following: • Where do I fit? • Where do the people I’m serving, working with, developing with, and creating for fit within the system? • How is the organization I’m part of itself part of a bigger system? A summary of Boon’s insights: • Systems thinking helps us understand context, empathize, and understand other people and the context they work in • Systems thinking provides a visual language that other people can learn from • Language can help reveal not just problems, but how problems relate to each other even when they may not seem connected • Systems thinking is a tool that can help with prioritization What you’ll learn from this episode The history of systems thinking, especially how it first developed within scientific communities The