Summarized highlights from Letter to a Young Systems Thinker | Jen Briselli

Systems thinking involves engaging with systems through active dialogue rather than attempting to control them

“If you can learn to listen carefully, you find that systems speak. Not in words, but in patterns and anomalies: beacons that light up the places where an experiment or intervention can teach us more about a system’s behavior and the path to desirable change.”

“But some systems don’t sit still for diagrams, (especially the complex human systems you’re probably most interested in). And if you stay with systems work long enough, committed to curiosity and reflection, sooner or later you realize the point isn’t to model, map, or master the system, but to be in conversation with it.”

Systems practice requires active participation and relationship-building, not passive observation

“This isn’t mysticism. It’s not detached observation nor a passive meditation. Systems oriented practice is active and relational.”

It involves “sensing where the system is malleable, where small shifts might propagate into meaningful change” and “actively modulating constraints, seeding new patterns, and prefiguring more livable futures.”

Understanding systems requires appreciating context and meaning, not just abstract information

“What matters most in living systems is not information in the abstract, but meaning in context.”

This approach values the messy, iterative nature of learning and adapting within systems

Systems thinking embraces uncertainty and multiple viewpoints to foster meaningful dialogue

This approach emphasizes the importance of presence and participation in shaping desirable futures

The goal is collective understanding through curiosity and reflection rather than mastery or control