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systems-thinking skill

/skills/systems-thinking

This skill helps you apply systems thinking to complex problems by mapping actors, stocks and flows, and identifying leverage points for impact.

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---
name: systems-thinking
description: Help users think in systems and understand complex dynamics. Use when someone is dealing with multi-stakeholder problems, trying to understand second-order effects, managing platform ecosystems, or analyzing complex organizational dynamics.
---

# Systems Thinking

Help the user apply systems thinking to complex problems using frameworks and insights from 6 product leaders.

## How to Help

When the user asks for help with systems thinking:

1. **Map the system** - Help them identify all players, their incentives, and how they interact with each other
2. **Identify stocks and flows** - Understand what accumulates (stocks) and what moves between states (flows)
3. **Trace second-order effects** - Work through what happens after the first-order impact of any change
4. **Find leverage points** - Identify where small interventions can create large systemic changes

## Core Principles

### See the system
Seth Godin: "What does it mean to be a strategic thinker? It means to see the system." Understanding the invisible rules, culture, and interoperability that govern how products and organizations succeed or fail is the foundation of strategic thinking.

### Think about all players and incentives
Sriram: "Systems thinking. Think of all the players in the system, think of all of their incentives and how they interact with each other." This approach is superior to Jobs-to-be-Done for handling complex product trade-offs and multi-agent incentives.

### Use stocks and flows
Will Larson: "Systems thinking is basically you try to think about stocks and flows. Stocks are things that accumulate and flows are the movement from a stock to another thing." Model business processes like hiring pipelines or user funnels using this framework.

### Consider second, third, and fourth-order effects
Hari Srinivasan: "The skillsets that you think through and manage in a complicated ecosystem are quite different." Managing complex ecosystems requires understanding effects that cascade beyond the immediate impact.

### Think beyond today's decisions
Nickey Skarstad: "Second order thinking is you being able to think beyond the decisions that you're making today." Consider how current decisions impact future constraints and ecosystem dynamics.

### Automate recurring pains
Melissa Perri + Denise Tilles: "Tell me about some process you really hated and ended up trying to automate or build a system around to make it better." Identify recurring manual pains and build automated systems or frameworks to solve them.

## Questions to Help Users

- "Who are all the players in this system, and what does each one want?"
- "If you make this change, what happens next? And then what happens after that?"
- "What accumulates over time in this system (the stocks), and what flows between states?"
- "Where are the feedback loops - both reinforcing and balancing?"
- "What constraint, if removed, would unlock the most value in this system?"
- "What recurring manual pain could be systematized?"

## Common Mistakes to Flag

- **Only seeing first-order effects** - Changes ripple through systems in ways that aren't immediately obvious
- **Ignoring incentives** - Every player in a system responds to their own incentives, not yours
- **Optimizing locally** - Improving one part of a system can make the whole system worse
- **Missing feedback loops** - Many systems have self-reinforcing or self-balancing dynamics that amplify or dampen changes
- **Treating symptoms instead of causes** - Systems problems often require addressing root causes, not visible symptoms

## Deep Dive

For all 6 insights from 6 guests, see `references/guest-insights.md`

## Related Skills

- Setting OKRs & Goals
- Defining Product Vision
- Platform Strategy
- Organizational Design

Overview

This skill helps you apply systems thinking to complex problems so you can map interactions, anticipate cascading effects, and find high-leverage interventions. It combines practical frameworks—players and incentives, stocks and flows, feedback loops—with targeted questions to expose root causes. Use it to move from local optimizations to durable system-level improvements.

How this skill works

I guide you through a structured analysis: identify all players and their incentives, map stocks (what accumulates) and flows (what moves), surface feedback loops, and trace second‑ and third‑order effects. Then we search for leverage points and recurring manual pains that can be automated or systematized. The output is a clear map of dynamics, prioritized interventions, and suggested metrics to monitor.

When to use it

  • Designing or managing multi‑stakeholder platforms or ecosystems
  • Evaluating product changes with possible second‑order impacts
  • Diagnosing recurring organizational problems or bottlenecks
  • Planning strategy that must account for incentives and feedback loops
  • Prioritizing interventions where small changes could yield large system effects

Best practices

  • Start by listing every player and their incentives before proposing solutions
  • Model key stocks and flows (e.g., user base, hiring pipeline, cash) rather than only events
  • Trace at least two orders of consequence for each proposed change
  • Identify and document both reinforcing and balancing feedback loops
  • Prioritize leverage points and quick experiments over broad sweeping changes
  • Automate repeatable manual pain points to reduce variability and free capacity

Example use cases

  • Launching a two‑sided marketplace and balancing supply/demand incentives
  • Assessing how a pricing change cascades through churn, acquisition, and partner behavior
  • Designing a hiring pipeline to avoid long‑term talent shortages and reduce time‑to‑fill
  • Resolving cross‑team tradeoffs where local optimization harms overall product health
  • Creating monitoring dashboards tied to stocks (retention, backlog) and flows (hire rate, release cadence)

FAQ

How deep should I trace second‑order effects?

Trace at least two additional steps beyond the immediate effect; go further only for high‑impact changes or when feedback loops are likely.

What’s a quick way to find leverage points?

Look for constraints that limit flow or amplify feedback. Small changes to those constraints (removing a bottleneck, changing incentives) often yield outsized gains.