Think in Systems

The Art of Strategic Planning, Effective Problem Solving, and Lasting Results

By: Zoe McKey

Narrated by: Anna Doyle

Length: 2 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." (Albert Einstein)

Get out of that rut. Find long-term solution to your problems.

We have the best of intentions to improve our conditions, but often, our solutions fall short of improving our lives. Our best efforts can result in the opposite of what we want over time. If we apply conventional thinking to complex issues, we often maintain or feed the very problems we want to fix. How to avoid this trap? I will tell you in this audiobook.

Think in Systems is a concise information book offering high-level, strategic problem-solving methods for personal and global issues. The book presents the main features of systems thinking in an understandable everyday manner, helping you to develop the skill top analysts and world leaders use.

Your life is a system. Everything that is connected to your system (life) is a part of it. Your town, country, the world, the solar system are all bigger systems you are a part of. These systems are interconnected. Whatever you do will affect the system and whatever the system does will affect your life. Systems can have positive and negative effect on your life or on the lives of people, generally. 

The greatest problems like hunger, war, and poverty are all failures in the system. Similarly, fights with your loved ones, being stuck in a rut at your job are also system failures. They are not only your fault. But they can’t be fixed with the help of cause-effect thinking. 

Systems thinking boosts your critical thinking skills, makes you more logical, enhances your analytical abilities, and makes you more creative.

This audiobook will help you to:

• Learn the main aspects, concepts, and models of systems thinking
• Design models and systems maps to solve your problems
• Find solutions to your underlying problems, not just the symptoms
• Improve your mental health, wealth, and connections
• Learn to use systems thinking in your business, relationships, friendships, and general political, socioeconomic, and environmental issues. 
• Widen your understanding about international economic, political, and socioeconomic affairs
• Manage your business better
• Shift your focus from the unimportant details and focus on the real issues
• Stay a learner
• Map out a strategic action plan to change your circumstances. Become more patient by understanding the world - and your place in it - better 

Learn to use systems thinking in your problem-solving, decision-making, and strategic-planning practices today. 

©2019 Zoe McKey (P)2019 Zoe McKey

Overly Informal and Reaching

Besides the narration being poorly executed (is the narrator sick with a cold? why do some chapters echo?) the information presented is extremely loose.
I would say this is a good book for an introduction to general systems theory, but I definitely don't trust the "self-help" aspect of this book.
Not to be too harsh, I have never attempted writing a book myself, but perhaps the bibliography is more enlightening than the contents.

why the self help?

struggled to finish the book. overly informal and only lightly touches on the concepts of systems thinking and spends more time on self help dribble

Terrible read

The reader sounds like she’s eating sometimes and fluctuates between reading very fast and very slowly.

Sub Par Performance

Audio performance was horrible. Difficult to understand, read too fast in places. The story is sometimes a little pedantic too.

Why is this self help!

The book is all over the place and really does not seem to be self help.

Even after 2 listening ...

I knew that the author and I didn't know each other and therefore had no common ground of understanding; however, I did expect to have a better understanding when I got to the emd. As easily, laidback as the language was throughout the book; I am still.still at a lost of how to use system analysis thinking . Do be aware this is the 1st time of hearing of the possible way of thinking. I would suggest this as a 2nd or 3rd book on the subject.

good book

Sime if the sections were read too fast for a second language listener. commission errors sounded like commisioners. whilst i am direstung point one, the reader is already on point three...slow down juts a tad bit