Every day, we are surrounded by many systems: the telephone network, the stock exchange. Systems are also around each human being like family relationships, friends, or a system of internal organs working in harmony.
To better understand the world around us and ourselves, we need to know how things work. Operational Thinking is a thinking tool that helps us to visualize the invisible relationships around us. To imagine that connection, Operational Thinking has a chart type called Loop Diagrams.
Loop Diagrams following basic instructions:
(1) ⮕ (arrow) represents the direction of influence
(2) plus sign (+) or minus sign (-) represents whether the influence has a negative or positive effect.
(2.1) What is negative or positive influence mean?
For example:
(A) increases make (B) decreases then (A) influence (B) = negative (-)
(A) increases make (B) increases then (A) influence (B) = positive (+)Do it for your self
You can using Loopy - an interactive website that helps you create your own Loop Diagram. https://ncase.me/loopy/Types of Loop Diagrams
From the above factors, you can see that there will be two basic types of loops, which are the Open Loop System and the Closed Loop system. The main difference is that a closed system will have feedback instead of just one-way influence.
At school, if teachers only give lessons to students, it is one-way learning. When the classroom has feedback between students and teacher, it is a Closed Loop System. The system can be self-improve.
When looking at a closed system, we will see two more subtypes: Positive feedback loop (an amplifies system) and a Negative feedback loop (a balanced system). For example:
Quesion: What happens when two kids fight but no one want to lose?Question 2: What happens if the price increase?
Question: Through the map above, think about the following 3 questions:
- Why do people call positive feedback loop and negative feedback loop?
- Why do two children fight is an amplifies system, what are the characteristics of amplifies systems?
- Why are supply and price is a balanced system, and what are the characteristics of a balanced system?
Properties of the system
Carrying capacity
Carrying capacity is the maximum capacity that a system can have. An amplifies system can expand itself, but nothing can grow forever. Let's look at an example of the two children fight; the carrying capacity is the kid pain level. They can only withstand a certain degree of pain.
As a system develops, it will reach a maximum level (indicated by dotted lines on the chart). When that level is reached, there are two cases: (1) the system remains at that level (2) "overshoot & collapse" when the system's development has a negative impact on the carrying capacity of that system. Like the children in the fight, the next punch causes their pain tolerance level to decrease, then they give up.
Delayed response
The elements in the system do not have an immediate effect on each other; it takes time. In the market, when supply increases, it takes a while for market value to fall, just as when the price of a particular item increases, it takes a while for the producer to come up with new items.
Use Loop Diagram to describe complex systems.
The Loop Diagram is not only useful in showing the correlation between two subjects, but it can also be used to describe more complex systems.
To describe the theory Adam Smith's invisible hand
Adam Smith's invisible hand is the theory that the government does not need to intervene too much in the business market. The market itself will adjust and stabilize against external influences.
Or explain about Sex education and its social effects by @syk0saje
And that is the most basic definition of Operational Thinking and Loop Diagram, in the coming days I will publish of the following articles on this topic. 😎
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#Fulbrightlearning A series of articles sharing the knowledge that I have learned at Fulbright University.
In Design & System thinking class, I had assignments to reading about Operational thinking in the book Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity and then explain that knowledge to my classmates. The above articles are the content that I presented to the class after one week of preparation.