Systems thinking for civil servants
How to use systems thinking to drive improved outcomes in complex situations.
Documents
Details
The Government Office for Science, in collaboration with the Policy Profession, Royal Academy of Engineering and the Systems Thinking Interest Group has produced a suite of documents to promote and embed systems thinking across the Civil Service.
The guidance is intended for civil servants working all over government, regardless of grade, department, background or profession.
The documents include:
- an introduction to systems thinking, a short summary of what systems thinking is, when it is useful and why it can be beneficial to your work
- the systems thinking journey, which expands on the content within the introduction to systems thinking and maps 5 systems thinking principles to different stages of the policy design process
- the systems thinking toolkit, which contains step-by-step instructions on how to use 11 systems thinking tools
- the systems thinking case study bank, which contains a collection of 14 personal testimonials from civil servants on their experiences of using systems thinking in their work
This suite of documents aims to act as a springboard into systems thinking for civil servants unfamiliar with this approach. We introduce a small sample of systems thinking concepts and tools, chosen due to their accessibility and alignment to civil service policy development, but which is by no means comprehensive. We hope this acts as a first step towards using systems thinking approaches to solve complex problems and we strongly encourage the reader to go on to explore the wider systems thinking field further. These documents are ‘beta versions’ which we hope to update in the future in response to user feedback.
Other departmental systems thinking resources
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
This guide introduces senior civil servants and team leaders to systems thinking and gives practical guidance for implementing systems approaches and shifting the culture to more systemic ways of working.
Policy Profession
This video sets out what systems thinking is and the advantages it offers for good policy making.
Defra
An introductory document which introduces systems approaches that can be applied to common Defra scenarios.
Contact us
For further support or information on our systems thinking products, contact systems@go-science.gov.uk.
Updates to this page
Last updated 12 January 2023 + show all updates
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Added link to new guidance for civil servants on how to be a systems leader.
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First published.