Summary

Ranching has become a complex business that requires consideration of the ranch-wide impact of every decision. Everything functions in a system, from the planets to single-cell microbes. Systems Thinking is a language for learning and describing how organizations and complex systems function. Overlooking the system and its interconnected parts can result in unintended consequences and actions that backfire. This lectureship introduces the principles, processes, and tools that will aid natural resource managers’ understanding and management of dynamically complex systems.

Learning Objectives

• Recognize the often hidden and unintended consequences of our actions
• Organize your own thinking to match the way complex systems operate
• Change our behavior so that we are working with these complex forces, instead of against them, to create what we want
• Expand the choices available to us and focus on high leverage changes
• Explain trends, structures and why things are happening
• Apply system archetypes to your own situations
• Identify mental models and their role in structure
• Plan and evaluate actions to improve system performance

Instructors

Ben Turner, Ph.D. • King Ranch^® Institute for Ranch Management • Texas A&M University - Kingsville