Systems thinking
What systems thinking taught me about recurring problems.
I once thought recurring problems needed more effort or a quicker fix. A graveyard shift and a string of client revisions taught me to stop reacting to the latest incident and ask what kept producing it.
When the quick fix is not enough
I used to solve problems one incident at a time. Something went wrong, I corrected it, and I moved on. That worked until the same problems started returning in slightly different forms.
At first, I treated repetition as bad luck or a sign that someone needed to try harder. Systems thinking gave me another way to read the situation. Instead of staring at the latest event, I began looking for the pattern around it and the conditions that made it likely to happen again.
Two experiences made that lesson real for me. One involved surviving a graveyard shift. The other involved freelance projects that seemed to attract endless revisions. Neither problem sat where I first thought it did.
The graveyard shift was not just a planning problem
Early in my BPO career, I worked nights. My schedule ran against the rhythm of the rest of the city. I woke while other people were winding down, and I travelled at hours when public transportation became scarce.
I kept treating my exhaustion as a personal planning failure. I set more alarms. I mapped different routes. I left home earlier. Those changes looked sensible on paper, yet I still reached the second half of my shift already drained.
When I mapped the situation, the pattern became clearer. Limited transportation made the commute longer and less predictable. The commute reduced my recovery time. Less recovery increased my fatigue, and that fatigue made both the shift and the next commute harder. I was trying to fix my alarm while the same conditions kept rebuilding the problem.
The option that helped was already inside the workplace. My company had a sleeping lounge, which I had dismissed as a minor perk. Using it removed one late-night trip and gave me more time to recover. I did not need a stricter routine. I needed to interrupt the condition that kept draining it.
What repeated client revisions were telling me
Years later, the same kind of thinking helped me with freelance work. Several projects went through more revision rounds than expected. My first explanation was simple: perhaps the clients were indecisive.
That explanation was convenient, but it did not help me prevent the next round. The Iceberg Model pushed me to separate the visible event from the pattern and the structure underneath it.
The event was another revision request. The pattern was that it happened across different clients. The structure was my own process. I was starting projects before discussing expectations in enough detail. I was also accepting more work than I could support with a careful intake.
Once I saw that, the next step became practical. I slowed the intake, asked more specific questions, and confirmed expectations before I started. Revision rounds decreased. The clients had not suddenly become easier. I had stopped skipping the conversation that could catch a mismatch early.
What I ask when a problem keeps returning
These experiences changed how I respond to recurring concerns in course design, client work, and team processes. I still care about the immediate fix. I just do not stop there anymore.
I now ask:
- What keeps repeating across incidents?
- What usually happens just before the problem appears?
- What condition makes this outcome more likely?
- Where can I interrupt the pattern instead of treating another symptom?
Systems thinking does not make every problem simple. It helps me ask a better first question. Instead of “What went wrong this time?” I ask, “What keeps making this possible?”
That diagnostic habit also guides the decisions documented in my instructional design and eLearning case studies.
What problem in your work keeps returning even after everyone thinks it has been fixed?