Who comes after Harry Truman? A valid answer to this question is Dwight Eisenhower. Of course John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan are all valid answers too. What is it that makes these answers valid? It is not so much that these men were all Presidents of the USA, which of course they were, but rather that the question assumes ‘after’ to mean ‘subsequent US President’. So it would make no sense to give as an answer ‘Doris Day’. Unless of course you were a big fan of Billy Joel. Then the lyrics of ‘We didn’t start the fire’ would be the context for the question, and after would then take on a new meaning. If you Google ‘Harry Truman Doris Day’, here’s what you’ll get as the top hit: http://www.dy-tech.info/hotpot/Fire/start_the_fire.htm

How would we represent this puzzle as a system? In our book “Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st century problems” published by Taylor & Francis you will find clues as to how to answer this particular question. A device we recommend to think about systems is called the Conceptagon. This is a system of 21 concepts organized as seven triads or groups of three sibling concepts. One such triad is boundary, interior and exterior. The system boundary separates the system of interest from its environment, or wider systems. It helps us know what makes up the system, and how; it also demarcates what is of subsidiary interest but about which we may be able to do little, other than to respond, cajole, influence or other such terms that suggest lack of direct control.

A description of what we do, know and hope for relative to systems thinking and its application can be found at Interior. This is “our world” the space we occupy, explore, contemplate and propagate, for better or worse. But we know we belong in a very real sense to a wider universe of systems worlds. Our system boundary is intelligently permeable, to ideas information and executive action, but it nonetheless exists and is very real to us. We venture into other worlds to find out what goes on there and what therefore might subsequently go on in our world, but these worlds are not our world. They are our context. They make sense of our questions. They turn our de Gaulle into something other than Pompidou. You are now in the Exterior. Let us be your guide there.