Collaborative systems thinking: Uncovering the rules of team-level systems thinking

As the aerospace workforce braces itself for the ‘silver tsunami,’ more emphasis is needed on how to develop systems skills in engineering workforce Research has shown this knowledge is tacit and based in experience. However, with nearly one-third of the industry's employees eligible for retirement, this systems-level knowledge is at risk of being lost. This paper focuses on the team as the unit of analysis and the elements of design process and team culture that foster collaborative systems thinking teams. Eight pilot interviews, ten full case studies and 14 abbreviated case studies were used to explore ‘collaborative systems thinking,’ or team-level systems thinking. From these data a definition of collaborative systems thinking is derived and generalizations about collaborative systems thinking teams are presented.