Systems Thinking and the Linearisation Problem

In brief

A recent coaching interaction with a client made me curious about a question:

Do systems thinkers find it harder to structure their communication or communicate concisely because more of the wider picture feels relevant to them?

What I found → I haven’t found evidence of a direct relationship between systems thinking and greater difficulty structuring or communicating concisely.

What I found useful instead → Concepts such as linearisation and macroplanning describe what’s involved when deciding what information to communicate and how to organise it before we speak.

Why this matters → These concepts help explain why turning a complex internal picture into a clear message requires selection, prioritisation and sequencing.

What you can do → If you find it difficult to decide what to include, leave out or say first, I’ve included five questions that may help.

How the question arose

The question came from a coaching session focused on structuring communication and reducing over-explaining.

My client described a workplace conversation where he felt he had included too much information because, from his perspective, everything seemed important. As he gave me an account of what happened, I noticed he was looking at the situation as a whole: context, dependencies, causes, consequences, exceptions and knock-on effects.

That suddenly made me think that he may be a systems thinker, which in turn made me wonder whether there’s a connection between systems thinking and over-explaining.

Systems thinking describes a way of looking at and understanding relationships and interdependencies between different parts of a system as a whole, rather than looking at each element entirely in isolation.

So my question was:

If someone perceives a large number of relationships and interdependencies as relevant, does that make it more challenging for them to select and structure a message?

I must admit, I didn’t do a deep dive into this, but based on the brief digging I did, I haven’t found evidence showing that this is more characteristic of systems thinkers than anyone else.

However, what I did find were two concepts that helped me understand the communication process more clearly: linearisation and macroplanning.

Concept 1: The linearisation problem

The first is a concept in psycholinguistics called the speaker’s linearisation problem.

Psycholinguist Willem Levelt used the term to describe a fundamental problem involved in producing speech:

The information we want to communicate may exist as a complex knowledge structure in our heads, but spoken language requires us to give that information an order.

Put simply:

Interconnected thinking → networked

Spoken communication → sequential

So what sounds externally like scattered thinking may, in fact, partially reflect the challenge of translating a much more interconnected internal representation into something linear externally.

For anyone who tends to look at the wider picture and how individual parts are connected, the challenge effectively is:

How do you turn a network of relationships into a structured path another person can follow?

Concept 2: Macroplanning

Another related concept is macroplanning.

At a high level, macroplanning involves deciding what information to communicate in relation to a communicative goal and how that information should be organised.

To my surprise, this mirrors Step 3 — Select the Message — in my own Communication Judgement Framework (CJF), while the organisation of that information also crosses into Step 4:

1. Clarify the Objective

2. Diagnose the Situation

3. Select the Message

4. Deliver the Communication

(Side note: I developed my framework based on personal professional experience, communication coaching and repeatedly observing where workplace communication tends to break down. I wasn’t aware of the concept of macroplanning until I did the research for this article. So I find the overlap between the Communication Judgement Framework and macroplanning quite interesting, and somewhat reassuring.)

Both point towards something that is often overlooked:

Quite a bit of work happens before we choose words or decide how to deliver a message.

What we eventually say is the visible result of less visible judgements:

objective → situation → selection → prioritisation → sequencing → delivery

That is why simply telling someone to get to the point and stop over-explaining isn’t helpful, because they may feel that many things are relevant to the main point. Therefore, it may be particularly challenging to decide what is truly important and what is supplementary.

From network to hierarchy: the Minto Pyramid

Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle is also useful here.

Minto, a former McKinsey consultant, developed the approach after seeing business reports that contained plenty of information but failed to guide the reader clearly towards the main point.

Her diagnosis was:

“The problem was the thinking, not the language.”¹

The idea is to organise information hierarchically:

Core message or conclusion
↓
Key supporting points
↓
Detailed information and evidence (available if and when needed)

This is important because a network of ideas does not automatically tell us which ideas should carry the most weight in a particular message.

Context, dependencies, risks, consequences, stakeholders and exceptions may all be relevant to the wider issue. But they cannot all occupy the same level in the communication.

However, the Pyramid Principle does not solve the whole selection problem. You still have to decide what belongs in the message. But once you have done that, it offers one useful way of creating hierarchy.

5. What is the clearest sequence for what remains?

→ Lastly, decide the order in which the message should be delivered.

There is no single structure that works for every situation. The sequence should depend on what the communication needs to achieve.

For example:

Giving an update:
Status → Implication → Decision/Action

Making a recommendation:
Recommendation → Rationale → Decision/Action

Raising a risk or concern:
Risk → Impact → Mitigation/Recommendation

The important thing is to avoid automatically communicating information in the same chronological order in which you happened to think of it or discover it.

Instead, structure it around the order in which the other person needs to understand it. And in business, usually we don’t want to beat around the bush, but rather get to the heart of the matter as fast as possible.

Final thoughts

I haven’t found evidence in response to my original question about whether systems thinkers find it harder to select and structure what they communicate.

However, I found some interesting concepts that help us understand the communication challenge itself, regardless of how you process information.

Whatever your thinking style, if your internal picture contains multiple relationships, dependencies and consequences, communicating it requires you to make that picture more selective and sequential for somebody else. This applies to everybody.

If you naturally tend to think in highly interconnected terms, you may find this process more challenging, or maybe not. But as mentioned, I haven’t found evidence of a direct relationship.

So in conclusion, while any given situation will always be part of a wider context, you may need to tighten your Window of Relevance to what matters for this objective, this person and this moment in time.

Your thoughts may form a network, but your audience still needs a path through it.

----

Source

¹ Barbara Minto, interview with McKinsey & Company on the development of the Pyramid Principle.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

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I write about communication, judgement, and the decisions that shape professional success, sharing practical frameworks, real-world examples, and tools to help you think more clearly so you communicate more effectively.

If your mind naturally sees multiple relationships, dependencies and possible consequences, the challenge is deciding which parts of that wider picture belong in this particular communication.

So, if a lot of things feel relevant, here are five questions that may help.

Five questions to keep your message on point

1. What am I trying to achieve?

→ Start with the communication objective.

• What should happen as a result of this interaction?

• Does the other person need to understand something, evaluate something, make a decision, take action or clarify something?

Your objective gives you the first filter for relevance. Something can be true, useful and connected to the wider subject without being necessary for this particular communication.

2. What does this person need from me?

→ Now move to the recipient.

• What do they already know?

• What are they responsible for?

• What decision or action sits with them?

• How much detail do they actually need?

The bigger picture remains unchanged, while the relevant window changes.

3. What is the core message?

→ Now create hierarchy.

• Of everything you could communicate, what matters most?

• What is the central point, conclusion, recommendation or implication?

This is where the Minto Pyramid becomes useful:

Core message
↓
Key supporting points
↓
Additional evidence and detail

Without hierarchy, everything risks appearing equally important.

And when everything appears equally important, the audience has to do extra work to figure out the hierarchy for themselves.

4. What can I leave out or defer?

→ Decide what gets filtered out.

This can be the trickiest part when everything feels connected.

Ask:

If I remove this, can the other person still understand the message and make the required decision or take the required action?

If yes, consider leaving it out initially.

The more useful question is not simply:

Is this important?

But rather:

Is it necessary for this objective, for this person, right now?

I think of this as your Window of Relevance.

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natascha@confidentverbalist.com

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