Systems Thinking Tools

Systems Thinking Activity: The Iceberg Model

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The following video introduces the Iceberg Model, a tool that helps us better understand why things happen and discover how we can take action to create powerful change. While you review the video consider...

• how you can use this information to help learners become more effective problem-solvers, critical thinkers, and change-makers; and
• how systems thinking can be a valuable tool for many fields, including business, engineering, and environmental science, and how it can benefit learning.

The Iceberg Model is a systems thinking tool that provides deep insights into complex contexts and issues. It helps us to examine the “bigger picture” by providing a model that looks beyond immediate events. Only ten percent of an iceberg’s mass is visible, and above the water; ninety percent is out of view. Complex problems are much the same. In order to fully understand them, and why they persist, we must identify the historical patterns, the deeper structures and the ways of knowing that combine to give rise to what we see. This understanding gives us a better chance at developing lasting solutions that target the whole system rather than addressing symptoms.