Understand the full range of systems approaches and how to use them with this innovative overview. Leaders and managers face increasing complexity and uncertainty because technical, organizational, socio-cultural, political, and environmental issues have become intensely interconnected. Systems thinking is recognized as the essential competence for managing complexity. As the demand for systems thinking grows, however, the fragmentation of the field into different methodologies has become a potential liability. Critical systems thinking (CST) shows how this diversity can be a strength rather than a weakness by revealing how different systems methodologies address various aspects of complexity and how they can be used in combination to resolve the messiest of wicked problems. Critical Systems Thinking offers, in a single volume, an account of the value of systems thinking and CST in the modern world, an explanation of the pragmatic philosophy and expansion in mindset necessary to embrace CST, and detailed instructions on how to undertake critical systems practice (CSP) using the variety of systems approaches to navigate multi-dimensional complexity. The book is a ‘practitioner’s guide’, and the busy reader can be excused for going straight to Parts 2 and 3, which explain CSP and how to succeed in applying it, but that would be a pity. CST has the broad purpose of enhancing ‘good deliberation’ in ways that will allow us to evolve in a more ‘balanced way’ and improve the world in which we live. CSP needs to be understood as a means of realising that ambition.