You get an advantage over other people who are not systems thinkers. Systems thinkers see things from different perspectives which allows them to identify issues other people cannot. This gives them the advantage.

Traditional systems thinking has focused on the Functional and Operational perspectives of systems as typified by the often seen Causal Loops. While systems thinking provides an understanding of the situation, holistic thinking goes beyond systems thinking to identify solutions. This allows the holistic thinker to create innovative solutions while their colleagues are still reacting to problems.

In the past teaching and learning systems thinking has been difficult and has mainly focused on Causal Loops. That has now changed, expanding the concepts developed under a grant to Cranfield University from the Leverhulme Trust in 2007, the nine Holistic Thinking Perspectives have provided a standard set of perspectives and a way to use them that have helped many workshop and seminar participants to improve their problem solving skills by improving their thinking.