"Systems thinking" has become the kind of phrase people add to their profile the way a small business adds "artisan" to a jar of jam. It's been emptied of meaning by people using it as a shield. So it's worth asking what it would actually mean, precisely, if the word still had edges.

Somewhere this quarter, in a talent review, a manager will describe an engineer as T-shaped. Heads will nod and a box will be ticked. The engineer, who is not in the room, will spend the next year receiving work shaped like the letter rather than shaped like their ability. Nobody will check whether the label was accurate, because it does not feel like a claim. It feels like an observation, but it’s neither.