For anyone interested in applying this stuff to real world issues, I highly recommend the +Acumen Systems Practice course [1]. Rob Ricigliano and Karen Grattan have put together a solid, pragmatic guide on how to understand, analyze, and engage complex systems. We've been working with Rob and Karen at Kumu [2] for years now and nobody else comes close when it comes to applied systems thinking.

[1]: http://plusacumen.org/courses/systems-practice/

[2]: https://kumu.io