In this month's Systems Thinking Puzzler, we ask you to use your Systems Thinking skills while playing the role of presidential adviser. Thanks in large part to recent events in the Iraq War, President Bush's approval rating jumped by 34% in the past few weeks. Many in the White House are feeling upbeat after reading the Newsweek poll published at http://www.msnbc.com/news/899351.asp?0cv=KA01&cp1=1#BODY .

The poll says 71 percent of respondents approve of the way Bush is doing his job up 18 points from his 53 percent approval rating a month ago, when America stood on the brink of war. And a full 93 percent of those surveyed say they believe U.S. military efforts in Iraq have gone very well (73 percent) or somewhat well (20 percent) so far.

This positive news has many believing that a second term for Bush is a lock. Others are pointing to a few areas (e.g. the economy, healthcare, and taxes) also mentioned in the poll that have the potential to hinder the President's re-election chances. Because of your past successes at facilitating meetings, you've been asked to use a Systems Thinking framework to facilitate a discussion about the president's approval rating. You hope to help attendees decide if things are rosy, bleak, or somewhere in the middle. And you'd like them to decide this by exploring how the dynamics of approval ratings work. You're about to sit down and use the iThink® software to build a model for facilitating the discussion.

A distinguishing characteristic of highly-skilled systems thinkers is their ability to quickly get to the heart of an issue, problem, or process. Perhaps you've seen it in action, or perhaps you've experienced it yourself. Skilled users of the thinking skills, language and toolset typically are very good at focusing problems, at posing good questions, at untangling complexities, and at generating high-leverage insights.

Just as you can get stronger by exercising, you can improve your ability to do systems thinking by practicing. This feature is a practice field for developing that capability. Each month, we'll present you with a puzzle-a real-world case that can benefit from the application of systems thinking. We'll ask you to spend a couple of hours (maximum) to work through the case, capturing the essence of the issue. In the next month's issue, we'll provide you with one approach to the solution of the puzzle. So each puzzle gives you two chances to learn-first, as you work the puzzle, and again as you compare your approach to ours.