[bartlettD]

Systems Thinking goes beyond just causal loop diagrams, which are a useful tool in soft-systems modelling. Systems Thinking is more of a foundational mindstate rather than a set of tools and I think this is something I disagree with the author on.

https://sebokwiki.org/wiki/What_is_Systems_Thinking%3F

Systems Engineering uses Systems Thinking as the root of the apprach but will use any tool available for actually modelling/designing the system. A big one which is used a lot for hard-systems is SysMl (an offshoot of UML, I know) which is again somewhat inpenetrable for outsiders. I think thats ultimately a trap for all domain-specific tools where they need some way of being abstracted for the layman.

For an Engineering Manager, a combination of tools from the Operations Management disciple and Enterprise Systems Engineering is possibly something that might be a bit more useful to you.