In fine, design thinking is nothing without systems thinking

Design thinking is amazing at making people work together around an as enough clean problem or challenge. 

It integrates problem framing which is guaranteeing to ask the right question.

But to ask the right question a group needs to ask themself a lot of other questions to find the good one, and they need an adapted canvas to conduct this conversation. 

Systems thinking allows the creation of a visual representation of the system the team is working on. 

But you ask: what is a system? A service, a product, a company, or a territory are all systems. The next question is: how to describe it visually to create the right tool to work on and to facilitate the group explorations trying to define the right primary question to ask?

Systems thinking provides exactly what is missing for entering well into the design thinking process. 

If you want to start a design thinking process be sure the previous exploration stage was done well, with a systemic approach. 

Or you may create more problems than you solve, and it is not a design thinking goal.