“TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.” Thus begins Ishmael, a compelling exploration of our shared assumptions…

We judge others by what they do; we judge ourselves by our intentions.” “What you do thunders so loud, I can’t hear what you…

This month we continue our look at Graphical Function Diagrams (GFD). GFD’s help us visually see how two variables are interrelated by plotting the relationship…

Today’s workforce represents a broad range of age groups. As a result of college internships, modern healthcare, antidiscrimination laws, and a plethora of lifestyle…

Leaders like to think that good planning and solid management are the keys to successful change. Yet too often their best efforts, combining their…

The first part of this article, which appeared in the previous issue of The Systems Thinker (May 2010, Vol. 21 N. 4), introduced the “people-in-context”…

This is a story about what happened to a group of technical managers working in a multinational corporation, the Big Can Corporation (BCC)*, when…

Roger and his wife June had been struggling with differing views about how to bring up their children. Recently, Roger attended a program about…

TEAM TIP Apply this method to anticipate— and avoid—unintended consequences before taking action. Irecently read an article by Daniel Aronson called “Targeted…

Consider all the learning that occurs as people move from place to place inside and outside an organization, carrying insights and ideas from one…

We are living on the knife’s edge of one of those rare and momentous turning points in human history. Liveable lives for our grandchildren,…

Leadership traditionally has been thought of as “doing the right thing” while management has been defined as “doing things right.” Contemporary leadership combines these…

As a writer, on a handful of occasions, I’ve produced work that stands far above everything else I’ve written. This work has a special…

Suppose you have just been appointed the CKO—Chief Knowledge Officer—of your organization. You are responsible for managing the company’s knowledge capital, including how it…

Imagine you are the human resources director for a company in a rapidly growing industry. Your latest strategy meeting focused on developing a human…

Reinforcing processes, which we covered in last month’s issue, are only one of the building blocks of complex systems. While the snowballing effect of…

Have you ever been caught in a situation where you felt that things were going well beyond what you intended, but you felt powerless to…

In Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership, Joe Jaworski illuminates the nature of the choice to lead and the profound worldview out of which…

For the past 15 years or so, I have told audiences a story about how my perception of what determines good business performance has…

I grew up and was educated in Rome, Italy. The European didactic style tends to be more theoretical and less interactive than that of…

The topics elementary- and middle-school students today study are complex and often difficult to understand. Seldom is an issue as simple as it appears…

It’s a good thing we have comfort zones, those ways of acting and thinking that do not cause us stress or require much thought.

Although the parable of the boiled frog has become a familiar story in organizational learning circles, it does not yet seem to prevent organizations…

Managers in today’s organizations are continually confronted with new challenges and increased performance expectations. At the same time, they are bombarded by a bewildering…

As members of communities and organizations, many people feel their days (and their energy!) being consumed by contentious conflicts between diverse stakeholder groups. Organizations…

When encountering system dynamics modeling for the first time, sharp-minded managers often ask, “How can you have any confidence in your model if you…

Corporations today face many pressures to become “lean.” Unfortunately, most people also attach “mean” to lean, which can lead us to confuse leanness with…

About seven years ago, a Fortune 100 corporation began a three-year, $2 million organizational experiment. The goal was to gain a sustainable competitive advantage…

It’s Monday morning. You’ve just settled in at your desk to catch up on some reading, when the phone rings. The program manager of the…

It’s another busy night in the hospital emergency room. Several car accident victims have been rushed into surgery, one little boy is having a…

Stress management — long the domain of psychiatrists and therapists — is increasingly being recognized by corporate America as a critical workforce issue. The reason…

Imagine you are part of a healthcare team that has developed a computer model to grapple with the complex and often conflicting factors involved…

You have had some success with visionary planning and now you intend to begin using “systems thinking” to help achieve your vision. In fact you…

World events over the past several years have highlighted the need for new ways of exercising leadership. Such events include the ongoing crisis in…

Everything we talk about involves one or more of four types of conversation. We use them when we are socializing, talking about the weather,…

Recently, I had a long conversation with my fifteen-year-old daughter, Elise, about why she had to learn algebra. I had helped her with a…

Our efforts to understand and intervene in organizational events have a persistent bias: to interpret phenomena from a personal framework. In other words, situations…

Hi, my name is Brian and I am a recovering knower. But for the grace of God, and the disciplines of organizational learning, I…

Don’t ask systems thinkers for advice on managing performance or staff engagement. They will probably say something pretty fruity, and you’ll wind up frustrated…

We suspect that every reader of this newsletter has been steeped in articles and classes on a myriad of problem-solving techniques. We have all…

When first beginning to draw a causal loop diagram, don’t spend a lot of time up front trying to select the “perfect” variable name.

Thanks to the recently revised science and environmental sustainability education standards in the Washington State K–12 system, teachers are now required to teach and…

The goal of education for sustainability (EFS) is “to develop in young people and adults new knowledge and new ways of thinking needed to…

Imagine you were suddenly struck with a strange illness that affected your vision. While you were still able to “see” everything around you, somehow…

Imagine that you work for a company that has created a powerful and compelling shared vision. Furthermore, you and your colleagues have established a…

The recent decline of well-established firms and the perceived need for corporate renewal has fueled a growing interest in the topic of organizational learning.

Big Machines, an equipment manufacturer, decides to form a strategic alliance with Special Parts, Inc., a custom-designed components supplier. The partnership goes well until…

Building learning organizations requires more than just “re-engineering” our existing structures. It requires a whole new vision of what organizations can become and a…