Favorites from the Field
David Peter Stroh
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Moving from Blame to Accountability
By Marilyn Paul -
Six Steps to Thinking Systemically
By Michael Goodman, Richard Karash -
Using the Archetype Family Tree as a Diagnostic Tool
By Michael Goodman, Art Kleiner
Peter Senge
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Transforming the Systems Movement
By Russell Ackoff -
The “Thinking” in Systems Thinking: Honing Your Skills
By Barry Richmond -
Applying System Dynamics to Public Policy: The Legacy of Barry Richmond
By Steve Peterson -
We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This: Developing the Capacity for Cross-Sector Collaboration
By Mille Bojer -
Pocket Guide: Using the Archetypes
By Daniel Kim, Colleen Lannon
Gene Bellinger
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Moving from Blame to Accountability
When something goes wrong in an organization, the first question that is often posed is, “Whose fault is it?” When there’s data missing in…
Value Creation and Business Success
The most successful organizations understand that the purpose of any business is to create value for customers, employees, and investors, and that the interests…
Creating Business Results Through Team Learning
As of 1993, Sigma Tech (a fictional name) was one of the most successful small corporations in the U.S. The company’s business was both…
The Leader’s Journey
Much has been written over the years about leadership — the skills required, the dynamics involved, the characteristics displayed by outstanding leaders, and so…
Action-to-Outcome Mapping: Testing Strategy with Systems Thinking
In the “classic” systems thinking approach, a group uses mapping and modeling to help explain an important behavior over time. While we occasionally encounter…
Human Dynamics for the 21st Century
As a global society increasingly becomes a reality and people strive to come together across divisions of culture, religion, race, age, gender, and other…
Superstitious Learning
The drive toward improvement has become a way of life in corporations today. Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering, and other improvement techniques have…
Check In, Check Out: A Tool for “Real” Conversations
Your daughter was sick last night and you didn’t get much sleep. Tony’s car was rear-ended on the way to the office. Vivian has…
Facilitative Modeling: Using Small Models to Generate Big Insights
All you need to do is read the paper or watch the news to realize that the world is becoming more difficult to understand…
Why Few Organizations Adopt Systems Thinking
I frequently talk to groups of managers on the nature of systems thinking and its radical implications to management. In doing so, I use…
The CEO’s Role in Organizational Transformation
Why are attempts to transform organizations usually painful and so often unsuccessful? Why is it that, even when leaders recognize the value of the…
Structure-Behavior Pairs: A Starting Point for Problem Diagnosis
There are many possible starting points for drawing a systems diagram. One way to begin is by telling the story behind the problem, and…
What Are Mental Models? Part 2
TEAM TIP Look for things that rise and fall in your organization, such as employee motivation, product sales, progress on goals, etc. What are…
Appreciative Inquiry: Igniting Transformative Action
In the streets of Seattle, Washington, last year, the world witnessed a striking expression of social concern. An array of highly disparate groups —…
From Individual to Shared Mental Models
Making individual mental models explicit is only one step toward fostering organizationwide learning. Since perceptions of reality can vary widely among different people in…
Meetings That Matter: Conversational Leadership in Today’s Schools
If the element in greatest evidence in a school system is “young people,” and the second most prevalent feature is “desks,” surely a close…
Operational Thinking
The first three systems thinking skills help you establish an extensive (breadth) and intensive (depth) boundary for your mental or computer-based model. The next…
Behavior Over Time Diagrams: Seeing Dynamic Interrelationships
An old Winnie the Pooh cartoon sketch shows Christopher Robin dragging Edward the Bear down a set of stairs by one arm, while the…
Empowering Multigenerational Collaboration in the Workplace
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…
Extending Systems Thinking to Social Systems
We live in a networked age. After centuries of perceiving different parts of the world as separate and isolated, we are now beginning to…
Transforming the Character of a Corporation
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…
From Spreadsheets to System Dynamics Models
Decision-makers often turn to computer models when they face a problem too “big” to grasp all at once. Having the computer keep track of…
Liberating Structures: A New Pattern Language for Engagement
“We change the culture by changing the nature of conversation. It’s about choosing conversations that have the power to create the future.” — Peter…
Learning Through System Dynamics as Preparation for the 21st Century
What should be the outcome of a systems education? We do not expect most students to spend their lives in front of a computer…
Systems Thinking Tools: A User’s Reference Guide
Whether you are new to systems thinking or merely need a guide to available tools, this collection introduces you to dynamic, structural, and computer-based tools…
Guidelines for Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams
The old adage “if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail” can also apply to language.
Systems Thinking as a Language
Language has a subtle, yet powerful effect on the way we view the world. English, like most other Western languages, is linear—its basic sentence…
What Are Mental Models?
In writing and teaching people about systems thinking, my colleagues and I at I see systems often refer to “mental models.” For some people,…
Toyota’s Current Crisis: The Price of Focusing on Growth Not Quality
For the past 15 years or so, I have told audiences a story about how my perception of what determines good business performance has…
Creating Causal Theories
Peasants in southwest France have been selling smelly but delicious black truffles to restaurants for more than $600 a kilo (2.2 lb). Not surprisingly,…
From Riots to Resolution: Engaging Conflict for Reconciliation
As members of communities and organizations, many people feel their days (and their energy!) being consumed by contentious conflicts between diverse stakeholder groups. Organizations…
The World Cafe: Living Knowledge Through Conversations That Matter
Consider all the learning that occurs as people move from place to place inside and outside an organization, carrying insights and ideas from one…
The Structure of Paradox: Managing Interdependent Opposites
When faced with a problem, how often do teams within your organization become polarized around proposed solutions that are opposites? For example, one group…
The “AND” Method
TEAM TIP Apply this method to anticipate— and avoid—unintended consequences before taking action. Irecently read an article by Daniel Aronson called “Targeted…
Balancing Loops with Delays
A simple balancing loop can be thought of as a basic control loop. In this type of feedback loop, any discrepancies between desired…
Comfort Zones
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.
Palette of Systems Thinking Tools
There is a full array of systems thinking tools that you can think of in the same way as a painter views colors many…
Systems Thinking Concepts for Environmental Education
The goal of education for sustainability (EFS) is “to develop in young people and adults new knowledge and new ways of thinking needed to…
Stress Management–Whose Job Is It?
Stress management — long the domain of psychiatrists and therapists — is increasingly being recognized by corporate America as a critical workforce issue. The reason…
Pocket Guide: Vision Deployment Matrix II: Crossing the Chasm from Reality to Vision
This handy pocket guide presents a comprehensive example of how to actually use the Matrix. Includes step-by-step instructions. Download the PDF file .
Embracing Vulnerability:A Core Leadership Discipline for Our Times
World events over the past several years have highlighted the need for new ways of exercising leadership. Such events include the ongoing crisis in…
Designing Effective Learning Environments
Imagine you are part of a healthcare team that has developed a computer model to grapple with the complex and often conflicting factors involved…
How Learning Works
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…
The Learning Organization Journey: Assessing and Valuing Progress
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…
The Next Great Frontier: Designing Managerial & Social Systems
The 1990s are shaping up to be a decade of dramatic changes. The recent shake-ups at IBM and General Motors are ominous signs that…
Leanness
Corporations today face many pressures to become “lean.” Unfortunately, most people also attach “mean” to lean, which can lead us to confuse leanness with…
Mental Models and Systems Thinking: Going Deeper into Systemic Issues
In a causal loop diagram of a systemic issue, variables are connected in cause-and-effect relationships. But often the implicit thought processes behind those links…
The Need to Understand One Another
Years ago, before diversity became an almost faddish concern for managers everywhere, a wise older gentleman, John Bemis, helped me see the deep connections…
Confessions of a Recovering Knower
Hi, my name is Brian and I am a recovering knower. But for the grace of God, and the disciplines of organizational learning, I…