Category: Articles

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Teaching Systemic Thinking: Educating the Next Generation of Business Leaders

Are we failing to adequately prepare our business leaders? Since an article in the Harvard Business Review on the topic more than 30 years…

Thinking in Circles About Obesity

TEAM TIP Although this article focuses specifically on the issue of weight management, some of the lessons are relevant for organizational issues; for…

Consultants as Problem Solvers or Capacity Builders?

As we seek ways to cope with the increasing rate and complexity of change affecting our businesses, many of us have begun to recognize…

People in Context, Part I

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

The Inescapable Need to Change Our Organizations: An Interview with Peter Senge

The Systems Thinker (TST): What are the two or three new big ideas for management in the 21st century? Peter Senge: Organizations will have to…

Manage by Means, Not Results

Etion line may churn out three different car models in 10 different colors. Sounds inefficient, doesn’t it? At the very least, Toyota’s shop floors…

Sustainability: The Inner and Outer Work

Over the years, many people devoted to sustainability have used the phrase “the triple bottom line” to articulate strategy. They don’t focus solely on…

Until the Vulcan Mind Meld… Building Shared Mental Models

In the popular science fiction TV series Star Trek, the Vulcans, an extraterrestrial species, possess a unique characteristic: They can wordlessly share thoughts, experiences,…

What Is the Relationship Between Systems Thinking and Lean?

What is the relationship between systems thinking and lean? That’s a fascinating question, one not so easily answered, because we’re talking about two very…

Both the Parts and Whole: Leadership and Systems Thinking

Leaders operate in the realm of bewildering uncertainty and staggering complexity. Today’s problems are rarely simple and clear-cut. If they were, they would likely…