Category: Articles
Showing 10 of 764 results (by popularity)
Why Simulate? Using Models for Strategic Planning
Your customers are demanding more services for the same price. How can you meet their expectations with your existing staff? As your company begins…
Transforming a Command-and-Control Culture
Introducing learning organization principles to a company is difficult and fraught with uncertainty. How do you lead without taking the reins? How do you…
TQM and Systems Thinking as Theory-Building Tools
Our brains are pattern-making systems — they organize our perceptions of the world into patterns that enable us to function effectively. For example, when…
Organizational Learning and Leadership Development at EDS
Evaluating a program on “learning how to learn” is difficult using traditional quantitative criteria. Fritjof Capra, author of The Turning Point, offers these guidelines…
Lessons in Systems Thinking: A Tale from the Land of Middle Health
Microtown, a small community deep within the Land of Middle Health, isn’t much different from other towns. Its citizens are young and old, rich…
Charting a Corporate Learning Strategy
Managers in many companies slay are struggling with one basic question: How do you actually create a learning organization? While the five disciplines described…
Shifting the Burden Revisited: Turtles All the Way Down
There is an old story about a student who asked his master, “Teacher, what holds up the world?” The teacher paused for a moment…
The “Living” Company: Extending the Corporate Lifeline
In the 1970s, diversification was the rage. But by the early 1980s, serious doubts had surfaced in the Shell Group about the wisdom of…
Clarifying Variables: Actual, Perceived, and Desired
One of the primary benefits of modeling with systems tools—whether causal loops or computer simulations—is the intense discussion it can generate around important variables…
ABC: Initiating Large-Scale Change at Chrysler
When Chrysler adopted activity-based costing (ABC) in 1991, the decision rep; resented more than a simple accounting change. The shift to ABC challenged many…