Category: Articles
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The Conversational Power of Mapping Our Mental Models
Suppose that I bought a $34 ticket to hear a concert and, on the way to the event, I lost the ticket. I…
Attention Not Energy
When you face something unpleasant, give it your attention but not your energy.” This is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever…
A Business Is More than a Balance Sheet
Teachers sit on the bleachers at town meetings watching the townspeople resist raising their salaries. The Dartmouth faculty complains to the trustees about the governance…
Shifting the Burden: The “Helen Keller” Loops
Most of us know the story of Helen Keller and have probably sympathized with her and her parents, whose actions to protect their handicapped daughter…
ithink®: The Visual Thinking Tool
We live in an age of spreadsheets. From tracking expenses to projecting future revenue streams, spreadsheet software packages have become an invaluable tool for many…
Bringing “Background Analysis” to Foreground of Energy Policy
In this article, Donella Meadows shows how computer models — products of structural thinking — can help bring clarity to a complex issue. As she…
Systemic Quality Management: Improving the Quality of Doing and Thinking
“No matter how hard Western nations try to engage in Quality Control education, they may not catch up with Japan until the 1990s, since it…
How Do You Know If Your Organization Is Learning?
Over the past year, since the publication of The Fifth Discipline, there has been a lot of activity and inquiry around the topic of how…
If People Are Assets, Why Do We Treat Them Like Expenses?
There is a lot of talk in the business community about “people being our most important assets.” It sounds like a good idea — recognizing…
The Do’s and Don’ts of Systems Thinking on the Job
So you’ve taken a systems thinking course — or maybe you’ve read a few issues of The Systems Thinker — and now you want to…