Category: Articles
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Is There More to Corporations than Maximizing Profits?
The sole purpose of a corporation is to maximize return on investment to shareholders.” That is the raison d’etre for most organizations — and…
Learning Histories: “Assessing” the Learning Organization
Anyone working to build a learning organization will, sooner or later, run up against the challenge of “proving” the value of what he or…
An Infrastructure for Organizational Transformation at Shell Oil
One of the most valuable insights I ever received on transforming organizations came from my study of physics. My early studies of classical physics…
Using Systems Thinking “On-Line”: Listening for Competing Hypotheses
A common approach for using systems thinking in a group setting is to set aside a specific time to explore a significant issue containing…
Modeling for Learning Organizations
Using causal loop diagrams or systems archetypes to explore a significant organizational problem can be an eye-opening experience. As a team works through the…
Software for Understanding Complex Systems
Life is complex,” states M. Scott Peck at the beginning of his book, Further Along the Road Less Traveled. Unfortunately, that statement goes against…
Delays-Making the Invisible Visible
At one point in the book The Machine that Changed the World (Womack, Jones, and Roos, 1990), the authors compare the way cars are…
Creating a Comprehensive System of Inquiry
Acentral tenant of system dynamics is the need to model the problem and not the system. As John Sterman points out in his book…
The Path of Creative Disruption: A Foundation for Sustainable Change
Sustainable change happens when people begin to see the world differently. It takes only a momentary abandonment of longstanding beliefs and assumptions for this…
Bringing Out the Best in People: An Interview with Warren Bennis
Ifirst encountered the work of Warren Bennis, widely known as “the dean of the leadership gurus,” in 1986. With a newly minted doctorate in…