Category: Articles
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Raising Awarenenss of How Social Structure Influences Performance
In my recent feature article, “Extending Systems Thinking to Social Systems” (Volume 18 Number 5), I presented the systemic law known as “structural determinism,”…
Cynics & Believers
How many times do we walk into a workshop and find ourselves wondering whether or not we really want to be there, questioning whether…
Polar Bears and Kids on Thin Ice
The place to watch for global warming—the sensitive point, the canary in the coal mine—is the Arctic. If the planet as a whole warms…
Turning a Tragedy into a Triumph of the Commons?
Recently, the New England Fishery Management Council adopted promising new rules for regulating threatened regional fish stocks. The new rules will over time shift…
Leading and Learning from the Future
In Theory U: Leading from the Future As It Emerges (SoL, 2007), C. Otto Scharmer, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, takes…
Relieving the Stress of Others
Here’s a story from the Harvard Business Review about helping other people manager stress (“Leading in Times of Trauma” by Jane E. Dutton et…
Visual Tools for Everyone
If you have ever reached for a pencil to explain or hang onto an idea, then the book Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes…
Common Thinking Traps: Correlation and Causation
People who have been beaten as children are more likely to beat their own children. Therefore, being beaten as a child makes the child…
Goals: A Self-Limiting Proposition
The establishment of a goal is generally based on a place or state one wants to be at in the future, as compared to…
Calmness: What a Systems View Can Bring
As I view the social landscape, charged with political maneuvering and economic trauma, I feel a certain calmness that comes through long association with…