Category: Articles

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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…

How Am I Supposed to Work with Her?”: The “Accidental Adversaries” Storyline

Building solid partnerships presents a perplexing challenge for organizations—and individuals—today. Managers are becoming increasingly aware that strong relationships among coworkers, team members, departments, and…

The Love, Love, Love, Hate Syndrome

Perhaps the most prevalent dysfunction in companies (and other areas of our lives) is conflict avoidance. Many of us avoid conflict without giving it…

Common Sense Is Not So Common

John, who is 14, and another teenager were passing a football back and forth at youth camp. Since we were inside, and there were…

Systems Thinking: The Bigger Picture

As a professional systems thinker and system dynamicist, I sometimes wonder why more people don’t see value in simulation models for learning and insight.

Learning to Green Our Organizations

A lot of books cross my desk, but few grab my attention the way one new title did recently. The book, The Necessary Revolution,…

Aren’t Learning Organizations Curious?

For all the powers of computers, Picasso considered them useless because “they give only answers.” Isn’t one of the remaining advantages of being human…

Planning to Deal with the Unpredictable

It is increasingly accepted that the metaphor of the organization as a complex adaptive system gives a better understanding of management issues than…

Building Relationships with Respect at the Center

In the introduction to her book, Respect: An Exploration (Perseus Books, 1999), sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot observes that “We pay more attention to [respect] when…

Ethical Investments-Humbug or For Real?

In recent years, people have poured billions of dollars into so-called ethical funds mutual funds that invest in companies that pledge to uphold certain…