Gordon Brown, former dean of the MIT School of Engineering, used to say, “To be a great teacher is to be a prophet —…

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…

Systems thinking can be thought of as a language for communicating about complexity and interdependencies (see “Systems Thinking as a Language,” Viewpoint, April 1991). To…

Fortune magazine recently labeled the U.S. school system “our most endangered institution,” highlighting a growing national concern about the quality of education in America. Steadily…

“It was as if I knew something was there, but I didn’t really see it. The clarity I gained was like putting on a pair…

How many times have you heard the saying “the squeaky wheel gets the oil?” Most people agree that whoever or whatever makes the most “noise”…

You have had some success with visionary planning and now you intend to begin using “systems thinking” to help achieve your vision. In fact you…

In recent years, Japanese management practices have been applied to U.S. companies with varying degrees of success. Although in principle such practices should work, the…

“Forget your old, tired ideas about leadership. The most successful corporation of the 1990s will be something called a learning organization,” intoned a recent Fortune…

In his book Synchronicity, Joseph Jaworski describes two scenarios developed by Shell in the early 1990s. “New Frontiers” depicts a world where “rich and…