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Modeling “Soft” Variables

When encountering system dynamics modeling for the first time, sharp-minded managers often ask, “How can you have any confidence in your model if you…

The Structure of Paradox: Managing Interdependent Opposites

When faced with a problem, how often do teams within your organization become polarized around proposed solutions that are opposites? For example, one group…

Hexagons: From Ideas to Variables

System thinking tools, such as causal loop diagrams, foster high-quality thinking, communication, and decision-making in teams. But plunging into the realm of complex, dynamic…

The “Living” Company: Extending the Corporate Lifeline

In the 1970s, diversification was the rage. But by the early 1980s, serious doubts had surfaced in the Shell Group about the wisdom of…

Management Accounting: Catalyst for Inquiry or Weapon for Control?

Since the 1950s, accounting has increasingly become the “language” of business. The growing importance of accounting systems since that time has led to two…

Entry Points to Modeling: Listening for “Dilemmas”

One of the biggest contributions that systems thinking can make is to help managers build theories about why things happen the way they do.

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…

Making It Happen: The Implementation Challenge

About seven years ago, a Fortune 100 corporation began a three-year, $2 million organizational experiment. The goal was to gain a sustainable competitive advantage…

From Spreadsheets to System Dynamics Models

Decision-makers often turn to computer models when they face a problem too “big” to grasp all at once. Having the computer keep track of…

Transforming the Character of a Corporation

We judge others by what they do; we judge ourselves by our intentions.” “What you do thunders so loud, I can’t hear what you…