The meeting was in full swing. Key players from management, technical leadership, engineering, and marketing had assembled to discuss several critical strategic product decisions.

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…

Years ago, before diversity became an almost faddish concern for managers everywhere, a wise older gentleman, John Bemis, helped me see the deep connections…

There are four questions to ask about any new tax proposal. Will it be simple? Will it be fair? Will it raise enough money…

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

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…

In this article, Donella Meadows shows how computer models — products of structural thinking — can help bring clarity to a complex issue. As she…

Pork production, engineering student enrollments, the oil tanker industry, real estate. What do they all have in common? They experience “boom and bust” cycles at…

“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…