Public policy can have severe unintended consequences. What can Systems Thinking do to bring results without the collateral damage? The Mayor of Somerville Mass. is applying systems thinking to creating public policy. An article in Governing.com informs about how linear logic drastically failed the Boston suburb of Somerville when a highway and […]
Don’t get stuck on thinking blocks. Think again, think better (systemically)
How can people keep thinking something when evidence around them is screaming a different reality? How can we make sure that thinking blocks don’t happen to us? It’s more common that we would like to believe. We may want to be independent thinkers, but we end up following the crowd, arriving at conclusions that are […]
How to Manage an Organization through Complexity (Go Patriots)
How do we manage an organization to cope with complexity? It means understanding the organization as a system and seeing the interdependencies, something that the Patriots understand. Independence vs. interdependence What can the theory of systems tell us about managing organizations? First of all, if all the components that make up the system are independent, then […]
Don’t Cut Through Complexity: Understand it and Manage It (Sorry, KPMG)
KPMG has the tagline “Cutting through Complexity” which suggests they really don’t understand complexity at all. In order to deal with complexity, we first have to understand it, and then we can manage it. How? What does complexity actually mean? “Complexus”, the Latin word for “complex”, roughly means “twisted together”. In other […]
Freeing Yourself from Limiting Beliefs
We’re getting ready to launch our new eBook ‘The Human Constraint’, a business novel for the New Economy. We’re excited to share a snippet of the accompanying online learning centre that accompanies each chapter of the novel. This section deals with limiting beliefs and a tool to overcome them. Assumptions and limiting beliefs In a chapter […]
Crash, Bang, New Economics (and How We Can Build It)
Our economic models have failed us. Anyone who has lived with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis knows that. Many have lost their jobs, or lost their investments and even their future prospects. Many who expected to have a smooth career path are getting by from contract to contract, or may even be chronically unemployed. The […]
How Do I Make Use of Systems Thinking Stuff in an Organization?
Question: I have an organizational situation that I need to address and I’m not sure how to go about it. I’ve been hearing a lot about something called systems thinking and I’m interested in understanding what it is and how I benefit from it addressing the situation at hand. Your thoughts on how to pursue […]
Growth mindset? There’s an app for that – well, a thinking process tool
Do you feel as if you’re stuck the way you are or do you feel that you can grow? A book by a Stanford psychologist identifies a “fixed mindset” and a “growth mindset.” Depending on your mindset, you can profoundly influence your development and happiness. We look at a Thinking Process Tool to support continuous […]
Holacracy vs. Hierarchy? The Answer Lies in Managing Complexity.
A recent article about the company Zappo’s relates how they have chosen a new organizational structure of holacracy that removes traditional managers and job titles. They believe this new structure will allow them to grow in a way that is less rigid and bureaucratic. While this may be a move in the right direction from […]
The Rabbi, The Sales Expert and the Good Wife – the Power of the Authentic Network
What do a Rabbi, a Sales Expert and The Good Wife have in common? The problem of an authentic network. During the same day, a conversation with a rabbi, a talk by a sales expert and an episode of TV series ‘The Good Wife’ all had something in common: authenticity and how it affects our […]
