Systems Thinking: The Next Step

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Getting Started: Systems Thinking-
Taking the Next Step

If you've heard about Systems Thinking - perhaps you've read The Fifth Discipline - and are wondering...How do I take the next step in building my, or my organization's, Systems Thinking skills?

Here's the answer!

Systems Thinking...Taking the Next Step is a multimedia Learning Environment which picks up where The Fifth Discipline left off. Now, instead of just reading about it, you can experience the paradigm, language, method, and technology of Systems Thinking as applied in real-world, case study examples. It includes an interactive case study, in which you will have the opportunity to play the role of CEO of a high-tech Company trying to implement an aggressive growth strategy in a highly-competitive emerging market.

This CD-ROM is great for giving people across your organization a first-level exposure to the power of Systems Thinking as an approach to strategy design.

Key Ingredients of a Learning Environment:

Multimedia technology creates an engaging, virtual environment.

Simulation compresses time and space so that you can experience consequences of your decisions.

Just-in-time coaching (delivered through movie clips, audio messages, and diagrams) provides you with the "just- what's-needed" assistance to improve your performance - while building your Systems Thinking skills in the process.

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iThink in...Systems Thinking

The Value Proposition

Using the iThink software in Systems Thinking enables…

consciously-chosen visions, objectives, strategies, and policies to be checked for internal consistency with the "physics" of the business
the interplay between the various parts of an organization to be assessed in terms of the likelihood of generating interference, rather than reinforcing, impacts upon each other
those involved in designing any performance-improvement initiative to literally "get onto the same" page in terms of underlying assumptions
those not involved in any such design effort to develop a "hands on" appreciation for how the initiative, or system of initiatives, is supposed to work
creation of an ongoing "organizational learning infrastructure" that enables new learning that occurs after an initiative has been rolled out to be incorporated into the collective understanding

A Snapshot Case Study

The senior management team of a well-known applications software company was debating whether to be in the client service business, or whether it ought to just "stick to the knitting" of pure software development-the latter being the decided preference of the majority of the team.

The firm decided to use the iThink software to construct a very simple model that might shed some light on this question. A simplified version of the map that resulted is reproduced below. Simulations of the associated iThink model clearly indicated that the client service revenue stream would have a definite tendency to grow relatively faster than the software revenue stream over time. This "inadvertent evolution," a relative expansion of client service revenues, was in direct conflict with the preferences of the majority of the senior management team. Had the team not come to understand that the evolution was a direct consequence of "the physics" of the business, they might have tried to resist it. Such resistance, referred to as "fighting the physics" in Systems Thinking parlance, usually results in a high-cost/high-frustration mode of operation.

Understanding the "physics," on the other hand, enables people to better understand their options, and hence to make decisions that respect the physics-without necessarily "giving in" to them.