RAFFIAPALM

Resources for product teams from industry experts.

systems thinking

  • When you start a new business you do not need to envision accurately the details of your strategy or predict foresightedly how technology will evolve. Rather, you need to focus primarily on getting the initial conditions right. If you start from a good place, then the choices that lead to success will look like the right choices. In order to exploit these choices, you need to create a business model whose resources, processes, and values can harness these forces so that they propel you toward success rather than blow you away.

    — The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. Christensen, et al.

    Source: Amazon Kindle
    Topics: , , , , , ,
    Read more: untitled post 245

  • On building learning organizations

    Personal mastery: Continually clarifying and refining our personal visions, and seeing reality objectively.

    Building shared vision: The capacity to translate individual visions into collective visions that galvanize a group of people based on what they’ll really like to create together.

    Mental models: Learning to unearth our own personal pictures of the world, to bring them to the surface so that we see how they impact our actions.

    Team learning: Spending time together to suspend assumptions and come up with new ideas.

    Systems thinking: What causes patterns of behavior? It is a framework for seeing the whole picture instead of individual things. The purpose is to make the full picture clearer, to see patterns between components or subsystems.

    Feedback: Any reciprocal flow of influence. Think of circles of influence in order to get things done, rather than linear processes.

    In building learning organizations there is no ultimate destination or end state, only a lifelong journey. “This work requires great reservoirs of patience… but I believe the results we achieve are more sustainable because the people involved have really grown. It also prepares people for the ongoing journey. As we learn, grow, and tackle more systemic challenges, things do not get easier.”

    — The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge

    Topics: , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Read more: On building learning organizations

  • Open systems have no boundaries. All systems are connected. There are no separate individual systems. This is a difficult concept to wrap our heads around.

    Boundaries are artificially created by people to help them separate and clearly examine one problem at a time. There is no such thing as one correct boundary of a system. The boundaries we decide to draw around systems are based on the questions we are trying to answer and the problems we are trying to solve. The boundaries we draw can lead to problems if we fail to keep in mind that they are of our own making and were artificially created by us.

    Ideally, we would study a problem and choose whatever boundary best helped to meet the system’s needs. But we are creatures of habit. We become comfortable with the boundaries we typically use. To get a more accurate picture, we should create a new boundary for each problem, have an open mind, and judge every situation on its own merits.

    — The Systems Thinker: Essential Thinking Skills For Solving Problems, Managing Chaos, and Creating Lasting Solutions in a Complex World by Albert Rutherford

    Source: Amazon Kindle
    Topics: , , , ,
    Read more: untitled post 303

  • I bet you’ve heard the saying “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” This saying stays true in the so-called “forest thinking” as well. When we analyze the intensive boundaries of a problem, considering every single aspect—or tree—of it, we can lose our focus on what matters. Instead of trying to narrow down if a particular dishwasher stopped working on Sunday afternoon, it’s more useful to see how often the dishwasher breaks down in general, how big the load is when it breaks down compared to the load when it works well, and so on. Forest thinking shows us the “on average” state of a system. To improve your forest thinking skills, try to discover similarities rather than differences—especially when in an organizational setting.

    Just because every person has their own strengths, doesn’t mean that they don’t share some attributives—being useful for the company for instance. One person can be terrible at maintaining good relationships with customers but can be exceptionally good at critical thinking. Instead of looking at individual factors, take a look at some central questions like “What is the interaction between the aspects guiding someone’s work morale?”

    — The Systems Thinker – Mental Models: Take Control Over Your Thought Patterns. Learn Advanced Decision-Making and Problem-Solving Skills by Albert Rutherford

    Source: Amazon Kindle
    Topics: , , , , , ,
    Read more: untitled post 346

  • When studying events, we look at them through analytical, logical lenses. We break them down into small, understandable chunks, and we fish for scapegoats while looking for cause-and-effect relationships. Is the economy going south? It must be the result of the poor decisions of a politician. Is the newspaper arriving late? That lazy mailman. For sure, he stopped to chat with the neighbor. Is your wife cold and distant lately? It must be her job. We seek linear, immediate, sensible explanations for problems surrounding us.

    But by doing so, we run the risk of seeing issues as being inflicted upon us rather than looking for our responsibility in creating them. We voted for the politician, after all. Or, if we didn’t, what did we do to prevent their election? It was our choice to use one delivery service over another. And when it comes to our relationship, we have our mistakes in the mix.

    — The Systems Thinker: Essential Thinking Skills For Solving Problems, Managing Chaos, and Creating Lasting Solutions in a Complex World by Albert Rutherford

    Source: Amazon Kindle
    Topics: , , , , ,
    Read more: untitled post 347

●●●

No more stories or excerpts.