Week 6

Systems Thinking

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Systems Thinking

The premise of systems thinking , the science of understanding how systems operate , is that organizational designs of the past are no longer capable of carrying organizations into the future . According to Senge (1994 ) systems thinking is a discipline for "seeing the 'structures ' that underlie complex situations , and for discerning high from low leverage change (Senge , 1994 ,

. 69 . This 'seeing of structures ' involves a shift away from linear cause-and-effect thinking to circular , relationship thinking . Senge (1994 ) observed that from an

br early age , we are taught to break apart problems , to fragment the world This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable , but we pay a hidden enormous price . We can no longer see the consequences of our actions we lose our intrinsic sense of connections to a larger whole

The world seems to be changing faster than we can ever imagine , and problems seem to be more complex . The rapid changes that have occurred in the last decade have led to many of the harsh realities we experience today . Different changes , such as technology , re-engineering and redesign initiatives have been introduced rapidly to respond to the challenges of the times . The intention was to make things better yet after all the effort , conditions did not improve , and staff morale has declined . Systems thinking allow people to move beyond a focus on the parts , to appreciate the impact of their actions upon others , to appreciate the organization as a dynamic process (Smith , 2001

Senge (1994 , presented different ideas destroying the illusion that the world is created of separate unrelated forces . Senge described systems thinking as what happens when we try to see the "big picture " when we connect all the pieces together and reassemble the disintegrated parts According to Senge (1994 , the architecture to be used in systems thinking is that of a learning organization . This organization has three cornerstones (a ) guiding ideas (b ) innovations in infrastructure and (c ) theory , methods , and tools

System thinking encourages leaders and managers to explore their own story . To explore the story , managers must write down what their challenge is and let the facts fundamental to that challenge emerge "At the heart of the art of systems story telling is one question : How did we (through our internal thinking , our processes , our practices , and our procedures ) contribute to or create the circumstances (good and bad ) we face now (Kemeny et al , 1994 ,

. 105 . The systems thinking process has the "distinct advantage of helping corporate leaders and managers recognize that decisions must be made in the context of the entire organization and not in a piecemeal fashion "Kinston Fire Victims 2004 . By applying systems thinking to the field of management , the management discipline can initiate the process of examining the organizational structures that influence and contribute to even crisis events (Carroll Sachi , 2001

Systems thinking is a multi-faceted concept "At its broadest level systems thinking encompasses a large and fairly amorphous body of methods , tools , and...