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Overview

Our Systems Thinking Workshop enhances your ability to understand, model and resolve complex business issues. Participants develop the "mental elasticity" needed to anticipate the intended and unintended consequences of today's decisions and understand how those decisions will lead to tomorrow's business successes or failures.

The course, based on the work of Peter Senge, author of the Fifth Discipline, presents the concepts and tools of Systems Thinking in a fast-paced and pragmatic manner. It uses a combination of business simulations, case studies, peer learning and expert-led discussions to create an engaging and lasting learning experience.

You Will Learn How To:

• Understand the challenges of your organization from a systems' perspective and design solutions that leverage your strengths
• Anticipate the intended and unintended consequences of today's decisions
• Use Causal Loop Diagrams (the principal tool of Systems Thinking), to properly diagnose and solve the most critical and complex issues within your organization
• View your organization as an interrelated and interdependent system rather than a collection of separate entities (i.e. departments, product groups, business units)

How You Will Benefit:

Becoming proficient with the tools and concepts of Systems Thinking allows you to understand, model and test business assumptions and decisions. This ability can have a tremendous impact on the contribution you can make to your organization. Thinking Systemically will give you the knowledge and tools to:

• Improve your “hit-ratio” of good decisions
• Become a more valued member of your team by increasing your ability to understand and manage increasingly complex organizations
• Model and predict the impact that decisions will have throughout the organization before they are implemented
• Avoid short-term thinking that can create long-term problems
• Increase your contribution to shaping the strategic direction of your organization

2-Day Workshop Agenda

• Experiencing Systemic Consequences
  • Beer Game Simulation
• Basic Language, Tools and Skills of Casual Loop Diagramming
  • Behavior over time
  • Telling the story/defining the issue
  • Macro variable identification and usage
  • Links between variables
  • Simple individual causal loops
  • Simple balancing and reinforcing systems
• Application of Basic Causal Loop Diagramming Tools to Real-Work Issues
  • In teams apply CLD basics to company-specific live issues
  • Fundamentals of Systemic Causal Loop Modeling
• Complexity Modeling and Leverage Points
  • Focus on the use of completing and competing multi-loop modes and conflicting leverage points
  • Review of the steps in labeling and reading multi-loops and modeling the business impact of leveraged actions over time
  • An introduction to the value of Scenario Planning
• Team Creation of Selected “Real Work” Complexity Models
  • Learning teams will select business issues to examine
  • Create a model with variables and loops to tell the story
  • Identify the causes and effects within the system
• Putting It All Together, Action Planning and Application

All workshops can be customized to meet the particular learning and business objectives of your organization.