Systems Thinking for Complexity and Leadership

Overview

Do you or your organisation:

• Wish to foresee the consequences of your policy and strategic decisions?
• Have endemic staff morale and productivity problems?
• Ignore or postpone fundamental solutions to chronic problems?
• Find dealing with complex situations increasingly difficult?
• Consistently misjudge symptoms for the cause?
• Feel trapped in short-term and fire-fighting behaviour?
• Experience growth in one area but decline in others
• Wish to free up you and your team’s  thinking
• Challenge its assumptions and norms
• Wish to create consensus and harmony in your team
• Desire to become a Learning Organisation?

Systems Thinking is a holistic way of thinking and a scientific methodology for dealing with complex situations underlying business, economics, scientific, and social systems. Based on a 5-day executive course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) this Short Course is designed to develop Systems Thinking skills by teaching practical tools in a hands-on environment. The Short Course will introduce Systems Thinking concepts and tools in a step-by-step fashion and will relate them to strategic and chronic issues facing the organisations.

Enrol on this course and you will receive a copy of Introduction to Systems Thinking by Maani & Cavana.

Topics Covered

The Short Course will cover the following topics. You will be working in small supervised teams.

Day 1

• What is Systems Thinking?
• Four Levels of Thinking
• How to Uncover Systemic Structures
• How to Build Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD)
• Breaking the Vicious Cycles
• Learning Activities
• Dynamics of growth in Hanover Insurance
• Power of Systems Archetypes
• How to Identify Leverage Points
• Systems Thinking and Mental Models
• How to Start Systems Thinking in Your Organisation?

Day 2

Morning:
This part focuses on company projects generated from participants’ organisations, where they work in small supervised teams and apply Systems Thinking tools to their complex business problems and strategic dilemmas.

Afternoon:

• Experience a Management Flight Simulation
• What is a Management Flight Simulation?
  Management Flight Simulation: this fun computer game challenges the participants to manage a call centre by balancing decisions for hiring, quality and call volumes.   Alternatively, the participants could assume the role of a marketing manager responsible for building a new brand by balancing decisions about sales force growth, advertising expenditure and store promotions.
• The company project and management flight simulation sessions will conclude with group presentations and debrief of the learning supported by eight years of related research.

Who should attend

Professionals and decision makers from all sectors and organisations, including CEOs and senior managers will benefit from this Short Course. It challenges their thinking as well as their strategic and policy approaches. Participation by company teams will be of additional value to their organisations.

Previous participants have included:

• CEO of Healthcare Organisation
• Policy and Research Officer
• HR Manager
• Clinical Director of Health Services
• Head of Marketing Strategy
• Technical Manager

No previous experience with Systems Thinking or computer simulations will be required.

Outcomes

At the conclusion of the Short Course, you will be able to use Systems Thinking tools to model and explain dynamic situations and apply them to complex business, economic or social problems such as strategic and scenario planning, growth strategies,  productivity and performance management, brand development, and restructuring. You will be able to recognise the dynamic and interdependent nature of recurring problems and to identify key leverage points for intervention.