By Robert Fritz
On May 25, my friend and colleague Peter Senge and I are going to spend a day together exploring one of the most important topics for organizational and social change: the creative process as practiced within a broad community. This day, called "A Community of Creators," is sponsored by the Society for Organizational Learning and Pegasus Communications.
I must admit, I don’t usually trust groups on principle. Maybe it is the artist in me. And by that, I mean that to create art demands an individual point of view, not a collective one. I have always agreed with John F. Kennedy when he said, “The artist, faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an offensive state.”
On the other hand, it is through groups that many wonderful things become possible that would have been impossible had they been done by a single individual. And here is the place where I become interested in a collective creative process.
There are numerous ways to get this wrong. Many groups display the following pattern: join together in a common cause with a shared vision; agree with each other; decide on some collective action; lose momentum; break into factions; turn the focus inward; lose touch with the original purpose.
Groups that form around common beliefs become more and more narrow and less and less creative and effective. These sorts of groups reflect the real-world example of what Kennedy described as an intrusive society and offensive state, as they demand greater conformity to doctrine and ideology from members.
So, for me, the question is, how can we join together in groups and still maintain our individual integrity? One powerful answer comes from the reason the group coalesces in the first place. If the group forms to create an outcome, then the best of all worlds can be realized. To be effective, the effort requires collective action, true leadership by strong individuals, and alignment of the group and its leaders. It takes structural tension, in which the group has a vision both of the outcome it is working to create and of the current reality. The team then needs to take effective, strategic actions on behalf of the vision.
Another type of community of creators is found in the arts and sciences. I have always been fascinated how, during certain historical periods, the “greats” collected in a particular location: for example, France for impressionism and New York City for bebop and abstract impressionism. Just before World War I, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, and a slew of other great poets found themselves in England. The Beats gathered first in New York City and then in San Francisco.
In this type of community of creators, while each person worked independently, they also had colleagues with whom they could carry on discussions, debates, collective shows, and publications. They supported each other in their creative endeavors.
Now, we have virtual cafés where like-minded creators can join a supportive community. People from all over the world come together in colleagueship to strengthen their learning, while maintaining the integrity of their individualism.
On May 25, in Boston, Peter and I will delve deeply into these questions. I always learn something new and exciting whenever Peter talks. He brings such a mastery of thinking to any event of which he is part. This day will be especially good for those who lead or work with others on teams, those who manage organizations, those in the arts who work collaboratively, and anyone who is involved with collaborative projects. I hope you’ll join us in this exploration.
Robert Fritz, a composer, filmmaker, and organizational consultant, is founder of Technologies For Creating® and author of the international bestseller The Path of Least Resistance. He also publishes a free monthly e-newsletter, Creating. Click here for more information about Robert and his work.
By Mark Alpert
The majority of people are pretty good at taking care of their homes, cars, and power equipment, and for the most part, they don’t mind doing it. There is a certain pride in keeping the car shiny and the computer running smoothly. It’s easy if you follow the manufacturer’s
recommendations as highlighted in the owner’s manual. We know that taking care of our belongings is the right thing to do, because a little preventive maintenance now will prevent potentially larger, more costly issues down the road.
What about preventive maintenance for our organizations? Wouldn’t it be great if your business or school came with an owner’s manual? That little paper booklet that identifies the steps to take on a periodic basis to keep the organization running smoothly or the process for troubleshooting any problems that might arise, with a technical support contact number if the suggestion doesn’t work?
The preventive maintenance and troubleshooting sections of the owner’s manual simply capture the ways to prevent common problems from happening and the steps to follow if things do go awry. Based on historical data collected about their products, the manufacturers know exactly what’s going to go wrong with your lawn mower and how to fix it. Can the same be true for our organizations?
Common, Repeatable Patterns
Unlike lawnmowers, organizations are exceedingly complex, and each one operates differently from the others. However, all organizations do exhibit similarities. If you look deeply enough, you will notice some common, repeating patterns of behaviors. How many times have you heard the expression, “Same @#$!, different company.” That expression is true. It explains how an automotive parts executive can take over at a software company and develop it into a global market leader.
Common patterns of behavior are known as “archetypes.” Pioneers in the field of systems thinking have identified a series of “systems archetypes,” including “Limits to Growth,” “Drifting Goals,” and “Tragedy of the Commons.” Systems archetypes can provide us with insight into the underlying organizational structures that influence behavior over time as well as specific events that might occur. Just like the data compiled in a useful owner’s manual, the behaviors captured over time that support the different systems archetypes provide useful knowledge on how to anticipate, avoid, and fix the problems.
As you learn about the systems archetypes and begin to recognize them at work, they become an effective diagnostic tool to gain insight into why your organization keeps seeing the same problems happen over and over again. Or even better, they can alert you to future issues so that you can address them before they spin out of control. The common archetypes will also provide you with the ability to understand the most effective leverage points, the best places to take action to drive improvement, and to consider the merits of fixes before you put them in place.
Another way to use systems archetypes is in planning. As leaders formulate an organization’s goals, strategies, and initiatives, they can refer to the archetypes to test whether the organization is set up for success. Are the current structures aligned to produce the desired results? If not, how should the existing structures be altered? Leaders can then make the necessary changes before beginning an intervention.
Organizational “Check Engine” Light
Unfortunately, our organizations don’t come with owner’s manuals. They don’t even come with the “check engine” light you see flashing in today’s automobiles. But we do have the systems archetypes. Think of them as your “check engine” light. When you recognize the signs, you can be confident that it’s time for some preventive maintenance.
Which systems archetypes do you find most often in your organization, and what are you doing about them?
Mark Alpert is president of Pegasus Communications.
By Jeff Frakes and Nalani Linder
Those of us who use systems thinking in our work frequently find ourselves with a need to share this powerful worldview and toolset with others. From our experience, this process can
become rather frustrating, as it seems that quite a few people “just don’t get it” despite their often significant efforts at attempting to learn these practices. We believe that one possible reason for this difficulty might stem from how one prefers to gather and process information.
We decided to test this assumption by collecting data from a sample of people with different Myers-Briggs typologies. Two hundred and seventy-one people completed a questionnaire in which they provided their MBTI types and evaluated how effectively they utilize 17 practices of systems thinking. Our purpose was to assess whether significant differences might occur among participants’ comfort in utilizing systems thinking practices based on their MBTI type preferences.
We discovered that a number of significant differences do exist. In particular, those who identified as “Intuitive” tended to apply 12 of the 17 systems thinking practices. We also found that those who identified themselves as “Perceiving” reported implementing 6 of the 17 practices. And respondents high on both the Intuitive and Perceiving scales were significantly more comfortable with “big-picture” thinking than were people with different profiles. The other dimensions of the MBTI bore little differentiation among the respondents regarding their comfort with systems thinking practices.
We believe that some value of our research lies in simply suggesting that people’s preferences in gathering and processing information may cause them to more or less easily embrace systems thinking. For those of us who "naturally" see the world through a systems lens, this awareness can be reassuring and help us to be patient when others may show a more linear and mechanistic mindset. For people looking to develop systems thinking skills, our research may also help them pay special attention to the specific practices that may be outside of their normal preferences.
As a result of our research, we decided to identify tools that trainers and others might use to help build familiarity and capacity for each of the systems thinking practices as needed. Some tools include those well known to the Pegasus community, such as the (Root) Beer Game to help understand accumulations and the Triangles activity from the Systems Thinking Playbook to understand interdependencies. Other tools use approaches better known in organizational development circles, such as the Variance Matrix, another way to identify leverage points.
Just as knowledge of MBTI types can be useful in team building, we propose that knowledge of systems thinking preferences may be equally useful. For example, team members could share their MBTI types and discuss how their preferences might affect their inclination to apply a systems thinking approach. Those with a greater natural inclination toward thinking and acting systemically could assist others as appropriate.
We continue our efforts to identify tools and techniques to enhance the practice of systems thinking in organizations. We invite others to make suggestions and comments on what they have found to be useful in encouraging the application of this important approach.
Jeff Frakes, Ph.D., serves as CEO of Performance Innovations, Inc., which provides coaching and conferencing in the human and organization development fields. He is a field faculty member for the organizational management program at Fielding Graduate University. Jeff has more than 20 years of experience as a human resources executive. He has contributed extensively to the use of Statistical Process Control and the administration and monitoring of drug dosages for those with neurological diseases.
Nalani Linder is founder and principal of N P Linder Consulting, providing organizational development and systems thinking resources to organizational and community change agents since 2005. Nalani has been teaching systems thinking workshops since 2008. She currently divides her time between facilitating organizational change efforts for clients and consulting to Washington State K–12 educators about integrating systems thinking into their curriculum. Nalani received her master’s degree in Whole Systems Design from Antioch University–Seattle.
Jeff and Nalani are offering a webinar Big Picture by Nature? Facilitating Systems Thinking in Groups.
by Barry Oshry
In her seminal book, Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows lists 12 leverage points for intervening in systems. High on her list in terms of effectiveness are those interventions that result in paradigm shifts. Citing Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein, and Adam Smith, Meadow says “people who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.”
When people were living in a pre-Copernican paradigm, they didn’t think that they were living in any particular paradigm; they were simply seeing the world as it was. The Sun revolved around the Earth; you could count on it. Every day. It was obvious that the Earth, as God’s special creation, was at the Center of the Universe.
Then came Copernicus. Sorry, it seems that the Earth is not the center of the universe, that it, along with other planets, revolves around the Sun. And whole worldviews were turned upside down. First, one man saw it, then a few, then many, and finally a new post-Copernican paradigm emerged. Not without much resistance and soul-searching. In the end, the pre-Copernican paradigm was seen as simply wrong.
We are now living blindly in an outmoded self-centered paradigm, one in which our personal experiences are felt to be the touchstones of reality. In this paradigm, how we feel about ourselves, others, other groups, who are our friends and who our enemies, all of these are experienced as solid reflections of the reality of who we and they are. We are simply seeing the world as it is.
Observations based on my work with the Power Lab and the Organization Workshop suggest a fundamentally different reality. We are systems-centered beings, and much of our experience is shaped not by who we are but by the nature of the systemic conditions we are in.
Organizationally, those at the Top are prone to falling into painful and destructive territorial issues with one another; those in the Middle become alienated, competitive, and evaluative of one another; and those in Bottom fall into the conforming pressures of groupthink. The feelings these people have about one another seem to them to be solid, based on the reality of who they are. Culturally, we observe religious and ethnic groups across the globe experiencing one another as dangers to be avoided or controlled or, in the extreme, destroyed. These feelings too feel solid and based on the reality of who these others are.
Shifting from a self-centered to a systems-centered paradigm provides a fundamentally different understanding of these relationships. We notice how systems processes shape our consciousness. We focus less on individuals and more on whole systems processes. We see systems differentiating (parts becoming more different from one another) and homogenizing (parts maintaining their commonality); we see systems individuating (members moving independently, pursuing their individual objectives) and integrating (members coming together in common purpose.) And we notice the consequences when these processes go seriously out of balance: territoriality, alienation, groupthink, racial and ethnic conflict, among them.
Shifting from a self-centered to a systems-centered paradigm opens up fundamentally different strategies for systems intervention: from self-centered interventions--fix, fire, divorce, separate, therapize, control, destroy one another--to systems-centered interventions--alter the configuration of systems processes, balance over-differentiated systems with homogenization, balance over-integrated systems with individuation, and so forth.
The self-centered paradigm is outmoded; it produces erroneous understanding and misguided interventions. A systems-centered paradigm is being born. First, one person sees it, then a few, them many, until a new paradigm emerges.
Barry Oshry is president of Power + Systems, Inc. and the developer of the Power Lab, a total immersion leadership development program, and the Organization Workshop on Creating Partnership, an essential component in leadership development curricula with a network of 250+ trainers worldwide. Barry is also an accomplished playwright whose plays on leadership, conflict, and organizational culture have been performed for organizations, included in festivals, and adapted for the stage. This piece originally appeared on his blog.
by David Peter Stroh and Marilyn Paul
Are you and your organization struggling to do more with less? Have people’s effectiveness and satisfaction dropped as workloads have skyrocketed? More and more of us are overloaded by trying to meet the challenges of a 24/7 world. You might wonder what you can do to manage your time and yourself in ways that are more productive and sustainable. As a leader, you might also want to know what you can do to help your entire organization combat the destructive dynamics that cause your collective workload to spin out of control even as you attempt to reel it in.
To meet these kinds of individual and organizational challenges, it helps to begin by developing the case for change. On a personal level, ask what overload is costing you in your career, your most important relationships, and your sense of well-being. Consider what you really want to do—ways in which you would realize your passions and aspirations if you only had more time.
At the organizational level, the costs of overload range from spiraling health expenses and burned out employees to tense working relationships, missed deadlines, poor quality work, and angry customers. Organizations also lose sight of and fail to implement strategic priorities because they spend too much time fighting fires and moving from crisis to crisis.
What Do You Want to Create?
The first step in building the foundation for sustainable productivity is to have a clear and compelling vision of what you want to create. As an individual, you develop a vision of where you want to be in five or 10 years, and also picture your ideal working day and week. At the organizational level, build a vision that integrates high performance and the characteristics of a great workplace (see, for example, the high-commitment, high-performance organizations cited in Russell Eisenstat, et al., “The Uncompromising Leader,” Harvard Business Review, July-August, 2008).
Identifying where you and your organization are now in relation to the vision establishes the creative tension vital to change. A critical part of describing your current reality is to understand how you, individually and at the collective level, unwittingly increase time pressure in your efforts to alleviate it. It is too easy to blame external factors—an unreasonable boss, the competitive environment, or the 24/7 accessibility provided by “time-saving” technology—for the overload you experience.
However, such explanations not only miss the many ways in which you contribute to overload, but also undermine your power to change how you work. The more you can see how your well-intentioned actions add to the problem, the more control you have over reducing your overall workload and increasing your effectiveness at the same time.
Another key factor is to cultivate support for the changes you want to make. Studies such as the well-known heart research conducted by Dean Ornish demonstrate that it is much easier to change deeply ingrained habits by reaching out to others. At the organizational level, you can analyze important stakeholders and mobilize a coalition for change.
Strategies for Increasing Effectiveness
Once you build the foundation for change, you are ready to target specific strategies for reducing workload and increasing effectiveness. At the individual level, this might mean ensuring that you make a realistic plan for what you can accomplish each day before opening email, and tackling your most important and challenging tasks early. At the organizational level, it can mean reducing incentives for firefighting, digging deeper to solve recurring issues by focusing on systemic versus individual causes of these problems, and holding firmly to strategic priorities in the face of distractions and urgent yet relatively unimportant concerns.
Implementing your strategies requires not only careful planning, but also ways to reinforce new commitments over time. This involves recognizing that change requires not only patience, persistence, and incentives to stay the course but also an appreciation that, in every moment, you must make a choice in favor of your new way of work instead of your habitual responses.
However well you plan and execute these strategies, it is also important to recognize that conditions change as you change. Adapting to changing conditions means learning from experience, i.e., drawing strength and wisdom from your successes and failures as well as adapting to new and evolving circumstances.
Finally, realize that you cannot save time, only spend it more or less wisely. Look instead to develop and sustain resources that are expandable, in particular your energy and ability to focus. Sound time management strategies such as clarifying a limited number of priorities and taking meaningful breaks enable you to cultivate these valuable skills.
David Peter Stroh and Marilyn Paul, Ph.D., co-founders of Bridgeway Partners, are internationally recognized systems thinking and organizational learning experts committed to helping organizations, individuals, and communities solve chronic, complex problems. David was previously a co-founder of Innovation Associates, the consulting firm whose pioneering work formed the foundation for fellow co-founder Peter Senge’s management classic The Fifth Discipline. Marilyn is a speaker, author, and coach whose best-selling book It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys has sold over 160,000 copies worldwide.
David and Marilyn will be offering a two-part webinar series: Managing Your Time as a Leader and Overcoming Organizational Overload.
By David W. Packer
A great artist painted a certain mountain many times. When asked why painting the same thing over and over did not bore him, he responded, “Moving my easel just a few feet provides 
a whole new view.”
Likewise, systems thinking, which ranges from basic concepts to complex simulations, provides us with the ability to change perspective and heighten understanding in many different dimensions. When we shift our vantage point, we discover different ways of thinking and doing that can lead to important results.
A Brand-New Entity
Let’s examine the power of a core systems principle--that a system is different from the parts or components that make it up. The system stands alone on its merits and is not in any way “the sum of its parts.” In a theoretical sense, the interaction among the parts creates a brand-new entity that is oriented toward achieving a goal that none of its components could do alone.
This recognition in itself yields enhanced perspective. Deming saw it, pointing out that optimizing the component parts never creates the most effective system. In organizations, the components are often the functions or departments--engineering, marketing, sales, and the like. Components are often called “silos” because of the visual imagery: Silos are robust structures that stand side by side with no connections.
If every function were “perfect” in its own realm, the resulting system would be too costly, too cumbersome, or too mismatched to achieve its overall goal. It is how the departments work together--invariably making compromises--that determines the system’s effectiveness. Managers schooled in perfecting their functional contributions find this insight paradoxical and confusing.
Hidden Cost of Functional Excellence
I came across an example of this kind of suboptimization in a church with which I was involved. The church had strong functions, including a popular and charismatic pastor who delivered fine sermons and readings, and a talented music director who led the musicians in delivering impressive performances.
What more could one want? Well, there was something. Many congregants felt a vague sense of disappointment, seldom articulated, that the total Sunday-morning experience was not what it could be.
At a retreat, board members struggled to identify the problem. They finally realized that, while the performance of the components was superb, the system was falling short. The lack of integration across the silos led, for example, to services that conveyed a somber message while accompanied by whimsical show tunes—or vice versa, a playful sermon with the sounds of a funeral dirge. Every detail was superb, but the end result failed to deliver the power that was possible given the talents at work.
In this case, shifting perspective to look at the service as a system led to the understanding that the whole, the words and music together, was essential to high overall performance, and that some compromise in both functions was thus necessary. This approach not only enabled the board to see the problem and the opportunity, but also evoked high-quality discussion and assessment.
Without the systems view, neither the problem nor the resolution would have occurred so clearly, if at all. As in most organizations, the emphasis on functional excellence might have continued unquestioned and masked the path toward a better way. Once recognized, the issue might seem obvious, but such recognition often stays unseen, like the biblical candle under the basket.
Once we embrace the need to manage the “whole elephant,” fundamental changes often occur in goal setting, action planning, execution, and performance evaluation--every aspect of work. The satisfaction of working and learning together in new ways is an added benefit of taking a systems view.
David W. Packer is founding partner of the Systems Thinking Collaborative, a veteran of the MIT System Dynamics Group and of Digital Equipment Corporation, and a variety of boards. He and spouse Ginny have parented five and are now grandparents to fourteen. And he is a Red Sox fan, among other things.
cathedral photo by Ian Britton
By Russ Gaskin
How do today’s leaders create profound innovation in the face of complexity? According to an executive report by the IBM Institute for Business Value, they do it by “embracing dynamic tensions.”
In a report released in July, “Cultivating organizational creativity in an age of complexity,” Barbara J. Lombardo and Daniel John Roddy assert that
“leaders who embrace the dynamic tension between creative disruption and operational efficiency can create new models of extraordinary value. . . . By harnessing the energy of opposites, creative leaders and their organizations can benefit from new assumptions that replace less effective ‘either/or’ approaches.”
The IBM researchers additionally found that “to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world, creative leaders avoid choosing between unacceptable alternatives. Instead, they use the power inherent in these dualities to invent new assumptions and create new models geared to an ever-changing world.”
The report lists seven key tensions that leaders can creatively optimize to create innovative breakthroughs:
Local and Global: “The new generation of social media-inspired globalists will push past tired management models and East versus West cultural stereotypes”
Real World and Digital World: “Forward-thinking business designs will seek to create new value at the intersection of the physical and virtual worlds”
Systems Thinking and Design Thinking: “Finding solutions to complex problems requires both analytical and creative thinking styles working together”
Business and Society & Environment: “Truly sustainable growth and profitability comes from solutions that address the needs of society and the environment”
Zero Sum and Expand the Pie: “Creative leadership is about seeking opportunities for shared value creation, even in the toughest of times and the most difficult of circumstances”
Power and Influence: “Organizational creativity thrives when leadership styles adjust as needed to support both top-down and bottom-up innovation initiatives”
Operational Efficiency and Creative Disruption: “Complex systems (for example, the human body) are able to adapt in an orderly fashion to unexpected challenges because their many distinctive parts work smoothly together”
Polarity Thinking
The body of work known as “polarity thinking” (or “polarity management”), pioneered by Dr. Barry Johnson, provides a practical and sophisticated method for leveraging dynamic tensions (or polarities). Polarities are situations like seven key tensions described above, in which both conflicting points of view are true. When leaders manage this ongoing, natural tension, they can often channel it into a creative synergy that leads to superior outcomes.
Leveraging polarities involves making a fundamental distinction between solvable either/or problems and both/and polarities, which are inherently unsolvable (but leverage-able). The ability to shift from exclusive reliance on either/or thinking to leveraging both/and thinking is a critical competency for success in an increasingly complex and interdependent world.
Tremendous breakthroughs can occur when forward-thinking organizations learn to harness the power of polarities to their advantage.
Russ Gaskin is chief business officer of Green America, and a teacher and consultant on social innovation and shared value creation. Through his consulting practice, CoCreative Consulting, Russ helps companies and multi-stakeholder groups generate innovative solutions to chronic challenges. Russ holds a master’s degree in organization development from AmericanUniversity and the NTL Institute.
Russ and Cliff Kayser will be presenting a workshop on Polarity Management in Seattle, WA, November 3, 2011.
By Chris Soderquist and Rebecca Niles
When you present a systems thinking diagram—whether stock and flow or causal loop—do you find that eyes glaze over? Does it contain too much detail for many in your audience? While these pictures are worth a thousand words, they can be a bit much for some, especially those who did not participate in their initial development. As systems thinking consultants, we have been on an ongoing quest to spread systemic insights in a way that the broadest of audiences can digest and put into action.
We recently tested a novel approach to communicating systems ideas to a broad audience in a very short timeframe. In less than 20 days, a team created an 
animated video that could be widely distributed and easily understood, drawing people into a deeper look at the structure of a large, complex system. The project focused on helping educate the public and New Hampshire state legislators about the possible unintended consequences of proposed cuts to state health and human services funding.
Pooling Our Knowledge
The process was started by NHCanDoBetter.org, which convened a group of the state’s leading health and human service professionals, former state legislators, communications experts, and systems thinking practitioners for the purposes of pooling their knowledge of the issues and quickly developing a high-level model of the implications of the proposed budget cuts.
The initial process took about six hours. We started with a visual nominal group process using hexagon post-its to make sure that the group surfaced all of the potential outcomes of funding cuts. We then divided into two consultant-led groups that independently developed stock and flow maps with feedback loops to capture the dynamics.
The result was two rough stock and flow diagrams that captured the stories the group wanted to tell. These graphics included the impact of budget cuts to health and human services on local communities, the business climate, and individuals.
We later integrated, simplified, and illustrated these maps in isee systems’ iThink computer simulation software. The stock and flow model was then converted into a video script. Interested participants helped to refine the story through online work sessions using Adobe Connect.
We then turned the completed script over to a graphic artist, Steven Wright, who developed a set of animated pictures to accompany the story. The same stakeholders then provided feedback to improve the quality and impact of these images. A voiceover was added to complete the package, and the animated video was widely disseminated via the internet.
A Clear Beginning, Middle, and End
The resulting video was very well received. Brett St. Clair, representative of NHCanDoBetter.org and partner at Louis Karno & Company LLC, had this to say: “If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a thousand pictures. We had nothing but positive feedback on the video. It uses the systems mapping technique to tell our story effectively with a clear beginning, middle, and end. I just received an email yesterday from a reporter with our state’s largest newspaper who has been assigned a story on the impact of state budget cuts, and she said she had been forwarded a link to our video from one of her colleagues who covers the state capitol beat. Just the kind of thing we’d hoped for.”
While stock and flow diagrams are rich in detail and storytelling capability, they may be considered too technical for wide audience acceptance. We believe that by using systems diagrams as the basis for video presentations, groups can create compelling stories that will be of great interest to the general population. By doing so, we can increase our ability to spread systemic thinking and, in turn, change the world for the better.
Chris Soderquist has more than 15 years of experience as a system dynamics consultant and trainer, with a diverse set of clients from the private and public sectors. He is a guest lecturer at the Darden School of Business (University of Virginia) in their Executive Education Program and is on the Boeing Engineering Leadership Program’s development team. Chris is a contributing author to The Change Handbook (Berrett-Koehler, 1999) and delivers system dynamics webinars for isee systems, where he is a consulting partner.
Rebecca Niles is a partner with the Systems Thinking Collaborative. Since 1995, Rebecca has been coaching teams in the use of systems thinking to understand complex issues ranging from teacher absenteeism to employee retention to new drug discovery to economic growth in Nigeria to reduction of child maltreatment. She provides training, facilitation, consulting, computer modeling, and learning laboratory development and delivery services. Rebecca has a master’s degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Other systems stories and simulations
View the Introduction to Systems Thinking webinar series, featuring Rebecca Niles and Chris Soderquist.
By Janice Molloy
What if, instead of competing with video games for kids' attention, schools learned from them? Would students approach the classroom with the same enthusiasm and openness to learning that many reserve for digital environments?
Quest to Learn, a New York City public school that opened in 2009, is exploring these and other questions. According
to Katie Salen, one of the founders and a keynote speaker at the upcoming 2011 Systems Thinking in Action Conference, "We looked at how games work--literally how they're built and the way they support learning--and we thought could we design a school from the ground up that supported learning in the way games do."
The curriculum is designed around "missions." At the beginning of each 10-week session, kids are dropped into complex challenges that they have no ability to solve. That mission is broken down into a series of smaller challenges that provide interdisciplinary, just-in-time learning.
As in a game environment, students always know where they are, how far they have come, and what they have to work on. Salen says, "Games understand how to incentivize players to want to get better." In the process, students become active problem solvers, using trial and error to figure out solutions to complex problems in collaboration with others.
Quest to Learn's ultimate goal is to increase students' engagement, equip them with strategies to become lifelong learners, and help them acquire 21st-century skills and competencies such as teamwork, creative problem solving, systems thinking, and time management. As a sign that this approach is gaining momentum, a second Quest to Learn school is opening in Chicago in the fall.
Video About Quest to Learn
NPR Story: School Uses Video Games to Teach Thinking Skills
Video of Katie Salen by the New Learning Institute
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
By Bob Doppelt
Capital is now flowing into clean technology sectors, in part to reduce climate-damaging carbon emissions. However, as important as new technologies are, we won’t solve the climate crises until we overcome a much more fundamental problem: our maladaptive beliefs and practices.
A large body of research shows that we humans frequently make poor decisions, 
especially when confronted with novel problems. In general, humans are not skilled at assessing risk, especially when the threat is new. People frequently misjudge the future effects of their behavior and often underestimate the consequences of changes occurring in their environment.
Creating the Conditions We Abhor
Case in point is a pair of bills recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. One prohibits the U.S. Department of Agriculture from analyzing how climate change might affect its operations and the farmers its serves. The other prevents the Department of Homeland Security from examining how climate change might affect domestic security.
The representative who introduced the USDA bill said he did so to prevent the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. The sponsor of the Homeland Security amendment claimed to be motivated by cutting costs. But the irony is that these bills might actually bring about the very conditions their proponents abhor. If we remain unprepared, climate change will compromise our food supply, reduce farmers’ ability to grow crops, open our nation to increased security threats, and restrict everyone’s freedom.
Many people in the U.S. and around the globe hold similar maladaptive views. I am merely using this example to illustrate that long-held beliefs and practices often prevent people, and even whole societies, from responding effectively to new circumstances.
Resistance to Change
“Bounded rationality” is partly to blame for this pattern. The human mind has a limited ability to receive, store, and process information. The information we obtain is often incomplete and skewed by the biases of those who gathered it.
But an even more important factor is that humans naturally tend to resist change. From slavery to tobacco smoking, beliefs and practices can exist for decades or centuries, even when they are clearly known to be detrimental.
Often, people strive to tweak and improve their existing systems. However, their beliefs and practices constrain these efforts to “first-order” change, which leaves the basic goals, structures, and outcomes of those systems intact. Modest improvement in the energy efficiency of goods is an example of first-order change. Increased efficiency does little to change consumption patterns. It can even cause people to purchase additional energy-consuming devices.
Only rarely do people strive for “second-order” change, which brings about a fundamental shift in beliefs, practices, goals, structures—and results. Cutting total energy use by 50 percent or more through dramatically reduced consumption and finding new ways to meet our needs and desires constitutes second-order change.
Three Key Factors
Second-order change is difficult because it requires three factors. People must feel significant dissonance between their current conditions and a desired new state. They must also experience a sufficient sense of efficacy or confidence in their ability to do what’s needed to eliminate the dissonance. And, just as important, they must believe that the benefits of making the change significantly outweigh the detriments. Without adequate sense of dissonance, efficacy, and benefits, people can remain stuck in less-than optimal or destructive patterns for long periods of time.
Climate change is the mother of all challenges facing humanity. To make intelligent decisions about how to respond, we must clearly identify the problems that need to be solved. The first and most important problem is our maladaptive beliefs and practices. The ability of change leaders to build sufficient dissonance, efficacy, and benefits will be essential to success.
Bob Doppelt is executive director of the Resource Innovation Group and teaches systems thinking and climate change at the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Power of Sustainable Thinking (Earthscan, 2008), which was rated one of the top 10 books on climate change by Audubon Magazine and one of the top 40 books on sustainability by CPSL at Cambridge University.
Skydiving photo