Terminology Tempest
At Lateral Action, Mark McGuinness points out an interesting dichotomy as one part of a larger article. Psychologists and business researchers agree completely that ideas and action must be combined. But one calls the combination innovation and the ideas by themselves creativity and the other completely switches the terms. Imagine the furor that would happen if you had these two groups in a room discussing innovation and creativity without them knowing that ahead of time! If you seem to be going in circles in a discussion, check your definitions.
Introducing My Brand of Insanity
Tripp Babbitt of My Brand of Insanity compared “command and control” thinking to systems thinking and gave an example of how optimizing one part without considering the entire business can lead to unhappy customers. Bryce’s posts frequently touch on looking at different aspects of business problems and using a systems thinking lens, as you’d expect from the principal and president of a consulting firm with the domain name of http://www.newsystemsthinking.com.
Downsides of Thinking Towards the Whole?
Angie van der Merwe is concerned that the individual can be lost when systems thinking focuses on their part in the whole and not their existence of people. It’s an interesting idea to me, because I can see how the abstract nature of the process could go to far, although in this case the situation that inspired her post seems to represent a potential trap for systems thinkers and not a necessary result.
Reading Material
Brian Setzler has also been reading Thinking in Systems and riffs off it a bit while Lauren Currie recommends we read Systems Thinking in the Public Sector by John Seddon (one of Tripp’s influences as well) although she describes it as a “massive challenge”.
And something I just liked…
Carla Ross muses on litter, trash, environmental responsibility, and systems thinking in a slightly rambling post that
