The Power of Systems Thinking

  Decision Making   Leadership   ProjectsAtWork  

System dynamics, a modeling technique developed at MIT, is well-suited for diagnosing problems at the project level, helping project leaders pinpoint internal feedback loops and understand how time delays in various activities can impact the overall behavior of a working system. Here are four common organizational pathologies that consistently derail projects.

How do you analyze the cause of failure in a project that has gone off track? How do you examine an almost infinitely complex system (like a modern corporation) and find where the failure occurred?

System dynamics, a modeling technique developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is designed to tackle the analysis of complex systems through diagnosis of causes at the root level. While systems thinking has a multitude of useful applications across an organization, it is exceptionally well suited for diagnosing problems at the project level— helping project managers pinpoint internal feedback loops and understand how time delays in various activities can impact the overall behavior of a working system.

The implementation of systems thinking will, if nothing else, eliminate placing the blame on managers who were likely doomed from the start. When a project doesn’t go well, it is very easy to point the finger of blame at the project manager. But if the project’s working system …

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