Applying Systems Thinking and
Common Archetypes to Organizational Issues
Getting Started
Why an Iceberg?
Organizations often try to solve problems or improve performance with information from the surface - or "tip of the iceberg" - rather than exploring lower, more meaningful structures.
At the surface of an organization are events: sales, product releases, layoffs, financial filings, press announcements. If we focus primarily on events, we tend to react. Life becomes a series of crises.
If we examine events, we see that they emerge from trends and patterns. An appreciation of trends and patterns allows us to plan and anticipate. Anticipating is an improvement over reacting, but we still aren't able to effectively create the results we want.
Trends and patterns are a function of the underlying structure. Some aspects of the underlying structure like physical layout, policies and procedures, reporting relationships, and contracts are easy to see. Others, like beliefs, mental models and culture lie much farther below the surface.
Understanding organizational structure allows us to anticipate trends and patterns and the events they trigger. We can redesign parts of the structure that are causing problems and look for improvement.
Systems Thinking provides a disciplined way of understanding the underlying organizational structure and dynamic relationships among data, information and people. If we only navigate in our systems by gathering data on the surface and reacting to the tip of the iceberg, we're likely to encounter trouble.
Effective organizational structure design is a much higher leverage strategy for improving system performance than reacting to every crisis. Conversations focused on structure also provide more opportunities for learning.