Applying Systems Thinking and
Common Archetypes to Organizational Issues
Module 6: Systems Archetypes
Exercise: "Managing the E-mailbox"
"Fixes That Backfire"
Estimated Time: 10 minutes
Purpose: To practice diagramming a "Fixes That Backfire" situation.
Instructions: Create a multiple loop diagram to respond to the following question:
Why do attempts to limit e-mail "distractions" create more of them?
Tips:
- Underline the variables as you read the case; choose one variable to be the PROBLEM and another to be the FIX.
- Write variable names on self-stick notes.
- Use the "Fixes That Backfire" template to help you organize your variables and loops. Create loops sentence by sentence (or paragraph by paragraph). Listen for reinforcing or balancing feedback.
Include in your diagram:
- Type of loop (R or B)
- Thought bubble(s) (Hint: Look for the link(s) where there is choice.)
- Direction (S's and O's)
- Delay (if applicable)
- Possible interventions
Managing E-Mail
Your organization has a strong emphasis on communication and sharing information. People collaborating on tasks keep in regular contact and send frequent progress updates. Colleagues share background documents frequently, often on an FYI basis.
You're very busy, with pressure to complete several tasks related to different parts of your organization and different teams. To meet a priority deadline, you narrow your focus to just the related communications, reading and responding only to the relevant e-mails. You concentrate on sending out key documents only to team members. This strategy keeps the time required for reading and writing e-mail and distributing documents to a manageable level and helps you move toward meeting the deadline. It seems that the total number of e-mails you are receiving has gone down, perhaps because you are not responding to so many routine e-mails, or sending out as many messages.
Your colleagues on other tasks continue to send messages and documents. After a while, when they don't get responses or acknowledgments from you, they send out inquiries and back-up communications. The longer you stay out of the communications loop, the more frequent their check-in messages become. When you finish the urgent task and are finally free to go through the rest of your e-mail, the volume is staggering.
You notice some urgent messages that you missed because they weren't flagged. You now have another important task to attend to. Overall, more messages are marked urgent, but some of them just seem to be a result of having not replied to more routine messages earlier. You don't even have time to sort through all the messages and complete your work tasks, but you worry about overlooking important messages.