By Seth Kahan

Cross your fingers behind your back and you know what you have done even though you cannot see it with your eyes. That's because of proprioception, the ability to tell where our body parts are and what they are doing through the body's internal feedback via muscles, joints, and tendons.

It's a physical phenomenon, but not a mental one. We don't have this same self-awareness when our mind takes a posture, creates a concept, or makes an assumption. We construct ideas and then we see them as real, not for the self-generated creation they are. That's why questioning assumptions is so important and can lead to breakthroughs.

Outlearning the Wolves: Surviving and Thriving in a Learning Organization, written by David Hutchens and illustrated by Bobby Gombert

By Mark Alpert

Systems thinkers have long adopted the iceberg analogy as a way to describe the events, patterns, and underlying structures that drive the behaviors that affect performance within a system.

The iceberg is a perfect metaphor, because it depicts just how much of what is really going on lies beneath the surface, out of sight. For many, out of sight also means out of mind. That mindset limits an organization's ability to improve, live up to its potential, and consistently accomplish its stated goals and objectives.

In this analogy, events are represented by the tip of the iceberg, the small portion visible above the waterline. Events happen now. The midsection, the partially visible portion of the iceberg just beneath the waterline, represents repeatable behavioral patterns that play out over time. As events are strung together, they create these recognizable patterns or trends.

Even further below the surface lies the underlying structure. Think of the structure as the foundation that creates the patterns and events. It's the causal driver of behaviors. The hardest to see, structure is the most important because it gives us a deep knowledge of how things really function and helps us predict behavior. When we understand the underlying structure, we can take higher-leverage actions to create different behaviors that result in the outcomes we most desire.