Developing a strategy for dealing with a situation begins with a description of the situation and the preferred state for today, not in some distant future, and the perceived implications of not doing anything.

A shifting the burden structure occurs when there are different ways to address a situation. With one approach being easier, faster, and requiring fewer resources, which do you think gets pursued? The problem is that taking the easier path ensures one will have to take the easier path repeatedly, and makes it harder to pursue the long-term better solution. See also Archetypes.

Once the strategy is developed the relationship model must evolve to represent that implementation appropriately sequenced.

The limits to results structure endeavors to bring a balance between a current state and a desired state though more often than not the action is limited by some constraint.  See also Archetypes.

There are things we can influence and usually a broader array of things we are concerned about though can't influence. It's important to know the differerence otherwise we waste our energies trying to change things we have no influence over. 

There exists a well defined set of possible ways to alter an existing set of interactions. Each of these alterations will produce a particular effect depending on the relations the change is relative to. Identifying which are possible and which will migrate the interactions to produce the desired situation is the essence of the strategy.

Enabling a Better Tomorrow is a systemic approach for developing a systemic strategy which may be employed to intervene in a current situation to effect the desired results while minimizing the likelihood of creating new problems in the process.

This diagram presents the valid relationships between stocks, flows, and parameters. Ghosts of Stocks, Flows, and Converters can be created as needed.

Network Magic is high tech start up growing rapidly and having difficulty developing resources to respond to customer demand.

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SystemsWiki's Musings

OK, we have a problem. Yet, do we really know what the problem is? More often than not we look at the symptoms, consider them the problem and attempt to fix them. This actually dooms us to failure because they're only symptoms.

An introduction to what seems to be our typical approach to dealing with problems that arise unexpectedly when we're focused on dealing with other immediate issues.

When the relevant interactions are identified it's appropriate to identify which elements are the responsibility of which stakeholders, which elements are part of the addressable interactions and which elements are part of the environment.

The situation Big Box Distribution considers to be a problem is an average accounts receivable period which is considered unacceptable as it is costing them money.

The strategy is actually a set of structural changes that have to be made to the relationships that cause the future to be different than the past.

Strategy is simply an idea as to how to move the current situation to the desired situation though it is seldom simple by any means. If the strategy is to be successful how numerous elements will be able support each other through the transition must be defined.

When we're trying to understand a situation it is often very helpful to have a sense of the historical trends of several dimensions relevant to the situation.

Now that we have some context for the situation it's appropriate to begin to investigate, though possibly not where you might think. And the investigation is actually a bit hindered because management fired the accounts receivables department. What I'm really interested in is trends as to how things have evolved over time.

Imagine you could create anything you chose with the existing technology and resources. What would it be?

While understanding the interacting components responsible for the situation is important it is even more important to understand the stakeholders as they are the ones responsible for the interacting components being the way they are.

Network Magic's rapid growth creates a growing demand for resources. And the more they satisfy their customers the more difficult the problem becomes.

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SystemsWiki's Musings

Investigating the behavior of several variables over time has probably raised more questions than answers. As such now it's time to investigate what else might be influencing the trending of these variables.

To this point the Situation, Behavior, Model, Stakeholder and Boundary aspects of this situation have been investigated. It is now appropriate to consider the assumptions that have been made to this point and ensure we are on a solid foundation before proceeding to the Leverage and Strategy aspects are considered.

It's now time for the stakeholders to take the investigation resulting from leverage and craft a strategy which will address the current situation in a manner that is beneficial to the whole system.

Before we can begin to sort out how to approach this situation it's appropriate to identify the relevant stakeholders and their motivations.