Faced with a performance gap the two most obvious responses are to work harder or work smarter. There are trade offs associated with each, some obvious, some not so obvious.

Derived from Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement by Repenning and Sterman.

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The intent here is to provide guidance for creating well structured and documented relationship maps that you can share with your audience and they are likely to find understandable and informative.

In Leadership & Management: A Structural Perspective I offered some thoughts regarding what happens when typical management and leadership approaches are applied to a hierarchical organization structure. Having continued to consider the nature of these two activities I would now like to offer what I consider to be a systemic perspective. A perspective which differentiates the two based on the structures they foster rather than the particular activities they promote.​

The limits to action structure endeavors to bring a balance between a current state and a desired state though more often than not there is some limit on the action.

A Systems Archetype has a very well defined structure that produces a characteristic pattern of behavior and there are well defined strategies for dealing with the structure.

The Limits to Growth Archetype demonstrates the manner in which initial growth may be slowed over time by a limiting factor.

The Exponential Growth Archetype is a reinforcing structure which promotes exponential growth. This is one of the two foundation archetypes. The other being the goal seeking structure.

Success to the successful archetype represents two reinforcing structures which may be in a delicate balance though as soon as one gains a small advantage the resource allocation favors the more successful and the result is then rapidly skewed in the direction of the more successful.

The limits to action structure endeavors to bring a balance between a current state and a desired state though more often than not there is some limit on the action.

We often set out to solve a problem or accomplish some particular result and things seem to go as planned. As time progresses it seems that progress becomes more and more difficult, if not impossible, and things may actually become worse than when we started. When this happens it is typically a Fixes that Fail structure that's operating.

An escalation structure results from two or more competing entities with the competition taking them to somewhere none of them want to be.

We often set out to solve a problem or accomplish some particular result and things seem to go as planned. As time progresses it seems that progress becomes more and more difficult, if not impossible, and things may actually become worse than when we started. When this happens it is typically a Fixes that Fail structure that's operating.

Two goal seeking structures attempting to resolve and based on the delay one may tend to settle for less.

Faced with a performance gap the two most obvious responses are to work harder or work smarter. There are trade offs associated with each, some obvious, some not so obvious.

Derived from Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement by Repenning and Sterman.

We often set out to solve a problem or accomplish some particular result and things seem to go as planned. As time progresses it seems that progress becomes more and more difficult, if not impossible, and things may actually become worse than when we started. When this happens it is typically a Fixes that Fail structure that's operating.

Faced with a performance gap the two most obvious responses are to work harder or work smarter. There are trade offs associated with each, some obvious, some not so obvious.

Derived from Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement by Repenning and Sterman.

An element of The Perspectives Project at Credit Never Happened at SystemsWiki.org

Faced with a performance gap the two most obvious responses are to work harder or work smarter. There are trade offs associated with each, some obvious, some not so obvious.

Derived from Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement by Repenning and Sterman.

An element of The Perspectives Project at Credit Never Happened at SystemsWiki.org

Faced with a performance gap the two most obvious responses are to work harder or work smarter. There are trade offs associated with each, some obvious, some not so obvious.

Derived from Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement by Repenning and Sterman.

An element of The Perspectives Project at Credit Never Happened at SystemsWiki.org

Two goal seeking structures attempting to resolve and based on the delay one may tend to settle for less.

We often set out to solve a problem or accomplish some particular result and things seem to go as planned. As time progresses it seems that progress becomes more and more difficult, if not impossible, and things may actually become worse than when we started. When this happens it is typically a Fixes that Fail structure that's operating.

A Growth and Underinvestment structure is simply an elaborated Limits to Growth structure where the growth inhibitor is part of another Balancing Loop with an external standard and some delay. The real nasty thing about this structure is that the two Balancing Loops form a single Reinforcing Loop which inhibits growth.
Context

All you wanted to do was put a bird feeder in your yard to attract birds and make for a more pleasant morning. And...