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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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 Addiction structure is the same as the Shifting the Burden structure though with the annoying aspect that one becomes addicted to the side effect ensuring that Fundamental Solution won't get implemented and the Symptomatic Solution will be applied repeatedly, and likely with greater frequency.

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.

There are about a dozen known systems archetypes with an interesting set of relationships among them.

The Exponential Growth Archetype is one of the two foundation archetypes. The other being the goal seeking structure.

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

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

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.