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. There is a also a video for this insight.

As long as A and B are equally successful everything will remain stable. Though if either A or B receive more resources than the other, or A or B is more successful than the other, the imbalance will result in greater success of A or B accordingly and promote even more success of the one that demonstrates greater success.

There are a number of habits that one should practice to improve their Systems Thinking skills.

A Limits to Growth Systems Archetype consists of a Reinforcing Loop, the growth of which, after some success, is offset by the action of a Balancing Loop.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

Diagram from a paper by James B. Rieley entitled "The Euro Financial Crisis: Making Sense of the Mess".

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

Insight Maker is completely web based making it easy to develop and share models, allows concurrent multi-user editing, and just happens to be FREE, which a pretty good feature/price ratio.

Our actions are based on our beliefs and the results of those actions are the basis for our beliefs. The difficulty we create for ourselves is that we make assumptions as to how to interpret the results we select based on our beliefs. As a result we are often operating on a flawed perspective of reality.

A Tragedy of the Commons situation exists whenever two or more activities, each, which in order to produce results, rely on a shared limited resource. Results for these activities continue to develop as long as their use of the limited resource doesn't exceed the resource limit. Once this limit is reached the results produced by each activity are limited to the level at which the resource is replenished. As an example, consider multiple departments with an organization using IT resources, until they've exhausted IT capacity.

Based on a sound realization of reality we need an effective approach to dealing with situations which promotes the requisite understanding to develop a strategy that deals appropriately with the situation. A strategy which also is explicitly designed to minimize unintended consequences and puts in place responses to them should they arise.

New Learning tend to reduce Outdated Thinking, Communicating & Learning though our Outdated Thinking, Communicating & Learning inhibits new learning. The question is then how do we break this cycle. Adopted from "An Introduction to Systems Thinking with STELLA" by Barry Richmond.

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

Shifting the Burden/SFD is a segment of Systems Archetypes.

Fixes that Fail Systems Archetype Stock & Flow Diagram.

Part 1 demonstrates Picture primitives and Links to create representations of interactions. These are made visually attractive because the Picture primitives are overlayed with images.

A Limits to Growth Systems Archetype consists of a Reinforcing Loop, the growth of which, after some success, is offset by the action of a Balancing Loop.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

The generic stock & flow form for a balancing loop.

Fixes that Fail Systems Archetype Stock & Flow Diagram.

This is a model depicting the interactions of the Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

Reinforcing Loop/SFD Simulation allow one to experience the explicit implications of the interactions.

This is a model depicting the interactions of the Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."