Fixes that Fail Systems Archetype Stock & Flow Diagram.

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

When endeavoring to develop an understanding of the nature of something it is generally useful to create a model of some type to aid in surfacing that understanding.

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

Introduce the concept of modeling and simulation.

New Learning tend to reduce Outdated Thinking, Communicating & Learning though our Outdated Thinking, Communicating & Learning inhibits new learning.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.

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.

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.

The Reinforcing Loop Systems Archetype is one of the two most basic Systems Archetypes. The Balancing Loop being the other one.

What's the real difficulty associated with managing time?

There are limits to what one can infer from a qualitative model.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

The Home Heating System can be used to demonstrate how we get caught in dilemmas and become victims of ourselves.

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

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

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

This model is derived from the paper "Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement" by Nelson P. Repenning and John D Sterman. See Insight 1899 for a simulation of this model.

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

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

A Growth and Underinvestment with a Drifting Standard structure is simply an elaborated Growth and Underinvestment structure where the growth inhibitor induces a decline of the standard over time. The real nasty thing about this structure is that the growth inhibitor influence sets up a Reinforcing Loop which even further promotes a drifting of the standard over time.

A Growth and Underinvestment with a Drifting Standard structure is simply an elaborated Growth and Underinvestment structure where the growth inhibitor induces a decline of the standard over time. The real nasty thing about this structure is that the growth inhibitor influence sets up a Reinforcing Loop which even further promotes a drifting of the standard over time.

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.

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.