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.
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.
This is a template which one might use as a basis for creating Insight Maker Relationship models. Links have default style of the blue ones in the diagram. The easiest way to get the red dashed links is to CTRL+d to duplicate them and then connect where appropriate.
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.
The limits to growth structure is based on the basic growth structure. And, as should be obvious, nothing grows forever as growth requires resources. Those required resources become a limits to growth.
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. See also Archetypes.
The Accidental Adversaries structure represents a situation where two interacting entities which should produce growth unwittingly limit the growth of each other because of their actions to promote their own growth.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An escalation structure results from two or more competing entities with the competition taking them to somewhere none of them want to be. See also Archetypes.
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.
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.
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.
One question that I seem to be getting more and more often is "Should I do this in Insight Maker or Kumu?" At one time that was an easy answer, and still is for certain things, for others it's becoming more and more difficult.
