A session typically lasts a half-day to two days and often leads into a longer term engagement including simulation modeling.
Systems Thinking for Strategy Development
After a brief introduction to the field of systems thinking, facilitators help apply various diagramming and facilitation tools to address the real world challenges that people face in their work or community. We use several approaches:
- Our "action to outcome mapping" approach helps intact teams with shared goals link their actions to their intended outcomes while incorporating the important role of feedback effects and mindsets in shaping long term change. We recently used this approach to help foundation program officers improve their approach to improving the world through philanthropy.
- An economic and environmental cluster approach pulls together diverse players from a multi-use region to illuminate ways that various policies and investments can either cascade across the cluster in positive ways or compete with other sectors for common resources. Recently used to help diverse leaders improve the economic and environmental health of the marine clusters around Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.
- The classic system dynamics approach uses issue brainstorming, behavior over time graphing, causal mapping, and policy testing to help a group focus on a critical strategic issue and build a shared understanding of important drivers of change. Used extensively in our modeling projects - e.g., forestry, corn, urban growth, energy policy.