| Our
Foundation
We serve our clients by staying on the leading edge of Systems Thinking. We translate and integrate best practices research in to practical applications. We create and facilitate innovative products and processes for leading and managing organizations strategically. |
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The CENTRE
for Strategic Management uses The Systems Thinking Approach™ as the foundation for its
consulting and training. What
Makes Our Approach Unique? 1. Holistic Thinking
Peter
Senge states “From an earlier age, we’re taught to break apart
problems in order to make complex tasks and subjects easier to deal
with. But this creates a bigger problem … we lose the ability to see
the consequences of our actions, and we lose a sense of connection to a
larger whole”. Many
strategic planning and change management models encourage analytical,
linear, and sequential thinking,
but Systems
Thinking looks at “ the whole system” and its purpose in the
environment. Systems Thinking sees the whole as
primary and the parts as secondary. The parts are a set of components
that work together for the overall objective of the whole. What this
means for us in the business world, is that consideration for the whole
organization is more important than any one of its units (or parts), and
those units should not be operating in isolation, but working together
to support the whole organization's objectives. Most of us have heard the adage: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there”. In systems thinking you work/think backwards to create the future you want. According to Steven Covey, “Systems thinking begins with the end in mind”. We start the process by defining the organization in the future, then working backward to strategically develop a plan to get there. 3.
Input-Throughput Every
human being operates within, what is called, an “open system”, and
how well they operate within that system is the key to their survival
and success. An open system is one that accepts inputs from the
environment around it, acts on those various inputs to create new
outputs into the environment. This also holds true for organizations,
the very survival and success of which depends on their interaction with
what is going on in the environment around them. This is known in
systems theory as the input-throughput-output model. The Centre’s
Systems Thinking Model looks at organizations as an open system as a way
to help them diagnose, analyze, problem solve and make decisions in
relation to their environment. 4.
Feedback
is Key The
ability to be flexible and adaptable is crucial in today’s complex and
continually changing world. It requires that organizations gain constant
feedback and adapt in order to achieve their desired outcomes. Feedback
is a key input that helps organizations learn, grow, and adapt at all
levels. After
examining 27 other strategic planning and change
management models, the Centre for Strategic Management found that no
other approach incorporated the input-output model or took a system’s
environment and feedback loop into consideration. The real
beauty of the Systems Thinking Approach™ is that by using our
“elegantly simple” four basic concepts, anyone can consciously
develop systems solutions for their systems problems. At its
simplest, Systems Thinking Approach™…
We
consider it A New Orientation to Business & Life! |
For more information please contact info@csmatl.com |
Systems
Thinking