Putting systems thinking into practice

The dynamic systems perspective illuminates some of the core challenges in organizational learning.If learning occurs through experience, there are good reasons why organizations often fail to learn. In particular, large organizations face a class of systemic decisionmaking situations in which learning is extremely unlikely. The systems perspective teaches us that cause and effect are often not close in time and space, that obvious interventions do not always produce obvious outcomes, and that long time delays, and systemic effects of actions can make it almost impossible to judge the effectiveness of those actions. This article presents a framework for organizational learning, outlines several breakdowns that thwart the learning process, and discusses how systems thinking can play an important role in helping organizations overcome the learning breakdowns through the design and implementation of managerial practice fields. Diverse methodologies of systems thinking have been developed over the past 40 years. Yet, despite widespread recognition of the growing importance of understanding interdependency and change, there has been relatively little penetration of these metbods into the mainstream of management practice. Managers talk about "the big picture," yet there are no established tools to guard against myopic strategies and policies. Everyone acknowledges the sins of short-term profit maximization, yet planning continues to focus on simple, short-term goals for business performance rather than on high-leverage areas for systemwide redesign and significant improvement. Useful methodologies like system dynamics (Forrester 1961; Richardson and Pugh 1981; Richmond et al. 1987) and Ackoffs (1981) idealized design planning bave heen in existence for 30-40 years and yet are still taught in only a small fraction of management schools.