Systems Thinking
“The bottom line of systems thinking is leverage – seeing where actions and changes in structures can lead to significant, enduring improvements.”
(Senge 1990, p. 114) Read more
Concept Maps
Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge.
They include:
- Concepts – usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and
- Relationships between concepts – indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts.
Service Design
My new favourite topic is Service Design Thinking for marketing.
In the Service Design reference book, This is Service Design Thinking, 5 principles are identified:
- User centered: Services should be experienced through the customer’s eye.
- Co-creative: All stakeholders should be included in the service design process
- Sequencing: The service should be visualized as a sequence of interrelated actions.
- Evidencing: Intangible services should be visualized in terms of physical artifacts.
- Holistic: The entire environment of a service should be considered.
Isn’t that what the business world has been seeking for years?
Yes it is.
And it’s a race to the top with disruptive innovations to be expected, even if not seen, as the design will go on behind closed doors in organisations (such as Sabio).
And only new clients will know the full breadth of user centred, co-creative, sequenced, evidenced holistic service deployment that results.
From my experience, Service Design based Marketing is the crest of the wave for customer experience management and competitive differential development.
In a nutshell:
It’s good for business because it’s really good for customers.
Check out this Service Design Tools repository.
The Path of Least Resistance for Managers by Robert Fritz
The first insight is that energy moves along the path of least resistance.
The underlying structure of anything will determine its path of least resistance.
We can determine the path of least resistance by creating new structures.
TOC Strategy and Tactic Trees
Alan Barnard on the use of TOC Strategy and Tactic Trees
Watch the short but knowledge-packed video:
The tree is only as valid as our assumptions.
Structural Tension Charting
Structural Tension Charting radically improves your approach to managing business and life.
I have taken Robert Fritz concept of Structural Tension Charting and combined it with my own integrations and the work of other noteables such as Peter Senge and Eli Goldratt to create what I am currently calling an Outcome Chart (as available inside the 7 Steps of Organizing).
What would it take to commercialise the following?
Freeing people to create the lifestyle necessary to fill their deepest criteria for contentment, by providing the precise information references and tools that will facilitate the manifestation of there dreams and wishes into reality.
The organizing principle of structural tension…
Structural Tension Charting
Here are the principles:
- Tension is the basic unit of Structure
- Tension exists out of discrepancy: It is a dynamic of structure that causes energy to move along the path of least resistance
- The path of least resistance is the principle that in nature, energy moves where it is easiest to go
- Structural tension is the discrepancy between two states, our desired state as compared to our current state
Structural tension charting facilitates the resolution of structural tension through allowing the visual representation of current reality, with the building up of all the steps that will get us to the desired reality.
Each Chart is comprised of a Current Reality box, a Desired Reality box, and a box inbetween for ‘how to get from here to there. This comprises a Structural Tension Chart.
It really is quite simple…
Robert Fritz book The path of least resistance for Managers explicates the system of structural tension charting. (See an article review of the book here).
