Adam Zeiner

Systems thinking enables us to engage complex problems more effectively, steering us away from short-sighted solutions that may work in the short-term but ultimately backfire and make things worse in the long run.

If you’re part of the map-building process there’s no better tool for organizing your team’s research and keeping everyone on the same page. [...] However… I f you’re not part of the map-building process, systems maps can be exhausting to interpret.

That typical hierarchical org chart does not depict the relationships between different parts of the team.

1. Alignment & common language

...we’ve been trained to think of organizations as homogenous and mechanistic, with a clear set of rules, a command-and-control structure, and the ability to leverage hierarchy to get things done quickly by issuing top-down directives to reallocate resources to meet objectives.

I worry sometimes that there’s a danger of embracing the theatre of systems thinking — using it to position services and to navigate what’s desirable, feasible and viable within the existing system — without actually reshaping the system itself.

An ecosystem map provides business stakeholders with a holistic overview of the different stakeholders and their internal relationships that together make up the ecosystem in which they aim to operate.