To this point the Situation, Behavior, Model, Stakeholder and Boundary aspects of this situation have been investigated. It is now appropriate to consider the assumptions that have been made to this point and ensure we are on a solid foundation before proceeding to the Leverage and Strategy aspects are considered.
A shifting the burden structure occurs when there are different ways to address a situation. With one approach being easier, faster, and requiring fewer resources, which do you think gets pursued? The problem is that taking the easier path ensures one will have to take the easier path repeatedly, and makes it harder to pursue the long-term better solution.
While understanding the interacting components responsible for the situation is important it is even more important to understand the stakeholders as they are the ones responsible for the interacting components being the way they are.
Now that we have some context for the situation it's appropriate to begin to investigate, though possibly not where you might think. And the investigation is actually a bit hindered because management fired the accounts receivables department. What I'm really interested in is trends as to how things have evolved over time.
It's relatively well understood that you can't be all things to all people. Somewhere one has to make choices. An Attractiveness Principle Systems Archetype is essentially a Limits to Growth Systems Archetype with multiple limits, all of which can not be addressed equally. See also Archetypes.
The limits to growth structure is based on the basic growth structure. And, as should be obvious, nothing grows forever as growth requires resources. Those required resources become a limits to growth.
Success to the successful archetype represents two reinforcing structures which may be in a delicate balance though as soon as one gains a small advantage the resource allocation favors the more successful and the result is then rapidly skewed in the direction of the more successful. See also Archetypes.
OK, we have a problem. Yet, do we really know what the problem is? More often than not we look at the symptoms, consider them the problem and attempt to fix them. This actually dooms us to failure because they're only symptoms.
A Growth and Underinvestment structure is simply an elaborated Limits to Growth structure where the growth inhibitor is part of another Balancing Loop with an external standard and some delay. The real nasty thing about this structure is that the two Balancing Loops form a single Reinforcing Loop which inhibits growth.
A Tragedy of the Commons situation exists whenever two or more activities, each, which in order to produce results, rely on a shared limited resource. Results for these activities continue to develop as long as their use of the limited resource doesn't exceed the resource limit. Once this limit is reached the results produced by each activity are limited to the level at which the resource is replenished.
An escalation structure results from two or more competing entities with the competition taking them to somewhere none of them want to be. See also Archetypes.
The limits to results structure endeavors to bring a balance between a current state and a desired state though more often than not the action is limited by some constraint. See also Archetypes.
An introduction to what seems to be our typical approach to dealing with problems that arise unexpectedly when we're focused on dealing with other immediate issues.
A shifting the burden structure occurs when there are different ways to address a situation. With one approach being easier, faster, and requiring fewer resources, which do you think gets pursued? The problem is that taking the easier path ensures one will have to take the easier path repeatedly, and makes it harder to pursue the long-term better solution.
An indecision structure results whenever there are two interacting goal-seeking structures which provide goals for each other. There is the potential of creating oscillations because of the inherent delays in the structure.
This is a summary version of the theWay model which presents the essence of the overall model though not all the detailed pieces. It was created as a way to get a quick sense of all the pieces at once.
The goal seeking structure endeavors to bring a balance between a current state and a desired state. This is one of the two foundation archetypes. The other being the growth structure. See also Archetypes.
Eroding Goals shares a basic similarity with Shifting the Burden - the dynamic tension between a symptomatic solution and a fundamental one. In the case of Eroding Goals, managers are faced with performance that fails to meet a stated goal.
The limits to growth structure is based on the basic growth structure. And, as should be obvious, nothing grows forever as growth requires resources. Those required resources become a limits to growth.
