February 15, 2016 by Todd Rosholt
Importance of Systems Thinking
Definition of Systems Thinking: The ability and practice of examining the whole rather than focusing on isolated problems (P. Senge)
Why is this important to our mission and to this “$565 Billion Dollar industry that is running blind.?”
Systems Thinking offers a better approach to complex and persistent problems that plague our industry. By contrast the sense of urgency with event organizers to fix problems quickly has led the live event industry to take short-sighted actions that result in unintended, adverse, and quite frankly, more problems!
At TENTPOLE, we have learned a lot about how Systems Thinking works best, where its strengths are, how to connect people naturally with it, and how to get it to take hold in an organization. More companies in the live event industry should start to build it into their work by:
- shifting responsibility from managers and leaders solving difficult problems alone to tapping into the intelligence and experience of an entire team or community
- pioneering ways to build communities across functional boundaries that use systems thinking as the primary vehicle for meaningful conversations around ongoing and new challenges
- pulling together new knowledge, identifying high-leverage opportunities and implementing more powerful strategic choices
- utilizing our collaborative innovation approach to problem solving and driving growth
Systems Thinking and my last handful of posts are about shifting how we think, communicate and act.
By bringing diverse perspectives into our conversations/projects under the tent, asking different kinds of questions, and making our assumptions visible open, we are better able to tap into what we call collective wisdom.
This approach ultimately, will improve the quality of our choices and future event experiences.