Prompt: Returning to your problem catalog, choose for analysis a real-world problem that impacts your current or former workplace or a current or former organization (professional, civic, recreational, religious, etc.) that you are affiliated with. The list below provides some examples of the types of things you may have encountered:
- Overuse of services provided by a group or department
- Continuous friction between groups
- Failure to follow rules/protocols
- Repeated tardiness in delivery of product, services, information, and so on
- Poorer and poorer (degrading) performance
- Proliferation/acceptance of poor performance
- Incompetence
Note: You can choose a problem that you have worked with in an earlier module or you can choose a new problem. However, for this exercise, choose a problem different from the one you are analyzing for your final project.
Once you have chosen your problem, analyze it from both a traditional linear-thinking perspective and from a systems thinking perspective. Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed: - Analyze the chosen problem from a linear thinking perspective.
- Analyze the chosen problem from a systems thinking perspective. Include the following:
- ○ A causal loop diagram or a stock and flow diagram (whichever you think is more illuminating) of the system producing the problem
- ○ Application of all relevant archetypes and an explanation of how they operate within the system
- Identify the extent to which there have been previous attempts at solving this or related problems. To what extent was systems thinking applied?
Guidelines for Submission: Your problem analysis should be submitted as a 2 page Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, one-inch margins. If sources are used, they should be cited using APA style.
