The Systems Thinker – A Lifetime of Systems Thinking - The Systems Thinker

Improving the performance of the parts of a system taken separately will necessarily improve the performance of the whole. False. In fact, it can destroy an organization.

you cannot learn from my mistakes, only from your own. I want to encourage, not discourage, your making your own.

Identifying and defining the ways we can control the future: vertical integration, horizontal integration, cooperation, incentives, and responsiveness.

Science, I believe, consists of the search for similarities among things that are apparently different; the humanities consist of the search for differences among things that are apparently similar. Science and the humanities are the head and tail of reality—viewable separately, but not separable. It is for this reason that I have come to refer to ... See more

Identifying and defining the hierarchy of mental content, which, in order of increasing value, are: data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. However, the educational system and most managers allocate time to the acquisition of these things that is inversely proportional to their importance.

The principal function of most corporations is not to maximize shareholder value, but to maximize the standard of living and quality of work life of those who manage the corporation.

Mistakes are of two types: commission (doing what should not have been done) and omission (not doing what should have been done). Errors of omission are generally much more serious than errors of commission, but errors of commission are the only ones picked up by most accounting systems.

The most valuable and least replaceable resource is time.

I have no interest in forecasting the future, only in creating it by acting appropriately in the present.