Managing a Business System Gb500

Manager’s Toolbox: Mapping a Business System

Mapping a Business System

Systems thinking provides a way for organizations to better foresee hidden challenges within a system and how it affects the overall future progress of the organization. According to Hutchens (2001), “systems thinking helps us better grasp what is (our “current reality”) so that we can design wiser strategies for creating what can be (our desired future)” (p. 59). Every organization has a number of systems in action to achieve specific goals. It is

imperative when an organization plans for these systems to understand how they affect one another. In the Tip of the Iceberg, Hutchens talks about how all activities in systems are derived from just two basic processes: the reinforcing processes and balancing processes (Hutchens, 2001). The overall purpose of a system is to accomplish a precise goal, and the lack of such goal may be a strong indicator that a well defined system does not exist.

A system is devised of a number of components that work together to achieve a desired goal. It is important for any system to have reinforcement and balance processes that work together to stabilize the system. The reinforcing processes work to positively affect changes within a system in the same direction. The balancing processes work to maintain a system at its preferred status (opposite direction). If one component is affected by any external variable and fails to fulfill its purpose within the system, then the system as a whole will be disrupted affecting other systems in an organization. As Hutchens (2001) explained, “each system has a ‘setting’ where it ‘likes’ to be, it will always like to return to this setting, despite external influences” (p. 62).

In a business organization, effectively mapping systems and predicting the many variables which can affect that system is an ongoing process. At any given time a system may face a hidden external variable which could lead the system into a...