αθανασουλας

Reality Check Please…

I must admit I really enjoy the use of the verb “communicate” in Modern Greek slang as a “certification of sanity.” “Epikinonis? (do you…communicate?),” my daughters ask me every time I say something that sounds crazy to them … and they couldn’t be more accurate. This “certification of sanity” necessitates three important prerequisites. First, it […]

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The Law of Requisite Variety

There is a little treasure of knowledge hidden in a very small phrase that comes more and more often to my mind these days… I would like to share it with you. In 1956, W. Ross Ashby, an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, stated that “only variety can destroy variety”, meaning that if […]

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The Learning Challenge

Recently, I had the honor to speak on my favorite subject, “Systems Thinking,” during a fascinating event on “Learning Organizations and the New Leadership Model.” In a short time it became apparent that there is little common ground among businesspeople on the meaning of “learning” or “a learning organization.” This is perplexing. I would expect […]

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System Trust Fault… System Reboot Required!

There has been a lot of discussion in Greece lately about “what went wrong and “how to fix it”. Many of those who are trying to figure out “what went wrong” and “how to fix it” are what social scientists call “future oriented” people. In other words, they work today and invest precious resources in […]

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Systems Thinking and Education – An Analytical Trap

Post-Renaissance scientists developed and established what we now call Traditional Analysis Thinking, or Reductionism. They reduced problems into ever smaller questions and, by answering them, re-constructed the problem and arrived at solutions. At the time, this was helpful. The problems we were trying to solve were really simple problems with solutions which could be proved […]

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Reinventing Business Thinking

Give any three-year old child a new toy and there are three things he or she will do. Take it apart, study its parts individually, and try to put it back together. These are the three steps of Analysis which cover how most of us think today. Analysis does provide us with knowledge, but it […]

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