System Archetypes


Overview/Description
Target Audience
Expected Duration
Lesson Objectives
Course Number



Overview/Description
Systems repeatedly fall into common patterns. In this course, you will learn five system archetypes, patterns that appear in every organization. By becoming aware of an archetype and learning how to identify it in your work situations, you gain a strong tool for assessing the structure and forces at work in your organization. Archetypes are used to clarify and test models as well as compile the many details involved in systems thinking that can so easily overwhelm the beginning systems thinker. Using archetypes simplifies the process of looking at your systems and gives structure to the steps needed to work within those systems.

Target Audience
Managers, supervisors, team leaders

Expected Duration (hours)
3.0

Lesson Objectives

Systems and Feedback Loops

  • recognize the importance of understanding the systems and feedback loops that exist in an organization.
  • identify the four characteristics of a system.
  • complete a balancing loop diagram given specific information about an organization.
  • complete a reinforcing loop diagram given specific information about an organization.
  • Identifying System Archetypes

  • recognize benefits of identifying system archetypes.
  • identify characteristics of system archetypes.
  • assess a changing-the-goal system archetype in a given scenario to determine what makes it that particular system archetype.
  • determine if an organization is exhibiting a solutions-that-fail system archetype in a given scenario.
  • determine the factor that caused an organization to foster a restriction-on-growth system archetype.
  • determine if an organization is exhibiting a treating-the-symptom system archetype in a given scenario.
  • assess an over-individualization archetype in a given scenario to determine what makes it that particular system archetype.
  • Course Number:
    STGY0404