Executive Education

Description
Change. Rapid, ever-accelerating, unpredictable change. It's a crucial dilemma facing all businesses today. Changes in technology, population, and economic activity are transforming the world, and the complexity of the systems in which we live is growing. But as complexity multiplies, so do the unanticipated side effects on humanity itself, further increasing complexity.

It's a vicious cycle that challenges even the most sophisticated managers. In fact, a senior executive's skill in dealing with fundamental change can actually dictate the success or failure of the organization.

"Systems thinking" is a response to the change dilemma. It is founded on the idea that increasingly, we must see the world as a complex system in which events are interconnected.

Systems thinking was devised to improve our ability to manage organizations comprehensively in a volatile global environment. It offers managers a framework for understanding complex situations and the dynamics those situations produce. Senior managers can use the system dynamics method to design policies that lead their organizations to high performance.

Understanding and Solving Complex Business Problems offers a new way of thinking about and resolving complex, persistent problems that emerge from change. Applying organization theory along with intuitive principles of feedback control, participants learn to:

• assess the likely impact of different policies and decisions that relate to their organization's growth, stability, and performance
• recognize business system archetypes that can trigger persistent, long-term problems
• use state-of-the-art management tools to identify relationships
• intervene effectively to make fundamental changes

In short, Understanding and Solving Complex Business Problems gives participants the skills and confidence to manage organizations with full understanding and solid strategy.

The Participants
Understanding and Solving Complex Business Problems is for executives with decision-making responsibility who are looking for fresh ideas to resolve organizational problems. Past participants have included:

• CEOs
• presidents
• COOs
• CTOs
• executive vice presidents
• corporate planners
• corporate strategists
• vice presidents
• senior project managers
• product development managers.

Faculty
Faculty Leader: John D. Sterman, Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management and director of the System Dynamics Group, specializes in systems thinking for corporate and public policy, behavioral decision theory, nonlinear dynamics, and environmental sustainability. His widely used management flight simulators allow people to experience the opportunities and challenges facing top management.

Nelson Repenning, Associate Professor of Management Science and Organization Studies, studies how process improvement techniques such as "Total Quality Management" and "Business Process Reengineering" can be so successful in some organizations but not in others. His case studies are the basis for formal modeling efforts that use both systems method and more traditional economic and organizational models.