Problem Catalog

Prompt: Returning to your problem catalog, choose for analysis a real-world problem that impacts your current or former workplace or a current or former organization (professional, civic, recreational, religious, etc.) that you are affiliated with. The list below provides some examples of the types of things you may have encountered:

•   Overuse of services provided by a group or department
•   Continuous friction between groups
•   Failure to follow rules/protocols
•   Repeated tardiness in delivery of product, services, information, and so on
•   Poorer and poorer (degrading) performance
•   Proliferation/acceptance of poor performance
•   Incompetence
  Note: You can choose a problem that you have worked with in an earlier module or you can choose a new problem. However, for this exercise, choose a problem different from the one you are analyzing for your final project.
  Once you have chosen your problem, analyze it from both a traditional linear-thinking perspective and from a systems thinking perspective. Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:
•   Analyze the chosen problem from a linear thinking perspective.
•   Analyze the chosen problem from a systems thinking perspective. Include the following:
  • ○  A causal loop diagram or a stock and flow diagram (whichever you think is more illuminating) of the system producing the problem
  • ○  Application of all relevant archetypes and an explanation of how they operate within the system
•   Identify the extent to which there have been previous attempts at solving this or related problems. To what extent was systems thinking applied?

Guidelines for Submission: Your problem analysis should be submitted as a 2 page Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, one-inch margins. If sources are used, they should be cited using APA style.