Systems are what surround us everywhere. A city, a company, and our own body are examples of systems with many connections. You don’t need to become an expert in every area and have knowledge of all the elements of the system to predict how it will act and respond to changes.

However, you have to be extremely careful when you put pressure on the system to change it because all parts of the system are interconnected — directly or indirectly. Therefore, changes initiated in one part will gradually affect all others and can both improve the state of the system and destroy it. Lacking knowledge of how systems work, managers with the best intentions often end up making their systems worse.

Participating in the program involves practical work with your company’s case — both during homework and in the classroom. We encourage participants to go to the program in mini-teams because having a common logic makes it easier to implement systemic changes and make your company flexible, balanced and resistant to external and internal influences.

Mental models. Dynamic complexity.

The purpose of the module is to understand how systemic effects are manifested in your company and to identify the root causes of the current state of your company.

Why there are problems in the organization and what needs to be done to get rid of them? What are the reasons for success in your company and what will make it possible to repeat this success?

• Mental models and prejudices as a system-forming factor of the organization: a common language in the organization as a way to communicate effectively and achieve greater results.
• Working with own destructive prejudices that prevent the manager and the system in general from moving forward.
• Identification of systemic effects in own systems — growth limitations, accumulation, delays, and others; their application when setting management tasks.
• Working with system archetypes — causal structures that describe and explain non-linear and counter-intuitive behaviour of systems.
• Biological system ‘Human.’ Burnout as an example of systemic effects.
• Theory of constraints: the sum of local improvements does not equal to the overall improvement — and how to deal with this?

Structure. How to put things in order in systems?

The purpose of the module is to understand the structure of your system, to learn how to analyse the relationships between system elements, to implement the necessary changes in the structure, and ultimately to bring order. We understand how to scale existing systems without losing meaning and create new ones.

• Diagrams of cyclic causality at the strategic and operational levels: work with your case.
• Structure of systems and approaches to building structural complexity of systems, development and scaling of systems.
• Effective scaling of systems: development of structural complexity, basic concepts of network theory, the logic of scaling (growing structures) of systems.
•  Types of systems and features of working with them: artificial and natural systems.
• Basic approaches to building structural complexity using the example of a management system: basic management structures, role definitions and role conflicts, and role design.

Systems and super-systems

Any system takes its place in the hierarchy of systems. For managers, the ability to see their companies at the micro-level (sub-systems), meso-level (actual systems) and macro-level (super-systems) is important.

The purpose of the module is to learn how to find the current and desired state of your company within larger systems: networks, clusters and ecosystems.

• A holistic approach as a way of seeing the world as a hierarchy of systems.
• Basic structural compositions of systems — hierarchies and networks.
• Working with super-system structures: finding the current and desired place of one’s companies in modern business networks and business ecosystems, building strategic partnerships and increasing competitiveness.
• Work with your case: the role of my system in super-systems: to whom and what value do I create?
• Forecasting the dynamics of systems in super-systems and managing the change of their roles in super-systems.
• Strategic design of social systems.

The system as a whole. System-forming factors.

The purpose of the module is to go upstairs and look at the system at a conceptual level. We train the ability to work with organizations as a whole — with organizational values, mission, and future desired states, to see and create emergent effects and properties.

• System as a concept. Working with the organization as a whole: values, mission, future desired states.
  
• Company culture — a set of common mental models — as a system-forming factor.
  
• Interaction of systems among themselves: cluster and ecosystem approaches.
  
• Complex social systems in which we exist: culture as a system of meanings; education system; the city as a system.
  
• Predicting the path of systems development: finding solutions that change the behaviour of complex social systems for the better.
  
• Business as a system. Capitalization of asset value.