System Thinking Theory And Practice

Promoting innovation closed loop

Discuss about the System Thinking Theory and Practice.

Google company is a technological company that is functioning in providing internet services that include advertising, computing in the search cloud and development of hardware and software technologies. Google has employed 57,100 employees that are tasked to provide innovative services to the company. This helps it to remain viable in the market due to the rapid technological changes that are taking place. Google has created a conducive environment for innovation from its employees. This has been achieved by existing forums that enable the employees to contribute.

Google cafes provide platforms that bring about interaction with their fellow employees. This brings about exchange of ideas during the conversations. This channel enables motivation and insight ideas how the innovation can be bettered. In the weekly segment of TGIF, employees have the opportunity of interacting freely to the top leadership. This includes asking questions and giving of ideas that will better the company. This platform enables innovation as ideas can be discussed and opinions will determine the viability off the idea. This platform enables innovation and makes the employees feel the sense of belonging to the company (Steiber 2014, p. 18). It is also supplemented by the internal innovation reviews meetings that are held on an occasional basis for brainstorming.  Employees have an opportunity of sending direct mails to any of the company’s leaders. This factor enables innovation as ideas are shared without necessarily meeting the top leadership of the company. The sending of mails enables scrutiny of the idea by the various teams and if it achievable, it is implemented. The twenty percent time allocation gives the employees time to research and better the ideas that they have (Scott 2008, p. 57).

Illustrates the communication of the employees to any of the leaders hence giving innovative ideas. B- Receiving feedback about the said idea and other recommendations about the same. C- ideas/ innovations discussed in the café being communicated to the technical team. D- Receiving feedback from them. E- Discussion of ideas during the weekly meetings. F- Feedback after insight. G- Ideas to engineers after research. H- Feedback on the idea. I- Researching the idea received via email before giving a feedback. J- Researching ideas generated during interactions in the café. K- Researching on ideas raised in the meeting.

A closed loop system is commanded automatically in a process that the operating design is confirmed by a feedback. The promoting innovation goal can be achieved by creation of avenues that enable the employees to be innovative in the company (Joseph 1995, p.97).

The closed loop above on innovation illustrates the inputs that are the factors that will enable innovative ideas to be conceived. The actuator fine tunes to get the necessary information that is required towards the innovation. The comparator determines the viability of the idea before the sensor determines if it can be implemented. It achieves this by considering the factors that are of importance before it can be implemented. The final decision is made when the idea looks productive to the company.  The system is designed to achieve the desired outcome by determining the relationship with the real condition (Sebastian 2013, p.39). This system minimizes the chances or errors. It is advantageous as the system is not prone to sensitivity that may be due to external factors.An organizational structure is a planned framework that that dictates how various activities that are undertaken by the company help it achieve its goals. The structure helps in defining the environment and the organizations objectives (Edward 2012, p. 6). The structure functions by defining the policies and the operating procedures and determines the necessary individuals that will participate in the decision making process. Efficiency- this role ensures that the output is maximized and time and energy are conserved. Harnessing experience aims at ensuring that the right people get to do the job. This gives room to very minimal error in the organization. Decision making is a crucial aspect in the structure of an organization. The structure defines who is entitled to give orders and the roles other persons are to perform. This role determines the survival of an organization in an industry.  Communication in the organization helps to pass the relevant information to different persons (Daniel 2008, p. 23). This will help in improving and achieving the objectives of the company. The span of control dictates the extent to which persons manage the organization. This helps one not to overdo and hurt other individuals in the organization.

Reasons for organizational failure

Increased hierarchy levels- this factor can facilitate failure of an organization. Many levels of hierarchy slow down the decision making process. This leads to delayed timeframe in achieving company goals (David 2007, p. 197). Poor communication can also hinder the progress of a company. It can lead to decreased morale in the working environment. This can happen when the language of communication becomes inappropriate hence leading to work breakdown. Poor communication also leads to loss of businesses and connections. If a client is wronged due to poor communication, he or she will not refer other potential clients to the organization. Lack of efficiency leads to lose of company resources. If persons tasked to achieve an objective within a determined timeframe and they fail to, resources will be lost to cover for the error (Robert 2000, p. 33).

Googles communication needs can be achieved if they utilize the emergent structure. This structure aims at incorporating all persons in the working environment. This structure enables the environment to be conducive to all innovative persons (Bartel 2014, p. 28). Their ideas can be supported and they will be helped to achieve it. This emergent structure aims at reducing the management levels to four levels. These levels function independently and are fed a feedback that is related to its specialization. This can be achieved by forming three research personnel groups. One will function to provide relevant information from the internal and external environment, the decision support team for decision making and the technical team that implement after researching (Ali 2014, p. 63). This can be justified from T205B under how the organizations cope with the increasing uncertainty. This can be achieved by creating a slack of resources. This factor however can lead to reduced innovation in google, decreased customer services and increased cost of operation. This can be caused by reducing the hierarchy’s information that they are supposed to handle or increasing the capacity to handle information in the hierarchy.  Sequential interdependence will also enable google to achieve it is communication target. The task based teams in emergent structure will also help in reducing the uncertainties.  Outsourcing also can function to manage the communication needs of google. Having experienced personnel will enable google to meet its needs. This process is efficient but can lead to people losing jobs as they will not be useful to the company (Fredric 2000, p. 79). Delegation of duties will enable people to work towards certain objectives hence achieving the company’s’ goals. Information technology will also help the communications team to achieve the set objectives.

Role of organizational culture in shaping organizational performance

Organizational culture is a defined way of life of people that have similar values, beliefs and assumptions in an organization. These culture dictates how members of an organization will carry themselves including how they will dress, handle their work and their actions in the workplace environment. The culture is based on characteristics that enable the organizations performance to be based on the culture (Joanne 2001, p. 7).

Innovation in an organization helps members to take the risk and perform. In organizations that innovation is not highly valued, employees work without morale and there is little or no invention to improve their performance. Attention to detail culture helps in ensuring that the employees perfect on the work that they are required to do. Good culture that values attention to detail enables their employees to do their work to accuracy.  Emphasis on the outcome enables a company’s performance to focus on meeting the customers’ needs. This helps in turn in changing with the latest technological advancements. Emphasis on people culture functions to ensure that their clients’ needs are met to precision (Jan 2009, p. 19). This in turn helps to refer the company to other potential customers.  

Teamwork enables good interaction of employees in the work place. Organizations that facilitate teamwork tend to perform better due to diversity of information. This factor enables extensive research that facilitates better product output. Aggressiveness in an organization enables an organization to outsmart their rivals

Organizational culture helps in creating a brand image. This enables the employees to have the distinct personality that is connected to their workplace. Employees have to achieve the organizations goals so as to elevate the performance of the company..

Openness in Google enables the company to achieve its innovative agenda as employees have the freedom to give their opinions towards achieving innovation. This is achieved when they hire persons that are passion oriented towards the job. Google also emphasizes on excellence, same as attention to detail enables the company have an enabling environment. The employees are tasked to produce products that are up to precision. The innovative culture at google is self-explanatory as they target people with potential over people with experience but cannot perform. Supporting smaller companies enables google to create that family support in their organization. This in turn motivates on the performance of the smaller companies and google too.  The leadership structure in google has provided for an enabling culture in the organization. The structure has enabled the employees to have the freedom to research and come up with new ideas without much supervision. Googles culture on TGIF, email and café have promoted innovation in the company and thus increased its output to the public.

Organizational learning is a systematic process in which an organization facilitates the creation of knowledge, holding it back to themselves then sharing it within the organization. This factor enables an organization to improve in its functions with time as it gains experience (Raanan 2014, p. 3). From the experience gained, the company is able to bring about its knowledge that improves the company’s functions. Knowledge can be created either as a group, organization, inter organization or on individual basis. The learning curve is used to determine the progress that an organization has taken in its learning. The curve illustrates how the company increases its output, authenticity, dependability and quality as time goes by. The components that enable learning in an organization include:

Systematic problem solving mechanism. This includes utilizing modern methods in determining the downfall and solving the issue accurately without guesswork. This enables an organization to have consistency in its learning (Stephen 2000, p. 6). This factor enables them to utilize the learned techniques in solving issues within the company. Experimentation functions to ensure that a company does its research extensively before implementing a certain ideology. This factor is driven by the opportunity seen in the market and need to expand the territories. Learning from past experience enables an organization to solve their underperforming culture. Learning from other people enables a company to grow. This enables the company to gain a better perception of the situation. This factor unearths the mechanisms that are utilized by others and thus enabling learning (Lois 2011, p. 23). Knowledge transfer within an organization facilitates learning within an organization. Shared ideas impact in organization positively compared to when held by few individuals.

Google has created a conducive learning environment through the existing structures, these structures include the café. It facilitates interaction between the employees and this leads to exchange of ideas. The weekly segment of TGIF facilitates interaction where employees give their ideas towards innovation. Emails between the Google staff also functions to facilitate learning from each other. Google also allocates time for its employees to engage in research. This time is useful as they are able to stumble upon useful information that can better the organization.

Principle of systems thinking, effectiveness in management for problem solving and decision making. Contrast with principles of strategic management (Jamshid 2011, p. 7).

Systems thinking is a branch of management concerned with apprehension of a components by determining the connection and association between them. Failure of the components is vivid if the company fails to be aggressive. This can be deduced to the slowness in embracing new components in the market due to rapid technological changes. Systems thinking differs from other mechanisms that are used to solve problems (Taghreed 2009, p. 27). It aims at giving a complete solution to a product whereas other techniques segment the problem before solving it. Systems thinking tries to incorporate the interaction between the various components before giving a solution.

Perspective is the ability to foresee the negative implication that will befall when undertaking a certain management decision. This facilitates the need of divergent opinions that will be catered for in systems thinking. Emergence is the product that has become that was not anticipated during the decision making process. This product can be used to provide value to their clients by addressing the challenges and patterns that were initially used.

Strategic management comprises of conceptualization and execution of objectives that have been decided by the top level management in place of the owners. These decisions are made in line with the current market demands taking into consideration the resources and the organizational surrounding (David 1999, p. 2). The principle of focus in strategic management ensures that the organizations important objectives are achieved on a daily basis. Leverage strength principle ensures that the company remains competitive in the market. The management has to discover the driving force that enables it achieve its sales and hence profit. Having understood the driving force, addition of innovation will enable the company move forward. This factor differs with systems thinking as they are not able to discover their strengths in time. Communication in strategic management is vital just as in systems thinking. Communication to the employees and giving them a forum to ask questions and give their comments helps them feel that they are part of the strategic policies being implemented. Strategic management principle on raising the energy level aims at ensuring that the employees remain motivated in the work place (Curtis 2004. P. 36). In systems thinking, motivation of the employees is not emphasized as seen in strategic management. Flexibility in strategic management helps to ensure that he organization is able to make drastic adjustments when need arises. In systems thinking, they also have the same provision of being dynamic in emergence situations. Investing in outside help works to ensure that the company has some external skilled labor that will facilitate the process. In most cases, the proprietors of the businesses have the opportunity to participate. In this forum, they challenge the proposed ideologies and seek clarification. This factor however differs with systems thinking as the proprietors have no chance of challenging the management on the decision that they make.

Reference list

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