Systems Thinking Sheffield

Wed Nov 24th is the first meeting of the new group Systems Thinking Sheffield[1]. Here's a bit of intro before the details.

Systems Thinking is a way of looking at organisations as cohesive units with a goal. It lets you ask questions such as "do the departments in our company work together, or do they fight?", "do we reward the behaviour we actually want, or something else?", "how do we learn and adapt as a group to be more effective?". Alternatively, a much better explanation is a short and very entertaining video someone linked to me recently of Russell Ackoff[2] called "Beyond Continuous Improvement".

Systems Thinking encompasses a whole range of subjects, including Theory of Constraints, Lean, Action Science, Cybernetics and and many areas studying the behaviour of people in organisations. It's gaining a lot of interest in software lately, but it has been successfully applied in many diverse situations.

Enough blurb - our first meeting[3] is in two weeks, and runs from 6.30pm-8.30pm at the GIST Lab in Sheffield. As it's the first meeting, this is mainly to get to meet each other, find out everyone's interests, and plan future content. So it's a great time to get involved :)

If you're coming, please sign up on the Eventbrite page[4] so we have an idea of numbers. (You don't *have* to, but it helps us plan.)

Many thanks to the GIST Foundation[5] for providing the venue and for helping kickstart the group.

See some of you there :-)

Cheers
Ash

[1] http://www.systhinksheff.org.uk/
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DOqEeIG8aPPk
[3] http://www.systhinksheff.org.uk/meetings/systhinksheff-0/
[4] http://gistsysthink0.eventbrite.com/
[5] http://thegisthub.net/about/

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