Kent Myers (myersk@us.net) writes:
> While I concede that key thinking is useful in support of design, I'll
> still claim that it is not systems thinking, and that if it is used in
> place of strategy on strategic problems, that it is the opposite of
> systems thinking. Systems thinking is required to put key thinking in its
> place, in fact to give it a place.
Perhaps it's just my imagination, but this entire thread seems to be
drawing a dividing line between the "systems thinking" and "core
competencies/success factors" camps, for the purpose of saying that one is
more significant than the other.
It seems to me that knowledge (in any domain) exists along a number of
dimensions, one of which is a tactical/strategic dimension. Southwest has
its tactical knowledge--core competencies, if you like--in a wide variety
of functional areas (e.g., managing its spare parts inventories), and as
you go up the organizational food chain, its knowledge becomes more and
more strategically oriented, emphasizing "systems thinking."
Southwest is successful probably because they've done a masterful job of
keeping their alignment between their tactical core competencies and their
strategic vision. Sure, systems thinking is necessary to "give everything
a place"--but that tactical knowledge is what you're putting in place.
Success requires both strategy, and the tactics to execute the strategy.
Jeff
-- Jeff Kenyon (jkenyon@uswest.com), Member of Technical Staff Knowledge Base Engineering, EAC, U S WEST Communications http://net.indra.com/~jkenyon/index.htmlLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>