Through our discussion of value chains and interdependencies we’ve reached a good place to highlight an important distinction between ways of looking at and thinking about business. These ways are not mutually exclusive – indeed, it is strongly advised that to be commercially aware, managers should be adept at many different methods of analysis. To introduce the two broad approaches for contrast:
Within your organisation or industry you may be a skilled professional – someone experienced in a particular field or line of work. Your substantive role may be to apply specialist expertise for the benefit of the organisation and its clients or customers. There will be things which you can do much better than your colleagues – qualities that you are called on to display and make use of. In that respect we are, each of us, ‘experts’ – and to fulfil our specific roles it is inevitable that we often adopt a reductionist attitude to our own business.
If you continuously and exclusively think in whole-system terms you may not get the low-level, well-defined portion of your workload completed. However, whilst your expertise may be vital to fulfilling your role – the very reason you are employed as you are – it is only part of the story when it comes to being commercially aware. Full commercial awareness requires far more systems thinking than you may have realised when training or studying for the profession you now find yourself in.
Allow 5 minutes
To extend your understanding of this section of the course, you may wish to view an introductory video on systems thinking such as Video 2. Towards the end of the video is an example of how a systems approach might be adopted in car design.
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The final two sections of this course are made up of two activities. Both activities should reinforce the notion of the organisation as a complex system.
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