• Notion #1:  The Connectedness of Events, Patterns, Structure, Mental Models    Organizational performance can be seen at the level of EVENTS -- those day-to-day or even year-to-year happenings -- successes, failures, conflicts, disappointments . . .. 

Seen from a wider or perhaps longer perspective, these EVENTS often form PATTERNS -- things that keep happening.

PATTERNS result from STRUCTURE -- things that give the organization its form:  policies, practices, processes, reward systems, measurement schemes .  .  ..  More that this is the built-in structures in each of us:  our ambitions, worries, habits, thought patterns .  .  .. 

But these STRUCTURES don't come out of the air.  They are the product of MENTAL MODELS -- the way we make sense out of how things work.  Like water is to fish, MENTAL MODELS are so ubiquitous as to be invisible.  MENTAL MODELS produce selective perception, thus acting as an information filter.

• Notion #2:  Organizations behave the way they do because they are built that way (however unintentionally) -- just as a roller coaster rides the same every time (even if we put new people in the lead seats or, for that matter, in every seat) .  With the roller coaster, it’s easy to see that it behaves the way it does because it was built that way (given its structure of rails, scaffolding, hills and turns).  The often-complex underlying dynamics that produce organizational behavior are not so easy to see, but unless they can be brought into view, intractable, persistent situations will likely continue.

•   Notion(s) #3:  It's no one's fault and everyone's responsibility
  • It’s no one’s fault that a system’s dynamic works as it does 
  • Everyone is acting to keep the system behaving as it does
  •  It’s everyone’s responsibility to examine how they are doing that and what they will do differently to change the system’s performance in the desired direction.