Systemic Perspective/Patterns of Behavior

This video provides insights into the development of the patterns of behavior, or behavior over time graphs associated with a situation.

While a situation may appear to be an event it is actually the result of a behavior over time that has finally developed to a point where it has gotten your attention. If you turn on the water in the bathtub, go away, and then return after 10 minutes, the full bathtub might appear as an event. This is simply a perception because you were not paying attention to all that transpired between the empty and the full bathtub.

What needs to be described is the way that relevant aspects of the situation have changed over a relevant time frame.

A relevant time frame is a period where changes have occured which are pertinent to the situation. If you're considering the trash in your town landfill a relevant time frame might be the last 20 years ,though probalby not the last 400 years or the last two weeks.

If you can capture data and plot real data it will provide a solid reference to work from.

If the best you can do is a free hand approximation, then draw one as it can be quite useful.

Approaching a goal - where something moves in a direction rapidly at first and then slow down as the goal is approached.

S-Shaped Growth - where something grows initially exponentially and then begins to look like it's approaching a goal.

Oscillations - where something seems to move in one direction and then another, over and over.

Magic Connections has been demonstrating exponential growth over the past two years and now has around 8,000 customers.

The organization has continued to grow and Support has been growing even faster than the rest of he organization, simply because Customers accumulate. As a result the organization is continually trying to find good resources to hire. Though where is the best place for the rest of the organization to find resources that know the company's products and the customers? Support of course. So the rest of the organization continues to hire resources from support making it difficult for support to maintain the staff needed to support customers.

References

Behavior over Time Graphs A short article from The Systems Thinker by Pegasus Communications
Everyday Behavior Over Time Graphs A short article from The Creative Learning Exchange
Getting Started with Behavior Over Time Graphs A paper from the Creative Learning Exchange.
Magic Connections Growth Model in Insight Maker

Additional Resources
Systems Thinking World Discussions
Systems Thinking World Q&A * Gene Bellinger