Systems Thinking for Business Quotes

“We must constantly be on guard for assumptions of simple causality, constructing narrative fallacies, making inference errors, and so on.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“The all-seeing eye reminds us, as system analysts, that we must consider our own limitations. The System 1/System 2 related judgment and decision biases”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“The Theoretician has a tendency to focus on the what, while the Practitioner keeps their eye on the so what. With all these taken together, the Theoretician is fragile, and the Practitioner is antifragile.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“Theoretician and Practitioner. The Theoretician focuses on the T perspective. The Practitioner uses the multiple perspectives of TOP.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“As risk events become more uncertain, that is, risks of Black Swans, the likelihood and to some extent impacts become nebulous. To deal with these risks, look for ways to make the system more robust or, if possible, antifragile.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“In Melanie Mitchell's excellent text on complexity science, Complexity: A Guided Tour (2009), she devotes Chapter 7 to Defining and Measuring Complexity.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“proper use and avoidance of pitfalls of models is crucial.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“there are excellent tools for network topology analysis. Gephi is one such tool, and their short YouTube video titled Introducing Gephi 0.7 gives a nice overview of the capabilities of this class of tool.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“One telephone has essentially zero value, but when most of your friends also have a phone, then there is great value in the device. The networking effect is prevalent in many, many business situations. As Facebook gained in popularity, new users were more likely to choose it because that's where their friends tended to be. This creates a particularly powerful reinforcing feedback loop. With the value increasing, according to Metcalfe, as square of the number using it, the probability of the next person choosing it increases as the square.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“Consider the case of two competing smartphone applications such as a chat application. As more of your friends gravitate to one option versus the other, the relative value changes dramatically”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“The idea of antifragility, for which evolution is the most important example, gives us tremendous guidance: o   Seek out low-cost options in your business and look for convex payouts. o   Embrace trial and error processes, and foster entrepreneurship. o   Embrace randomness, and be aware that attempts to mask or limit its effects may seem to work in the short run but could have big consequences in the future. o   Value diversity; it is important in evolutionary processes. Finally, we reviewed unpredictable changes in systems. Don't be lulled into complacency. Grove's "Only the paranoid survive" are words to live by.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“if your business ecosystem seems stable, don't be lulled into a potentially false sense of security. Big changes can happen very quickly. Don't confuse low volatility with low risk. Andy Grove, former Intel CEO, was fond of saying "Only the paranoid survive." These are wise words. Models used in business often do very well in periods of stability, but fail miserably in times of sudden changes. They work well when you don't need them and fail when you need them the most.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“There Is Value in Trial and Error—Sponsor trial and error in your organization—viva la entrepreneur. Take the example of Google. Google allows employees to use a percentage of their work time on projects of their choice.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“Evolution is antifragile! While individuals in the population are fragile, the population as a whole is antifragile.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“By its morphology, an antifragile object should be the opposite of a fragile object. So, something that is antifragile should gain, or get better in some way, from variations.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“Fragility is defined as a susceptibility to variation.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“The GA teaches business: o   The Power of Trial and Error—The GA has no objectives when it performs the crossover and mutation steps.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“The discussion on antifragility goes on to study some important characteristics of evolutionary systems.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“Google has studied this with their prediction markets and found evidence for better information flow for employees who were physically closer together (Cowgill et al., 2009).”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“sharing of information has increased the efficacy of the organization.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“Prospect theory could be valuable in situations of bargaining and negotiation. For example, when one party makes a concession, their utility impact is higher than the other party who had a gain. Prospect theory also supports the framing bias. Here, framing an outcome in terms of avoiding a loss is more compelling than receiving a gain.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“System 1 has a What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI) bias, which only considers factors that are readily apparent at the time.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“The psychological bias here is called competition neglect, and was initially identified by Camerer and Lovallo (1999). The bias is quite simply when people do not consider that the results from their decision depends on how others will act.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“Some of the world's best poker players use random choice to determine when to bluff.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“It was the dominance of the choice to rat out the other that drove the group to a deficient outcome. The individuals were rational, but the group was irrational!”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“Just because an individual ant seems to wander around aimlessly, doesn't mean a colony of ants will behave this way. This is sometimes known as the fallacy of composition.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“In his excellent book Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams (1997), Mitchel Resnick outlines a list of five heuristics associated with the aggregation of interactions: o   Positive feedback isn’t always negative. o   Randomness can help create order. o   A flock isn’t a big bird. o   A traffic jam isn’t just a collection of cars. o   The hills are alive (i.e., don't forget the environment).”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“Page lists four types of relevant diversity: o   Diversity in perspectives: ways of representing. o Diversity in interpretations: categorizing. o   Diversity in heuristics: problem solving. o   Diversity in models: inferring effects. These are all diversities in problem-solving methods.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight

“if you have chosen the most prominent expert to work on a problem, the performance of a diverse group containing that expert will outperform that expert on his own.”
― Rich Jolly, Systems Thinking for Business: Capitalize on Structures Hidden in Plain Sight