Systems: Tools And Techniques

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Buckminster Fuller, an American architect, used to say that the best way to teach people a new idea was to provide them with a tool which would lead them to discover the idea you wished them to learn, but through their own efforts. [13]   Project management uses the Critical Path Method to model dependencies between different parts of a construction programme dynamically over time, but a systems approach extends this technique from programmes to management systems using tools such as Causal Loop Diagrams and System Dynamics software - for examples of these tools and techniques refer to the diagram opposite this page and page 23.

Frank Duffy, another architect who explains his ideas in term of systems, lists the key assets of a business enterprise as ‘people, process and place’, to which might be added the constraints ‘planet and pounds’.  This perspective makes it easier to see the equations that govern property and business performance and to identify the determinants can be controlled. Thinking in network patterns not only illuminates the complex web of relationships that influence the behaviour of a system but also demonstrates factors which are malleable and can be changed, and tracks the consequences of any changes in the system through cycles of development. [14]

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