Have you ever felt like you and others are working hard to change organizations and systems but in reality making little long-term difference?
In Systems Thinking for Social Change, noted author and consultant David Peter Stroh offers a clear solution: thinking systemically about what you want to accomplish enables you to achieve better results with fewer resources in more lasting ways.
Here s how systems thinking can help people achieve sustainable, breakthrough change:
Increases your awareness of how you might unwittingly be contributing to the very problems you want to solve.
Empowers you to identify where you can have the greatest impact on others, by first reflecting on and then shifting your own intentions, thinking, and actions.
Mobilizes diverse stakeholders to increase the effectiveness of the whole system over time instead of meeting immediate self-interests.
Helps you and others anticipate and avoid the unexpected negative consequences of well-intentioned solutions.
Identifies ways to best leverage limited resources for lasting, system-wide improvement.
Motivates and encourages continuous learning.
Stroh, cofounder and principal of Bridgeway Partners, walks readers through the successful methods he has used over the past thirty-five-plus years to help nonprofit, business, and public organizations solve complex and chronic problems from homelessness to issues plaguing public health, public education, affordable housing, criminal justice, and more.
The result is a highly readable, accessible, and effective guide to understanding systems and using that knowledge to get the results you want in support of what society needs."