Systems Thinking For Business Resilience
 

Expose Hidden Dependencies, Break Destructive Feedback Loops, and Stress-Test Your Organization
What you'll learn
Analyze how hidden deep-tier supply chain dependencies create single points of failure using Toyota's 2011 earthquake response.
Evaluate how functional dependencies between organizational systems cross assumed boundaries using the Colonial Pipeline case.
Explain how reinforcing feedback loops amplify supply chain disruptions and apply three levers to dampen the Bullwhip Effect.
Apply the Mental Model Audit, Pre-Mortem, and Feedback Simulation to identify hidden dependencies and destructive feedback loops.
Requirements
No prerequisites required.
Description
Disclaimer: This course contains the use of artificial intelligence. What does that mean? We used AI tools during post-production and course development to clean up audio levels, help with editing, and support research. The instruction, examples, and subject matter expertise come directly from the instructor.
About the Course
Every organization plans for disruption. Most of those plans fail because they're built on a flawed assumption: that problems move in straight lines.
They don't. Supply chains break at points nobody mapped. Boundaries drawn on org charts stop matching how systems actually work. Small disruptions amplify into crises through feedback loops that leaders never saw coming.
This course gives you a different way to see your organization. Not through the usual risk matrix or business continuity checklist, but through the Systems Lens: four principles (Interconnection, Feedback Loops, Emergence, and Boundaries) that reveal how disruptions actually move through complex systems.
What You'll Learn
• How to distinguish between linear thinking and systems thinking, and why the difference matters when disruptions hit
• How to identify hidden convergence points in your supply chain before they become single points of failure
• Why the boundaries you draw between organizational systems are artificial constructs, and how to design systems that fail safely when those boundaries break
• How reinforcing feedback loops amplify supply chain disruptions, and three practical levers (inventory segmentation, demand transparency, and supplier partnership) to dampen them
• Three diagnostic tools you can apply immediately to stress-test your organization's resilience assumptions
Who this course is for
This course is designed for professionals in crisis and emergency management, including government officials and policy-makers in disaster management, NGO workers involved in humanitarian crisis response, and academic researchers and students in related fields.