This pre-recorded course of 1h 40 minutes plus exercises originally took a 6h day to work through.
VSM2 - Organisational diagnosis:
VSM2 can be taken together with VSM3, or separately. Together they provide learners with a working knowledge of the Viable System Model and the ability to use it for understanding, diagnosing and designing organisational systems covering:
- 2 approaches for diagnosing systems using VSM;
- Use of system archetypes;
If you don’t know how to design an organisation to deliver your strategy, or how structural change happens in organisations, how effective can you be in implementing your strategy? For senior managers and aspiring senior managers, the organisation is the principal tool at their disposal. So, understanding how organisations function as systems is a critically important skill. This courses will provide students with practical skills in using VSM to diagnose organisational issues.
Structure has a huge impact on how well organisations perform, how efficient they are, how well they can fulfil their purpose, how well they can formulate and carry out strategy. These days, organisation is a much more complex problem for business than it was a generation ago and we need new models to deal with the increase in complexity and rate of change in the business environment. That demands greater agility from organisations, and better performance management to know what’s working, and what’s not.
The Viable System Model (VSM) provides a normative model which can be used for diagnosis (how well does a current organisation reflect the VSM characteristics?) and also for design (how should we best structure an organisation so that it does the work it needs to and reflects the VSM characteristics?)
Objectives
- Learn two approaches to diagnose organisations with VSM
- Understand the power of archetypes to link surface symptoms to the underlying systemic structure which creates them
- Practice identifying archetypes in different organisations, and explore solutions to them
- Understand how VSM provides a way to pattern-match, linking from structure / system to symptom and vice versa
- Practice identifying strength / weakness / absence of VSM characteristics, and explore solutions to them
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Patrick Hoverstadt, author of ‘Fractal Organization’ ,which is a standard text on VSM.
Patrick is a leading consultant and internationally recognised expert in systemic approaches to organisation design, strategy, and transformation, with over 30 years of experience. Founder of Fractal Ltd, he has worked across private, public, and third sectors—delivering complex organisation restructures, national-level diagnoses, and innovative strategic models. He is co-developer of the “Patterns of Strategy” methodology and a specialist in the Viable System Model. Patrick has advised major firms such as BAE Systems, Siemens, and Rolls Royce, as well as government bodies and global NGOs. A prolific thought leader, author, and educator, he has contributed to postgraduate programmes at ten universities worldwide and served as Chair of SCiO, the UK’s largest systems practitioner community.
This material is Copyright and should not be used without discussions with the trainer.