PM Insight Fremont - Systems Thinking for Organizations
PM Insight-Fremont:
Systems Thinking for Organizations
Most companies have formal org charts, program governance, incentive plans, and various other
organizational “systems” that all influence an individual employee’s priorities and direct their
efforts. Ideally, these systems provide a unified a message that aligns with overall corporate goals.
More commonly, however, each of these systems pulls in a different direction, leaving employees
caught in the middle. Such misalignments generally trace back to well-intentioned attempts
to optimize a particular system without taking interactions with the other systems into
consideration. The resulting, opposing forces erode efficiency and deflate morale. Despite their persistent drain on the organization, these misalignments can be difficult to identify and correct before dramatic changes are required. Leveraging concepts from your SMEs’ fields to visualize how these systems work individually and together can provide a new lens that brings the issues into focus. Systems
Thinking provides a framework for realignments and lays a foundation for the ongoing adjustments required to stay aligned as the company evolves and markets change. This talk takes attendees through a series of examples and exercises to inspire new visualizations, introduce
Systems Thinking, and start them down the path of building iterative systems that will evolve together. Realigning and reorienting to consistently support high-level business goals will reduce the tension felt by employees, recapturing lost efficiencies and rebuilding morale.
Takeaways:
-
- Abstracted visualizations can be a powerful tool in addressing complex human interactions
- Systems Thinking offers a lens for balancing detail with context
- Ways of Working optimizations should always be done with the bigger picture in mind
- Small adjustments made on a regular basis can be used to avoid painful, sweeping changes
- Aligned systems mean lower organizational friction ->higher efficiency and engagement
Register today!
About the Instructor:
Belle Walker
Belle Walker is the Founder and Lead Consultant of Belleview Consulting. As the only Organizational Efficiency Engineer she knows, Walker takes organizations from friction to focus by ensuring that a company’s structures and processes are aligned with each other and with overall company priorities. She has brought her expertise to tech companies, nonprofits, and more to recapture lost efficiency and reengage teams.
Until April 2019, Walker was a Director of Engineering at HERE Technologies, an industry leader in digital mapping. There, she built several successful teams, including one responsible for content and process quality, process efficiency, and operational excellence for the HD Live Map product. Merging project managers, data scientists, software engineers, systems engineers, and more, offered amply opportunity for Walker
to hone and refine her organizational design and leadership skills.
Walker began her career at Google, where she built a nation-wide aerial photography operation and supported the Street View vehicle roll-out. After Google, Belle earned a master’s degree at USC, studying the application of systems engineering and operations research to organizations. Her work demonstrated that the principles can apply equally well to systems of humans as to systems of steel or code. Belle then led Product Management for a digital marketing company based in Irvine before moving back to the Bay Area for her role at HERE. In between these positions, she launched Belleview Consulting in 2012, turning her full attention to the company in late 2019.
She holds a master’s degree from the University of Southern California in Systems Architecting and Engineering and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in Mechanical Engineering.
Meeting Leader: Krishna Gundlapalli
Online Registration
PMI Silicon Valley Members: $5
Non-Members: $5
Veterans: Free (online only; contact Meeting Leader for the discount code. Please bring an appropriate ID card to the event).
Cancellation Policy
This event is a professional society meeting, held for the benefit of its members. The Plan Ahead registration fee paid is based on the registrant's ability to commit to attendance, ahead of time. The Plan Ahead registration fee will not be refunded for any reason, other than event cancellation, after normal business hours (5:00 PM, Pacific) on the registration deadline day. The PMI - Silicon Valley Chapter reserves the right to make last-minute changes to program content and speakers, as circumstances dictate.
Event Properties
| Event Date | 08-05-2020 6:00 pm |
| Event End Date | 08-05-2020 8:00 pm |
| Cut off date | 08-05-2020 11:55 pm |
| Individual Price | $5.00 |
| Location | Virtual Event |