Systematic thinking in your life
Your second assignment is to apply systemic thinking to your own professional life as a student. Please write a 500 word reflective essay answering the following questions and create your own model.
What you will submit:
Your second assignment is to apply systemic thinking to your own professional life as a student. Please write a 500 word reflective essay answering the following questions and create your own model.
1. What is the issue?
Think about the gap between how you are currently performing and how you want to perform. Performance can be defined in many ways. In our case study, performance was defined in terms of safely summiting Mount Everest. In the business world it can be defined by profit and loss, market share, team effectiveness, employee engagement. For this assignment we would like you to focus on a personal performance gap. Your performance gap could reflect a desire to get better grades, land an ideal internship, be a better roommate, exercise more, or any number of other things. Your model and description might answer a question and be future oriented (“How can I land the ideal internship?) or describe the past (“Why am I not getting the grades I desire?). To begin your essay, explain the performance gap you are addressing.
2. What are the key factors and how are they related?
In your reflective essay, describe the various factors (e.g. components of the system) that may be associated with this gap and how they are interconnected. In other words, what are the factors that hinder your performance of your ideal professional self? What is the relationship among these factors? While other components/factors (related to the environment) should be included, focus on the factors that you have control over and can change.
3. Draw a model on a separate sheet of paper describing the system.
This can be a series of boxes and arrows but does not need to be. Your model should consist of at least 6 components, and should show the complex components and connections of a complete system (ie, it should not be a flow chart or show a linear progression). Feel free to use the Internet for examples of different types of models.
4. Conclusion: What are you going to do about it?
Now that you have thought about the gap in performance and drawn a model of the entire system, where do you see a potential solution? How does this holistic view help you address and narrow your performance gap? (This should be the conclusion of your essay.)
Required formatting Grading Rubric (out of a possible 5 points)
12 point Times New Roman .25 exemplary work
Single spaced, double spaced between paragraphs 1 essay employs systems thinking to identify an issue
Genre conventions appropriate for a reflective essay and its contributing components
1 submitted a model that illustrates systems thinking
.5 suggested a solution based on the system presented
1.75 wrote a 500 word reflective essay .5 grammar and mechanics