The Leader as Systems Designer

See Your Organization as a System—and Lead It More Effectively

Welcome to The Leader as Systems Designer.

This course will help you use systems thinking, strategic thinking, and organizational design to become a smarter and more informed leader—whether you lead an entire organization, manage a team, or contribute as an informal leader.

The course is organized around the Transformation Model, a practical framework that reduces the complexity of an organization to seven essential elements. You’ll learn to assess these elements, understand their interdependencies, and align them to improve organizational performance.

The model will help you step back from day-to-day operations and see your business, team, or organization from a holistic, systems perspective. You’ll gain a clearer understanding of how your organization actually works, what contributes to its success, and what may be getting in the way.

In short, you’ll learn to think like a CEO.

Two Premises of the Course

1. All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get.

The results your organization produces are not accidental. They emerge from how the organization has been designed—not simply its structure or reporting relationships, but the interaction of all seven elements of the Transformation Model.

When results are disappointing, leaders often respond to the most visible problem. Systems thinking helps you look beneath the symptoms, identify underlying causes, and recognize where alignment or design needs to change.

2. The most important work of leaders is “on” systems, not only “in” systems.

Working in a system means managing the daily flow of activities, responding to urgent problems, and getting the work done. These responsibilities matter, but they are not where leaders make their greatest contribution.

Working on the system means stepping back to see patterns, relationships, and interdependencies. It means diagnosing problems from a broader perspective and identifying changes that can strengthen the entire organization.

The Transformation Model gives you a framework for doing this. It will help you ask better questions, make more informed decisions, and identify practical opportunities to improve your organization.

What You’ll Learn

By completing this course, you will be able to:

• Apply systems thinking to understand how your organization works.

• Assess the seven elements of the Transformation Model.

• Identify organizational strengths, misalignment, and underlying problems.

• Find high-leverage opportunities to improve organizational performance.

• Recognize how different parts of your organization affect one another.

• Diagnose underlying causes rather than simply react to symptoms.

• Spend more time working on the system and less time firefighting.

• Develop concrete ideas for building a stronger, more effective organization.

How the Course Is Organized

This is a focused, practical course. I avoid unnecessary theory and move quickly into concepts and tools you can apply to your organization.

Section One: Understanding the Transformation Model

I’ll introduce the course, explain the principles of systems thinking, and show you how to use the Transformation Model. You’ll also receive tools and resources to help you apply what you are learning.

Section Two: Assessing Your Organization

This is where you roll up your sleeves. You’ll conduct a comprehensive, high-level assessment of your organization using the seven elements of the Transformation Model. Rather than simply learning about the model, you’ll apply it directly to your own organization, business, or team.

Section Three: Identifying Opportunities for Improvement

You’ll step back and examine what you learned from your assessment. I’ll guide you through a process for identifying organizational strengths and weaknesses, areas of alignment and misalignment, and the leverage points that offer the greatest opportunities for improvement.

Who This Course Is For

This course is designed for:

• Executives and senior leaders

• Business owners and entrepreneurs

• Managers and team leaders

• Organizational development and human resources professionals

• Consultants, facilitators, and change leaders

• Informal leaders who want to understand their organization more deeply

• Anyone who wants to develop a more strategic, systems-oriented approach to leadership

No previous knowledge of systems thinking or organizational design is required.

About Your Instructor

I have a dual background in psychology and organizational behavior. I co-founded two consulting and training companies—the Human Development Institute and the Center for Organizational Design—and have spent more than 35 years helping organizations strengthen performance through leadership, team development, and organizational design.

The Transformation Model is one of the principal frameworks I have used throughout my career. I have introduced it to thousands of leaders and employees across dozens of organizations, helping them assess how their organizations operate and identify practical opportunities for improvement.

Since 2000, a business partner and I have also certified more than 1,500 trainers and consultants around the world to use our organizational development programs, including the Transformation Model.