Systemsthinking for every day use - a tale of web site traffic
I read in several places that systems thinkers tend to keep their work to themselves, and that stories work best to get more people to do it.
So, here is a story with a diagram of effects - want more traffic? .
Context: Last week, Marc Evers and I were working on a quote for a community website, based on a request for proposal we got. We made the diagram to clarify our interpretations about the clients ‘business’ - a not for profit foundation supporting a community of practice.
I’m involved in a number of websites, e.g. to support my business, conferences and as of recently wyrd web - a budding company to support more of that. The diagram helped me understand this client, and some of my other contexts involving a community and its’ website(s) - e.g. systems administrators don’t always see why uptime and responsiveness provides business value to a community of practice (which if done well supports a thriving eco-system).
We decided to send the diagram to the client, and then I posted it. The diagram itself is isomorphic with part of its message: quality content drives traffic, which in turn drives quality content. The post attracted a nice comment, which helps me to write more about this topic 
.
We’ll see in the coming weeks whether this diagram helped the clients’ contact person in sharing our understanding of an effective website’s value with the not-for profit’s board.
Tags: business_value, community, conference, people, sensemaking, systems-thinking