Systems Thinking Report: Analyzing Bank's Customer Loss Problem

This report applies systems thinking to address customer loss at XYZ Bank. The author analyzes the problem by viewing it as a system, proposing an incentive plan for employees to boost customer retention. The report highlights the importance of leadership and aligning performance management with remuneration frameworks. A rich picture tool is used to visualize the situation, demonstrating how the incentive plan can increase customer numbers. The report emphasizes the value of systems thinking in expanding choices and informing decisions within the organization. It also references relevant literature on systems thinking, performance motivation, and sustainable business models.

Running head: SYSTEMS THINKING
SYSTEMS THINKING
Name of the Student
Name of the Organization
Author Note

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Part A
Currently working in XYZ bank in the home country, it has been seen that the bank has
been struggling with significant loss of customers to the competitors. There is an immediate need
for overcoming the problem. System thinking is referred to as an approach for solving several
kinds of problems associated with the organization by clearly viewing the problems as different
parts of the system in overall (Arnold & Wade, 2015). The bank has thought of introducing an
incentive system for all the employees so that the bank will be able to bring in new customers.
Having this objective in mind, this incentive plan represents a step which is very much
significant and towards the right direction. It is considered to be an effective way of performance
motivation (Beuren, Ferreira & Miguel, 2013). All the workers after receiving incentives will be
able to operate more as partners of business and will be also responsible for tying reward
personally to the financial success of the bank. Monetary incentives are considered to be very
much motivating and is responsible for rewarding the performance as well as the productivity of
the employees through money. These incentives comprises of the all the sharing plans for profit,
paid time off, life insurance or bonuses. Therefore an incentive program is considered to be as a
formal scheme which is used for promoting or rather encouraging specific behavior by a specific
group of people during a period of time which is defined and is responsible for increasing the
efficiency and the productivity of the bank. It is to be recognized that any changes made to the
payment arrangements will be not effective if they are not seen to be coupled with the changes
which are accompanied to the wider system of organization. Another way can be calling out the
central role of leadership. A leadership which is effective is considered to be as a key where the
culture is driven by the leaders. With the help of financial incentives employees are very much
motivated. The management of performance, remuneration and frameworks which are cultural

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are considered to be most effective when they are aligned (Bocken et al., 2014). Any
misalignment may lead to confusion if the results or the outcomes are not consistent with that of
the true intentions of the organization. Therefore these recommendations can be considered as
holistic and not just directed simply to the remuneration in isolation. The rich picture tool has
been utilized for describing the situation where the issue is lying. A rich picture is a path of
exploring, acknowledging and defining a particular situation and expressing it through diagrams
for creating a mental model. The rich picture clearly describes how the incentive plan has helped
in increasing the number of customers in the bank. The picture provides an open discussion and
understanding of the situation.
Systems thinking is responsible for expanding the range of all the choices which are
available for solving any specific problem within any organization (Young & Leveson, 2013).
This is done by widening the thoughts of the people which will help in articulating those
problems in different ways. Systems thinking therefore allows people for making choices which
are informed and it is also valuable for telling and describing stories which describes the working
of the system. The tools used for systems thinking are nothing but vehicles which are effective
which helps in describing, identifying and communicating the understanding of the systems
particularly in specific groups.

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Rich Picture
References
Arnold, R. D., & Wade, J. P. (2015). A definition of systems thinking: a systems
approach. Procedia Computer Science, 44, 669-678.
Beuren, F. H., Ferreira, M. G. G., & Miguel, P. A. C. (2013). Product-service systems: a
literature review on integrated products and services. Journal of cleaner production, 47,
222-231.
Bocken, N. M., Short, S. W., Rana, P., & Evans, S. (2014). A literature and practice review to
develop sustainable business model archetypes. Journal of cleaner production, 65, 42-56.

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Young, W., & Leveson, N. (2013, December). Systems thinking for safety and security.
In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (pp. 1-8).
ACM.