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Thinking in systems

A business is a systemA business is easier to read when you stop listing its tasks and start watching what builds up, what moves, and how long things take to move. This part introduces five plain ideas from systems thinking: stocks (what accumulates), flows (the rates that fill or drain them), delay (the gap between a cause and what you see), feedback loops (results that circle back and change what happens next) and cadence (the rhythm at which recurring work happens).Seeing what holds you backMost of what slows a business down is not visible on a normal day. Work waits between steps.Systems dynamics applied to businessA business changes through a few patterns: things that feed on themselves, things that push back, waits that make both overshoot, and limits that stop growth. This part applies stocks, flows, delay and feedback to two small businesses: referrals and the morning rush at a bakery, and rework, steel lead time and a bottleneck at a fabrication shop.

Working with the map

Two clocks: work and waitingEvery job in your business runs on two clocks: the hours someone works on it, and the time it takes from start to finish. The gap between them is waiting, and waiting is what customers feel and task lists hide.Ceremonies: what the rhythm costsA ceremony is a gathering that comes back on a rhythm: the morning huddle, the Wednesday order review, the month-end look at the numbers, the yearly planning day. Each one is small on the day it happens and large over a year, because the rhythm accumulates.ChunkingA chunk is a group of things you treat as one thing, so you can think about the group instead of every piece. Chess players, climbers and everyone planning a week do it all the time.Discipline and disciplined processA process written on a wall is a hope. A process that is repeated, on a rhythm, by the same people, in roughly the same way, is something you can look at, discuss and change.Adding up: cost, working hours and elapsed timeWhen you map a process you end up with figures on many blocks: hours of work, costs, durations, waits. It is natural to add them all up, but they do not all add the same way.

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Common questions during testing: signing up, saving, your data and when something looks wrong.

  • Troubleshooting

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Access is by invitation during testing. Join the waitlist from the home page; when you are approved you will receive an invitation email. Open the link in that email to create your account.

Links can expire or be used once. Sign in if you already created an account. Otherwise email us from the address the invitation was sent to and we will send a new one.

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Use the same email you were invited with. Use “Forgot password” on the sign-in form if needed, and reload the page. If it still fails, contact support.

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Changes save automatically as you edit. The bar above the canvas shows “Saving…”, then “Saved” with the time. “Save failed — will retry on next change” means your last change did not reach the server: make another small change, or reload and check. If you are told that parent canvases are still updating when you leave, choose Wait. This is a testing service, so keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose.

Illustration to come

Screenshot of the bar above the canvas showing “Saved at 14:02”, and a second one showing “Save failed — will retry on next change”.

A figure is marked out of date.

Figures are calculated when you Parse, not as you type. After you change a block, a small dot on cards and the words “out of date” or “Stale” in the panels say the results no longer match the canvas. Use Parse (the button beside Update above the canvas) to save and recalculate this canvas and the canvases linked below it. Update applies saved data from linked canvases without recalculating.

A total says “counted as 0”.

A blank Duration or Delay, and several missing cost inputs, count as zero in a total, and the result lists what was counted that way. Read such a total as “at least what has been entered”. A value that is invalid or cannot be combined with the others leaves the result unknown instead.

The canvas does not open on my phone or tablet.

Editing needs a window at least 1024 pixels wide. On a narrower screen you will see “Full authoring requires a desktop viewport” and a link back to your canvases. There is no read-only phone view yet; open the canvas on a laptop or desktop.

How do I delete a canvas?

There is no delete control in the app yet. Leaving a canvas, zooming out or going back to its parent never deletes it, even if it is empty. If you want a canvas removed, contact support and name it; deletion is permanent and includes its child canvases.

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Canvases are tied to your account. See the Privacy Policy and Confidentiality pages for details.

Can I delete my account or data?

Yes. Contact support and we will delete your account and canvases. The Privacy Policy lists your rights under Quebec’s Law 25.

Something looks wrong or broken.

Reload first. If it persists, tell us what you were doing, what you expected and what happened, plus your browser. A screenshot of your own canvas helps; do not include passwords.

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