Organic to Go: Part 1

This is an individual assignment. Be brief in your answer. Submit a pdf document. Upload document
using Assignment 1 upload link on LMS. Do Not email your submissions.
About two-and-a-half years ago, an organic food retailer opened a new line of business – Organic to
Go (OTG) – that offered takeout health-food meals. Customers call or book orders over Internet from
a menu of snacks, salads, soups, sandwiches, and entrees, and then pick up their orders at a designated
time. Customers also walk in and order at the counter. Although there is a small eat-in area, most
customers order takeout.
OTG has grown vigorously, attracting lots of young employees. The entire staff has been amazed at the
volume of customers that responded to the new concept. Everything about OTG has grown – volume,
customers, locations, staff, and menu. The owners are young, with a big vision, and they gladly make
room for employees to rise into management ranks. Because they have opened new locations all over
the city, employees have had many opportunities to learn about the business and to develop new skills.
Just in the last year, eight new sites were opened, including two in outlying suburban areas.
In the past few months, OTG’s top managers have noticed some hesitation in the business performance.
The number of customers seems to be levelling off. Revenues are no longer booming. When site
managers are consulted, they report some increase in a variety of problems – botched filling of orders,
sloppy restocking, equipment and facility maintenance problems, and employee absenteeism. There’s
no clear trend, and different locations are struggling with different kinds of problems.

Discussion Points
1. Plot the troubling trends for OTG? Which one problem among these would you choose to focus on,
if you think correcting this one would rectify others. Offer a justification based on your
understanding of counter-intuitive behavior of social systems.
2. Why is the problem systemic?

3. What are the parts (Purpose, Element, State, Flow, Feedback Loop) in this system?

Organic to Go: Part 2

Once OTG was established and successful in its first location, its managers allowed themselves to dream
about the future. They knew they were onto a “hot” idea. They visualize how, as they opened new
locations, copying the successful model created in the original “mother store” would help them increase
their base. As growing sales volume brought in more revenue, funds would become available for
investment in more locations. OTG could be another Starbucks – Bicoastal, may be even international!
However, the story doesn’t stop there. If we draw the “the Bigger Picture” we can see how problems
began to arise at OTG. As the number of locations increased, the number of new employees increased.
Fewer of these employees had previously worked the original “mother store”. That meant that an
increasing number of new employees didn’t know the policies, operating procedures, and behavior,
expectations that had made the original business such a big hit with customers. As they tried to fit in to
the job, the new employees put an increasing load on their managers. Sometimes the newer employees
got frustrated and upset, and came late, left early, or took a day off without notifying their managers.

Organic To Go: The Big Picture

In addition, occasional problems with late or incomplete orders and with messy serving and eating areas
turned off some customers, who either came less often or stopped coming in at all. Some of these
customers complained to their friends, so OTG stopped attracting as much new business as it had before.

Discussion Points
4. Use the Figure above showing the Big Picture. Assign polarity for different causal-links. Copy paste
your modified causal loop diagram in the space below (scan if hand-drawn). Enumerate all feedback
loops in the “big picture”. Give appropriate name and indicate the polarity for each loop (R1, B1
etc.).

Organic To Go: The Big Picture with loop polarities

5. Articulate operational details of OTG, described above, with the help of the loops. Add other loops
in case you identify any missing part.
6. Compare the original purpose (Q#3) and the expanded depiction of the story’s actual outcome. Do
you see the issues at Organic to Go differently than you did at first?
7. What suggestions can you offer to OTG managers to reverse the disturbing trends? Justify your
suggestions using a modified causal loop diagram. Paste your diagram in the space given below
(scan and paste in case you have hand-drawn)

Modified Organic to Go: The Big Picture