Article Abstracts

At the Mithya Institute, we two kinds of learning: one that leads to tool building (information and knowledge management) the other that leads to wisdom. This section is about tools that allow us to manage and architect knowledge from data and information. Wisdom based learning is addressed in the other section titled learning.

How do you make sense of data and information that is hitting us at faster and faster pace? Meaning is critical to discovering larger vision and purpose. That leads us to identifying right strategies and approaches and to appropriate action. So the pathway to success begins with meaning creation.

We have been working on creating tools that help us make sense of information and created shared meaning and alignment between people. We call our process 'thinking (and learning) in 3D' because many times we create a 3-D tetrahedron onto which we map our thinking. This three dimensional framework is a representation of the whole system and is very useful for decision making, risk taking and strategic thinking. It brings clarity to the group that created it and gives language and allows one to communicate the strategy or vision effectively to others.

• This Thinking in 3D process has been used so far for
• Strategic thinking and planning
• Designing management and leadership development programs
• Creating business models
• Designing books and management training CD-ROMs
• Career Development for Executives as well as for College and High School students
• Change management programs

Article Abstracts

The three dimensional object that results in this process is a tetrahedron and some times also referred to as a pyramid. You will find several articles and images on this website that elaborate on this methodology.

What are pyramids for? This article gives you more detail about how 'thinking in 3D'has been applied in organizations.

Enterprise Development: Creating Shared Meaning through Pyramid Building: This article gives you more examples of 3D thinking in organizations and in its appendix helps you to look an enterprise development framework developed using this methodology.

Aligning Strategy, Process and People: This article is a larger version of a paper that later got published in the Systems Thinker (April 1998). It gives you a detailed version of how enterprise development model was developed using 3D thinking.

Interview with Tom Grant of Ford Motor Company: An actual user of this tool reflects upon how they used 3D thinking in Ford New Markets group and how he continues to use it after two years.

Tetrahedron Learning: This is an article published in Chaos newsletter of Communities of the Future about Thinking in 3D. It is one of the best testimonials we got!

Instructions for constructing a paper pyramid: It is what it says. You can build the pyramids mentioned in Enterprise Development and Alignment articles yourself!

Accomplishment Pyramid: This is the basis for an article that appears in the learning section. It also is elaborated in Personal Competencies and accomplishment cycle articles in this section.

Learning and Development Pyramids show you how the pyramid looks in three dimensions and also give you the essence of how people learn. The article on this pyramid is being prepared and several workshops in schools have been conducted using this pyramid.

Pyramids and Complexity: With markets and customer needs changing at internet speed, managing information and knowledge is quite complex. This article examines how pyramids allow people to identify simple and meaningful patterns on the other side of complexity instead of being stuck with simplistic models on this side of complexity.

Mithya Wheel: It is a second generation tool that is used in executive coaching. The words on the Wheel are outcomes of two tetrahedrons representing shadow and emergent sides of our emotional states. More on this is being developed at this time. Write to us if you are interested in learning more about it.