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Grounded Systems Ltd was founded by Mike Yearworth in 2008. Mike has a background in engineering and management and is Emeritus Professor of Management Science at the University of Exeter.

Mike works with organisations on the following:

  • Leading problem structuring workshops with teams for the purposes of planning, transforming and strategy-making
  • Problem structuring through stakeholder workshops supported by online group support systems
  • Enabling multi-organisational collaboration

Mike’s preferred way of facilitating workshops with teams is to work online in one-to-one and group sessions supported by Strategyfinder, as developed by Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann. He uses a variety of Problem Structuring Methods (PSMs) including:

  • Hierarchical Process Modelling (HPM), based on modelling purpose with a how/why dialectic, process performance scoring, and argumentation
  • Causal Loop Diagramming and Causal Mapping
  • Implementing multimethodologies
  • Augmented Qualitative Analysis (AQA) of large document repositories using probabilistic topic models for preliminary Causal Mapping

My new book is now available!

Current perspectives on approaches to problem structuring in operational research and engineering and prospects for problem structuring methods applicable to a wide range of practice.