How to create a connection circle

1. Start with a circle on a piece of paper.

2. Next, identify the key elements of the system you're examining.How do you know what's a key element? It meets these criteria:
   • It's important to changes in the system

   • Increases or decreases in the system

   • Can be described by a noun

3. Write these elements around the circle (don't include more than 10).

4. Look for cause and effect.
   1. Which elements are directly causing other elements to increase or decrease?

   2. Draw an arrow between these elements.

   3. Indicate an increase (draw a "+") or a decrease (draw a "–") for the second element in each relationship.

5. Find all of the cause-and-effect relationships. These can be based on data or they can be a hypothesis.

6. Look for elements whose relationships form closed loops. These are feedback loops.

Example

It's best to illustrate with an example. Let's say our product has been dealing with unhappy customers. We know they've been complaining about too many bugs in the product and slow response times from our support (as customers create more support tickets). At the same time, we've been shipping more features to make them happier. Let's use make a connection circle so that we can make sense of this.

From this story, we can identify the key elements: unhappy customers, bugs in the product, response times, support tickets and new features. We'll document them around our connection circle: