Systems Thinking

“In a system you can’t change just one thing.”

-- Lee Thayer – leadership coach, author

In the previous post, Arguing with Reality, the idea of linear thinking was pointed to as one of the problems we suffer from when dealing with the reality of a situation. Linear thinking is thinking only of the cause-and-effect of a very small number of the potential variables involved. Thinking and acting this way often unleashes consequences that were never intended. So what’s happening here?

The world we live in is comprised of systems. Groups of two or more people, people and machinery, people and technology etc. Simply put, everything is more or less connected to everything else. When we begin to see the “systems” operating around us our perspective to many of the problems we face changes.

Leadership expert Lee Thayer defines something called Dumb Systems. By this he means systems that produce dumb, inadequate, or unintended outcomes. So if there are Dumb Systems that infers there must also be Smart ones. Smart Systems produce outcomes that are close to what’s intended and required.

Have you ever tried to fix someone when it might actually be the system they’re operating in that’s faulty? There may be nothing wrong with the people. It may be the system that’s dysfunctional. Do you get mad and frustrated when someone in customer service tells you, “I’m sorry, that’s not our company’s policy?” The person may very well be a competent and nice individual who just happens to be stuck in a dumb system. I’ve witnessed many ‘A’ player employees leave companies because they became so frustrated in the systems they’re stuck in.

Have you ever hired someone that had a reputation for a poor attitude at their former company only to have them become a rock star for yours? Have you had a good person leave and then want to return to your company at a later date? What changed? It’s unlikely the people changed much, so what can we attribute it to? The “system” they’re working in changed. One business may be a very top down environment while the other gives their people both the responsibility and authority to do their job.

Think of it as a spectrum. On one end is a very controlling environment. The goal here is predictability. At the other end of the spectrum is adaptability. On the predictability end are businesses like McDonalds. A big reason you eat there is because you know exactly what you’re going to get no matter which one you go to. Predictable. At the other end of the spectrum think about the Apollo 13 rescue mission. Remember the scene in the movie where the CO2 in the capsule was rising. The program lead at NASA dumps a bunch of “stuff” on the table and says, “This is what they have. Find a way to fix the problem.” Adaptable.

Problems occur when we apply the wrong system for the results we’re trying to get. To predict the output of a system, it has to be tightly controlled. In exchange for that control you limit the amount of adaptability your employees have in any specific situation. Hence, “I’m sorry, that’s not our company policy.” A chance to make a customer-for-life was just sacrificed.

There are many examples of CEOs, VP of Sales, Directors of HR etc. coming into their new position and wanting to “put their stamp on it” immediately. Without them taking time to understand the systems they’re inheriting the results are often disruptive at best and tragic in the worst cases. However well-meaning their intentions are without first seeing the systems in place and taking into account the ramifications of their new programs the results are many times, and not surprisingly, far from what was expected. Employee morale is often the first thing to take a hit. If the leader digs in their heals without listening to the concerns they can turn a company with a reasonably good culture into an us-vs-them culture in no time at all. Not exactly the result they were expecting.

Dumb systems are those in which the ownership of problems are misallocated. Let’s say your customer service person is competent and has wide latitude to fix a customer’s problem. Do you think they have a better chance to please a customer rather than turning them into someone who complains about you to anyone that will listen? Can you begin to see it’s often the system and not the people? Many times it’s the system that has to be fixed,,, first.