Through the looking glass

An overview of systems thinking

In order to make things manageable we need to simplify things. But when do we make things unmanageable by oversimplifying things? It often boils down to how we look at things.

A deeply entrenched approach is to distil ‘three key success factors’, ‘five golden rules’, etc. Many people consider it the ‘natural’ way of looking at, and simplifying things. It is reinforced almost daily by presentations condensed to ‘three bullet points’ and a growing appetite for creating ‘laundry lists’, for example, of best practice and lessons learnt.

Unfortunately, this level of analysis frequently fails to deliver the goods. To understand why, consider this approach through this illustration.

The way in which the variables of a problem are viewed, shapes the actions that we take. If we look at the factors as independent, we accommodate the notion of being ‘acted upon’ and that forces affecting us are ‘out there’ (‘if only management would get their act together’, or ‘if only they were team players’). This gives rise to blame stories (they…) and ‘victims’ (us). We don't see our own role in the matter, we constrain our thinking and we fail to see the inter-connected and reinforcing nature of the factors involved. In short, we either come up with inadequate solutions or we fail to get into action at all. To break out of this we need to look at cause and effect as a ‘two-way street’, of which we are a part and where the dominating relationships are changing over time.

Consider an alternative view on the ‘failing organisation’ above. When an organisation is ‘failing’, it tends to be more difficult for managers to perform effectively. It is as valid to assert that ‘poor management’ is caused by a ‘failing organisation’ as it is to assert that a ‘failing organisation’ is caused by ‘poor management’. Similarly, an organisation that is unable to attract and retain good people will soon start to fail. But equally, when an organisation has good people and begins to fail, its best people tend to seek more attractive jobs elsewhere.

And so it is with the other factors – the causal relationships run both ways. This is illustrated below.

With such a ‘web’ there is little value in thinking of the ‘key success factors’. Rather, we need to consider the ‘key driving relationships’, the impact they are having and how they are changing over time. This is far more insightful for understanding the problem situation and for creating an effective intervention.

Appreciating a ‘two-way street’ brings the locus of responsibility for driving forces within the reach of actions that can be taken in the organisation. For example, “we are at the mercy of world oil prices”  becomes “we can't control oil prices, so we must manage the impact of oil price volatility on our business”.

This approach determines how things really work and enables an effective strategy to be developed to address the problem situation.

The starting point for looking at things this way is often only a feeling of unease, awareness that things could be better than they are...

The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny walks into a bar and asks the bartender, "Do you have any pickled eggs?" "No we don't", says the bartender. The Easter bunny leaves. He comes in the next day. "Do you have any pickled eggs?" he asks. "No we don't, and if you ask me again I'll nail you to the wall!" yells the bartender. So the bunny leaves and comes back the next day and asks, "Do you have any nails?" "No" says the bartender. "Well in that case, do you have any pickled eggs?"

The Abilene paradox

The Abilene paradox, coined by Professor Jerry Harvey of George Washington University, 1974.

'A married couple and the parents of the wife are sitting on a porch in 104-degree heat in the small town of Coleman, Texas, some 53 miles from Abilene.

They are engaging in as little motion as possible, drinking lemonade, watching the fan spin lazily, and occasionally playing the odd game of dominoes.

At some point, the wife’s father suggests they drive to Abilene to eat at a cafeteria there. The son-in-law thinks this is a bad idea but doesn’t see any need to upset the apple cart, so he goes along with it, as do the two women. They get in their old Buick (with no air conditioning) and set off. During the journey they drive through a dust storm. When they reach Abilene, they eat a mediocre lunch at the cafeteria and return to Coleman exhausted, hot, and generally unhappy with the experience.

It is not until they return home that the frustrations reveal themselves. It is revealed that none of them really wanted to go to Abilene – they were just going along because they thought the others were eager to go.'

Inability to cope with agreement:

• Much agreement in organisations is actually false consensus
• It occurs because many people feel they might be isolated, censured or ridiculed if they voice objections
• This often leads groups to adopt inappropriate goals, without commitment, without ownership
• Is a setup for organisational failure

Building strong dialogue and advocacy/inquiry skills, as well as building confidence that one will not be alienated if one speaks one’s mind, are necessary for making the decision not to go to Abilene.

For more information contact dave@lloydmasters.com

Education and the learning organisation

Education is central to our philosophy at lloydmasters and we aim, wherever possible, to up-skill our clients when we work with them so that relevant skills and learning from our consultancy work stay within the organisation.

One obvious way of doing this is to get members of our clients’ organisations to work with us; another is for us to create ‘micro worlds’ through workshops.In such workshops we structure the process to help create a genuine dialogue so that people can discuss and challenge each other’s mental models and beliefs in a positive but relentless way – thus creating better mutual understanding and awareness, i.e. learning. This process is shown in the model above: ‘the learning wheel’. Frequent use of this on an individual or team basis helps create a true learning organisation.

Conscious incompetence – a step towards a generative safety culture?

Safety culture often sits in the realm of ‘unconscious incompetence’. That is, a poorly used ‘label’ with no specificity and little translation into practical application. This is despite the fact that safety culture is identified as a major factor in practically all major accidents, incidents and systems failures.

The safety culture of an organisation reflects unconsciously adopted norms, beliefs, expectations and worldview. These manifest themselves as deeply ingrained and unique routines (ways of ‘doing’) and influence what information and knowledge the individual ultimately attends to and ultimately accepts (ways of ‘being’). People play out roles according to the ‘unwritten rules’.

A first step towards building a positive safety culture is to move from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence by making the safety culture visible and understanding its impact. This is a difficult step to make because we stand in an emotional relationship to what we know or believe.

Making your safety culture visible may challenge some of the core assumptions and beliefs of the organisation. Moving from conscious incompetence to conscious competence requires shared learning. If shared learning is to proceed successfully, a necessary shift in the group belief system is equally important as one in the individual belief system. Group members should be invited to test the validity of their beliefs about the organisation, about other people and about how they themselves ‘show up’.

Knowledge and belief are not ‘cold’ and feelings can act to enable or frustrate learning, especially in deconstructing old mental models to make room for new ones. Furthermore, information and knowledge, whether generated externally or internally, are subjected to the perceptual filters of the existing culture. At its heart, building a safety culture involves reorienting group values, assumptions, norms and behaviours through changing cognitive structures (e.g., multiple causation of accidents, human error, group practices vs. individual attitudes) and emotional structures (e.g., fairness, positive reinforcement, trust and accountability). This requires the opportunity to unlearn unconsciously adopted beliefs and behaviours which block new learning and action. It requires the fostering of genuine communication and to eventually create feelings of congruence and personal leadership – vital ingredients for a generative safety culture.