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...