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John Muir never heard of systems thinking but he summed up the essence of it when he mused, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Anything made up of component parts is a system. An organization is a system because it is a combination of interrelated people, groups, ideas, materials, and processes that exist in time and space. Systems thinking has its roots in the general system theory conceptualized by Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy and others in the 1940s.1 When a system works, the parts together create synergy; the “greater than” is generated by the relationships between those different parts.2 The health of those relationships determines the size of the greater than.
One of my first steps whenever I work with an organization is to assess how its system and the component parts relate. I learn about the various departments or teams, the front office, and how work is brought in and flows through the organization. Key questions include what is the purpose of the organization and how is success defined and measured? From the system’s perspective, I want to know what disrupts the relationships between those different parts and the collective goals they are trying to achieve. And, how can those relationships be improved or restored so that knowledge and other resources flow in an optimal manner? These questions uncover the baseline for the quality of interaction within the system.
Although this baseline is helpful in restoring productivity and harmony, it is insufficient. Creating a visual representation opens a deeper understanding. When an idea moves from the conceptual to the tangible, it uncovers more levels of meaning. Imagine, for example, a list of rising average temperatures for a mountainous region and compare that with satellite images showing the shrinking snow cover over time. Which one has a more visceral and personal impact? The term for this is “systems visualization.” Instead of thinking about the system, a visual image of it is constructed using people or props.
John Curtis Gowan, an educational psychologist and the author of Trance, Art and Creativity, believed our ability to work with images underlies human progress. He wrote that “In the case of every historic scientific discovery and invention that is researched carefully enough, we find that it was imagery, either in dreams or in a waking state, which produced the breakthrough.”3 Images, and the feelings they evoke, are one way the vast intelligence of the collective unconscious communicates with the conscious mind. The power of an image is reflected in Aristotle’s comment, “The soul never thinks without a picture.” Using representatives in a constellation forms an image of the system being explored. That image changes as representatives move about and verbal phrases are introduced. Making things, ideas, or relationships more tangible and visible is a catalyst for learning. The dynamics of even a complex system can be quickly mapped using people or symbols. Those dynamics often reveal that the underlying systemic issue is not isolated in one person or department. The component parts of a business system commonly mapped with representatives include:
Other parts that may be identified when mapping the system include:
Not all these components need to be named and placed in a constellation. Usually, five or fewer are enough to clarify the issues and provide insights that lead to a solution. Creating a tangible representation of an intangible idea generates insights because the emotions and intuition become involved. The representation makes visible what was subconscious and hidden from view. What is too often characterized as a person problem—some lack of character or competence—is often structural and/or systemic. The resolution of a structural issue tends to be located in the present. For a systemic issue the resolution may have something to do with how we see the world based on past events.
W. Edwards Deming, of Total Quality Management (TQM) fame, tells a story of the CEO of a company with a pressing fire safety issue. He sent his 10,500 employees a letter pleading for them to be more careful with the highly flammable chemicals they handled.4 The problem, from his perspective, was that employees were being negligent. The number of fires were eventually reduced, but only when structural changes in how those materials were handled were introduced. From a systemic perspective, what seemed to be a culture of carelessness was really a symptom of the CEO’s careless reasoning. Mistaking a situational issue for a people problem is what Stanford psychologist Lee Ross calls a “fundamental attribution error.”5
Defining a problem as a people problem makes it more difficult to talk about. A problem that cannot be talked about in a public setting is one that can’t be solved. When the elephant is fleshed out in living color in front of everyone, that spell is broken. Physically mapping a system without preconceptions can reveal how the unseen, unacknowledged, or excluded parts of a system impact everyone in it. A common example of this is the failure to remember and honor the founders of an organization after they have retired. This lapse weakens the culture that made their company successful. Making an idea tangible enables the issue holder to see the problem from a number of different and more objective perspectives. She can walk around the representatives and notice as an outsider what is going on with each part and how that impacts the system as a whole. If “you can see a lot by looking,” as Yogi Berra famously said, you can see even more by looking from different perspectives. This shift in perspective for the seer often means the object being perceived shifts as well. “Seeing” phenomenologically has its roots in the word “shaman.” The anthropologist Audrey Butt, during her fieldwork in the Amazon, reported that one of the Akawaio titles for a shaman was eneogie, “the one who perceives.”6
The System Remembers
Many organizations have a long history. Details and specifics that may have affected or caused the current issue are often forgotten as people retire or leave. What happened could be far enough back in the past that no one from that era is still employed or even living. Yet, the passage of time is not always a solution. Part of the system still remembers and can show up as: