How Systems Thinking can help you lead more intentionally
A few weeks back I wrote about how reflecting deeply can be transformative. Most often we react to events - we experience a challenge or a gap and go with our gut on a response. Stimulus and Response.
A Systems Thinking approach can make our responses more intentional, more focused and more effective. As the model above suggests, the more deeply we understand a system, the more leverage we have to transform it. Systems thinking, and the iceberg model were both popularized by Peter Senge in his 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. Systems thinking provides a vocabulary and a set of tools that can help you understand why things are the way they are and most critically, where the leverage points for effective change are. But systems thinking has it’s roots much further back. Check out The Universal Traveler from 1974 for a deep dive into trippy, counter-cultural Soft-Systems Theory that smells and tastes a lot like Design Thinking. You can go back even further. I’m currently reading Peter Checkland’s Systems Thinking, Systems Practice from 1981…which includes a 30-year retrospective on System Thinking!
Anticipation over Reaction
Who wouldn’t prefer to see around corners and anticipate challenges before they unfold? Systems Thinking suggests that the path towards anticipation lies in seeing the unseen. We can only see the visible world - Trends and Patterns are seen with the mind’s eye if we sit with the questions “What has been happening?” Only then can we begin to deduce trends.
DESIGN IMPLIES A THEORY OF CHANGE
Once we start to see a pattern or trend emerging we have two options - intervene now to make a change and/or make a change next time, before it happens. This is the dream of every time-travel movie - go back before something terrible has happened and make sure it doesn’t.
As facilitators, leaders and change agents, the question is always: “What can be shifted?” …but more critically, which changes will stick? Which will be most impactful? To answer those questions, we need to have our own theory of change.
Which is more impactful for an organization? An intensive workshop or long-term coaching? What is more effective, a training for select senior leaders, or video learning for a whole division? It depends. On what? Evidence, sure, but we all select our own evidence. It comes down to what you, the change agent, thinks is possible. We can and should check your hypothesis later, but the intervention you choose will be the one you believe in.
Mental models built the system
The deepest level of change for a system is shifting the way the people in the system think. Most systems are co-created and co-evolved, over time. People with positional power set certain rules and structures, and people give those structures power by participating in them, giving them legitimacy. Over time, people shift the system just by using it in their own ways (Google Desire Paths for more). If you can understand and shift the assumptions, beliefs and values that sustain the system in its current state, the system will shift, inextricably.
This is one reason why I believe in coaching as a theory of change. A conversation, for me, is the smallest unit of a change. And deep, sustained conversations over time are, I have found, to be the most effective approach. To connect with me about coaching head over to my coaching page.
HOW to bring Systems thinking into your work
The main way is by taking time to think. It’s rare, and hard to do, but reflection time is always productive. Linked above is my essay on reflection. It’s specifically about year-end reflections, but the models and frameworks can be applied to any project or team. Retrospecting is key to any leadership practice. Set aside an hour by yourself or with a team and ask people to consider each of these levels of perception.