Systemsway newsletter
Yesterday I came across a seemingly great quote. "If you transform people and put them in the same dysfunctional system, nothing much will change." The quote has substantial truth in it. It's saying that nearly all of the transformation programs are targeted towards transforming people and not towards transforming systems. If people are transformed but system stay untransformed, people will succumb to dysfunctional system — so transforming people is a futile effort. This is what Dr. Deming said — that bad systems will turn good people into bad. What quote is trying to cite people vs systems That systems have more impact on how people behave vs people have on the systems The message says it is the system that enables or disables the individual and collective potential of people. So we shall fix the system first before fixing people.
If an executive reads this they would fully agree, because it's a true statement. The themselves have experienced the same. So executives will they would say: let's start transforming the systems first, before transforming people. But then the system will succumb to untransformed people. Bad people will turn good systems into bad is also equally true. If you bring all the people from India to drive in the USA without transforming them, the people would deteriorate the system. So what shall we do? Let's transform both? In what order?
Whatever path you go, you will not get a good answer. This entire conversation of people vs. systems is such a futile conversation, specially in the context of corporation. The people vs. systems conversation leads to people blaming systems and taking no responsibility for the role they play in the state of the systems. People fail to realize that it’s people who who lead ,managed and operated systems systems to it’s current stated. Systems vs people the perfect way to lead, manage and operate a terrible organization. If not people vs. systems, then how shall we frame this conversation? Let's first think about why this people vs. systems conversation even exists.
Because most people who lead, manage and operate in organizations are methodically trained in Analytical Thinking, where the default and intuitive instinct is to break systems into parts and find straight-line cause-and-effect relationships. So how does a scientifically minded person break an organization? They break it into systems vs. people. This way may be the perfect way to understand and intervene in non-living mechanical and technological systems. But that way of understanding and intervening in systems is terrible for social systems — which is what all human organizations are.
In the people vs. systems mode of thinking, systems failing people and people failing systems are both correct statements and people pick one of the statement and stick to it. Because most people are linear cause-and-effect thinkers, they pick one of the statements — individually correct, systemically wrong. And you can't even learn from experience when you hold on to one side of the loop, because you can always find an explanation that confirms the side you already picked. This is the reason the greatest physicists and engineers, who have crazy analytical thinking power, fail to become great organizational executives. Social systems are loopy, and managing social systems demands thinking in loops. No wonder mechanical and technological leadership is so much easier in relation to social systems leadership.
Therefore, if you are a CEO or a CXO or in any position of power, your job is not to lead people and not to lead systems, but to lead the system of which people are a part — so that the people of the system work towards fixing the system in which they themselves are embedded. It’s an hard thing to acheive, because leadership is hard, but think of the power that corporation where people of the systems who continue to fix and improve their systems in which they are embeded .
If you are think it makes sense but it’s such a loopy thinking it indeed is. This is the reason leadership has been hard thing learn: leadership has no option but to think in loops to lead social systems, whereas mechanical and technological leadership can get away with straight lines — though in the age of AI and modern technology, even technologists have to think in loops now.
In our view thinking in loops shall be introduced in high school level but till that happens you and your people have to learn by yourself. . Interested in learning more about how to think in loops, how to understand systems as loops, and how to lead the system of which people are a part? Book a session and let's talk.