Systems are Everywhere
“A bad system will beat a good person every time.”
Most of us desire to do well and do good every day. Although I live in a society that celebrates free will and independence, I’ve come to appreciate that we don’t have as much autonomy as we like to imagine. Sometimes we are boxed-in to unhealthy or unproductive behaviors because of outside forces that are beyond our control. While we’re all doing the best we can, we can also acknowledge that some of how we act in a given moment is due in part to the influence of our surroundings and environment.
From this understanding comes a useful lesson for change agents: If you want to change the way people behave, you may have to change the systems in which they operate.
We are all influenced by the systems in which we are embedded. People working in a physically peaceful environment tend to slow down, speak more softly, and listen to others. Put the same people in a loud, frantic space and their anxiety will rise as their patience grows shorter.
Some systems in which we operate are readily apparent – your physical environment, you family, your company, your weekend softball team, etc. At the same time, you interact with numerous large and complex systems that you rarely consider.
If you ate food today, you interacted with the food system, including seed providers, farmers, processors, distributors, retailers, marketers, and more. When you last looked at your phone (if you’re an American, it was probably within the last 4.8 minutes) you interacted with electricity providers, device manufacturers, networking companies, your fellow consumers and hundreds of other stakeholders that are required to make that little slab in your hand work like magic.
And of course, each of these systems exists within their own complex systems; electricity production starts with the extraction and transportation of raw materials, the building and maintenance of power grids, marketing to consumers, billing and administration, etc. The transportation system includes vehicle and factory design, manufacturing of chemicals and plastics, skilled and unskilled labor, government regulation, international trade agreements, and on and on ad tedium.
Expanding your focus to see the world through the lens of systems can provide new perspective and mobilize your energy for action. In Frank White’s book The Overview Effect, former astronauts reflected on the “cognitive shift in awareness” they experienced when looking back at the Earth from the vantage point of space. Observing the planet from this new vantage point awoke them to the idea that Earth is “a tiny, fragile ball of life,” “hanging in the void.” The astronauts described “a feeling of unity,” in which the conflicts that divide people became less important. As a result, several became energized to create a planetary society to protect the future of this “pale blue dot.”
Keep in mind these were sober and serious engineers, scientists, and military professionals, not prone to flights of fancy. Intellectually, they knew beforehand that the Earth was just one planet among many in the solar system. But seeing it isolated and framed in space facilitated a perceptual breakthrough, opening them up to a broader and more nuanced view of the Earth as a system itself.
This ability to discern a system in which you operate – and then see beyond it – illuminates a key distinction between a leader and a manager. A manager tends to operate from the inside, seeing no further than the boundaries of the organization in which he or she functions. In contrast, a change agent tends look over the horizon, seeing each system as a functioning entity in a larger environment.
But seeing beyond your familiar boundaries can be challenging. Just like a fish may not recognize the existence of water, it can be difficult to identify the systems in which we are embedded. Our brains were designed 50,000 years ago to recognize immediate threats and opportunities, and we still live in an event-oriented world. It takes practice and discipline to observe patterns in our environment, and to identify the underlying structures and preconceptions that can drive those events.
Thinking about systems can illuminate hidden truths, but it can also illuminate ambiguities. For example, in the early 1990s I was among one hundred full-time employees of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (since re-named the American Association for Justice). At the time, ATLA had a few thousand member lawyers scattered across the country, plus many thousands of trial lawyers who were not members.
I came to learn that our job on the staff was to balance support for several embedded systems within ATLA that conflicted in subtle and unexpected ways. Usually, the needs of our members was paramount. At other times we focused on the interests of the entire profession, including attorneys who had not joined the organization and no idea we were speaking on their behalf. We also had a Board of Directors and an executive committee, usually consisting of experienced, successful, and wealthy trial lawyers. On occasion, their needs became the staff’s primary concern, pushing aside the interests of the membership or the profession as a whole.
At those moments, it would have been fair for me to ask, “Who is ATLA?” Is it the dues-paying members? Is it the larger body of trial attorneys working across the US? Is the privileged few who sit on the Board? Or is it us on the staff, the team of professionals who have been managing these ambiguities for years?
All systems have identifiable boundaries and interconnected parts, and most also have different levels, defined by their relative size and complexity. Zoom all the way out to see the large system, which includes everybody in the system in which you operate. At ATLA, this was the large population of trial attorneys working around the country. Embedded inside the large system are numerous groups and subgroups of various sizes and functions, including all of our dues-paying members, regional teams, and the association’s Board of Directors.
Finally, there is the individual level of system, which is any single person within the system. In my case, you might picture me as a somewhat confused individual in a chaotic workplace, struggling to figure out how to do my job on a daily basis.
Any part of a system can be understood only in relation to the larger system in which it’s embedded. In the case of an association like ATLA, the richest members of the Board shared many characteristics with the poorest and least influential trial lawyers, and the two subgroups continually influenced one another at conferences and other organizational functions. In other words, no part of the system existed in isolation, even if the interconnections between its parts weren’t always apparent.
Since all elements of a system are interrelated, changes in one level of the system will have impacts elsewhere, often in ways you can’t foresee and may not notice. At the same time our systems shape us, we shape our systems.
So if you want to bring about an intentional change in a large and complex organization, you may have to impact more than one level of the system at the same time.
The systems model is a lens to help you see your situation more fully, and see up and beyond your immediate surroundings. Once you’re attuned to the systems around you, you’ll be able to imagine new ways to articulate the problems you’re confronting, and suggest numerous solutions to bring about lasting change.
