For anyone in a position of management or team leadership, the discipline of systems thinking offers some important and useful mental models.

Some Definitions

In the context of systems thinking:

A system is a set of interconnected elements with a purpose.

This includes everything from cells to organs and entire animals, from families to organisations and societies, from central heating to bathtubs. Systems thinking is simply the discipline of understanding interconnected systems and their behavior.

The literature is expansive, but there are two flavours I tend to take interest in:

System dynamics allows us to model the dynamic complexity of systems with nonlinear behavior, with tools like stock and flow diagrams. Such techniques can be used to model and simulate actual systems, including manufacturing plants, process queues and ecosystems. This is handy, though probably overkill for a typical software or knowledge-work team, since the outcomes of teams can often be modelled as simpler stochastic processes.
The anthropological study of human systems. For me, this is where things get really interesting: the language of systems thinking rejects the linear narratives we’re conditioned to see (through language, culture and the limitations of human cognition), and instead reveals the systemic conditions that give rise to the patterns of behaviour we observe in our lives and our work.

Systems Thinking and Management

The ‘old’ view

There’s a famous quote by W. E. Deming in his book Out of the Crisis:

If you have a stable system, there is no use to specify a goal. You will get whatever the system will deliver. A goal beyond the capability of the system will not be reached. If you have not a stable system, there is no point setting a goal. There is no way to know what the system will produce: it has no capability.

In these four succinct sentences, Deming spells out everything that is wrong with ‘traditional’ management methods. The conclusion may seem intuitive (systems thinking often is), yet the implications are so rarely considered in the organizations within which we work and live. It is a modern day tragedy that organizations often go out of their way to avoid facing up to this reality.

Indeed, the human element was extremely important to Deming, who wrote later in his life (in a letter to Peter Senge):

Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people.

People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers–a prize for the best halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars–and on up through the university.

On the job, people, teams, and divisions are ranked, rewarded for the top, punished for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.

An alternative view

In general, systems thinking rejects ‘traditional’ management myths: that if you get people to put more effort in you’ll get more out; that if there is a failure then there must be a linear causal chain (i.e. someone or something to blame). The discipline instead encourages us to look for ways to transform our systems in order to discover and realise possibilities that were previously unavailable to us.

Donella Meadows categorises twelve ways in which we can influence systems. Those favored by traditional management styles (e.g. heroics, bonuses, overtime, threats of noncompliance, etc) are those which maintain the system and attempt to increase its output within its existing constraints. According to Meadows, many of these are among the least effective types of intervention. She proposes other interventions (including some which are common to lean thinking) such as buffers, stocks, feedback loops, and the structure of information flows.

Barry Oshry offers some interesting (and uniquely stylised) lessons from running his ‘Power Lab’ workshops in which participants enter a three tier society. During this time, participants’ experiences always seem deeply personal, but the same systemic patterns emerge time after time.

Human factors research

Meanwhile, the field of human factors research studies the failure of complex systems with humans in the loop. Sydney Dekker, among others, has written extensively on the topic, and shows how useless the ‘old view’ of human error is, and why we should reject the traditional preventative solutions rooted in compliance and disciplinary action. (One of the important takeaways: there is no root cause.)

Amy Edmondson’s research into psychological safety builds on this, showing not just why this old view of human error is counterproductive to safety, but why psychological safety is an important predictor of high performing teams (supporting, as it does, a culture of learning and continuous improvement).

Getting Started

In short, systems thinking is an important discipline for any manager or leader. It offers tools to see opportunities that traditional methods overlook. Moreover, it also provides a much more powerful role for management: sometimes a system needs to be changed so that new options are made available to those working within it. (This should not be confused with the dreaded ‘re-organization’, however. Too often, these are rooted in the management myths which should be consigned to history.)

Some of the books I’ve found helpful as an introduction to this field:

Systems Thinking: A Primer by Donella Meadows, which is a great introduction to the language of the discipline.
Seeing Systems by Barry Oshry: an intriguing look at human systems from an anthropological perspective, presented in an eclectic (and – depending on taste – powerful) mixture of prose, poetry and theatre.
The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error by Sydney Dekker provides a compelling survey of research into human factors investigations, and how to avoid falling into the traps of the ‘old view’ of human error.
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy Edmondson shows the importance of a blameless culture and the role leaders should play in building one.
The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. A well known book that draws insightful connections between systems thinking and other key ‘disciplines’ that Senge argues are necessary to build learning organisations. It is, however, a long read, and arguably the literature on learning organisations has evolved since it was written.