Principles of Systems Thinking
by
Charles Lamson
Several principals of systems thinking help in understanding organizations and developing strategies for organizational communication.
1. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Systems are more than just the parts that make them up. A cake is created from separate ingredients, but the cake is totally different from the assembled raw ingredients. In much the same way, an organizational system is more than the sum of its individual members and units, or their particular relationships to one another. For example, most charitable fund-raising agencies are composed of office staff, telephone and personal fundraisers, advertising and promotion staff, accountants and bookkeepers, managers, and a board of directors. Each individual member has particular values, strengths, and weaknesses. Joined into units, such as the accounting department, individuals skills and strengths can compensate for others' weaknesses, and together they can achieve things they could not do separately. The units become wholes in their own right; they evolve their own goals and operating procedures, and they develop a set of values and a culture of their own. Joined into an organization, the units too can achieve different outcomes and have different values than they could on their own. Accounting units keep the fund-raisers honest. Advertising and promotion keeps the whole charity visible in the community, increasing revenues. But advertising and promotion would have no budget for their operations without the fundraisers (nor would the accountants be paid without those they monitor). In a very real sense, the charity functions as it does only because of its entire configuration of people and units. However, the people and units would not be what they are without the whole. It is through their place in the charity that they realize their potential. This process, through which a dynamic interdependence of parts and whole creates a unique overall system, has been called emergence by systems researchers.
Wholeness also applies to process systems. The variables can be defined independently, but their influence is due to how they interact with each other in the system. The variables act as a set, and if the organization is altered to introduce another variable, the entire system changes its character.
2. Cause-effect relationships in systems are complex. Because all of the parts of a system are interconnected, it is not possible to find a single, simple cause for events or problems in the system. In the People Express process system, service quality affects the reputation of the airline. However, is it the ultimate cause of reputation? Quality is influenced by the number of passengers carried and by service capacity, which are themselves influenced by the flight schedule and additions to service capacity, which are themselves influenced by service quality. Where is the cause for the system's behavior? The answer is: In the entire system. Because all variables are linked together, it is impossible to find a single ultimate cause for a problem, or for that matter, for success. Systems thinking warns against trying to find a single variable or process to blame for a problem or to attribute success to. Although individual variables or processes certainly play an important role in the organization, problems or success stem from the system as a whole.
3. It takes time to find the right levers. Because indirect effects are hard to uncover and often overlooked we often fail to find the really important variables, people or units of the system. Although systems are wholes and their parts are interdependent, some variables, people and units, are particularly important. These parts stand at central points in the system where they are in a position to influence a number of other variables. If we cannot change or control some element of a system, it cannot serve as a lever.
4. To understand a system, do not just focus on the system itself. Every system is embedded in a group of larger systems (suprasystems) and every system is made up of another of smaller interdependent subsystems. For example, the landing crew of a freight company is a system made up of a number a number of subsystems (workers, their interpersonal relationships and so on), which are made up of smaller subsystems. Information is input into a system through one or more of its subsystems. As information moves through the system it is interpreted, acted upon and communicated to other members of the system and subsystems.
5. Systems must adapt or they perish. To thrive, and sometimes to survive, organizations must adapt to their environments. If an organization's environment changes, or if it moves into a new environment, the organization must change as well. During the early 1990s, fast-food chains adapted to the healthy lifestyles movement adding salad bars and vegetarian burgers, and by moving into high-schools and colleges, where their customers were less concerned with health issues, and regularly went through french-fry withdrawal. Some chains shut down their outlets in health-conscious areas, and reopened new ones where health was not such a hot issue. Now that the healthy lifestyles movement has faded, many of the salad bars and almost all of the veggie burgers have disappeared (except in a number of different varieties in India).
In adapting to environmental pressures, an organization must balance the need for change with the stability provided by the older systems. Organizations that successfully adapt are able to acknowledge that stability as well as change as needed.
6. History is important in organizational systems. It is important to remember that organizational subsystems and suprasystems are made of people not things. These beliefs, values, histories have an important effect on how members interpret, respond to and communicate the information they obtain. for example, if employees believe that dishonesty is the normal way of conducting interpersonal relationships in their organization the inevitable communication breakdowns are likely to be interpreted as dishonest manipulation. In an organization whose employees value openness and honesty the same breakdown might be interpreted quite differently, employees will act differently on that information and they will communicate it to others in very different ways. From the position they occupy in their organizational system, their choices probably make perfect sense to them, but they may not make sense to someone in a different position.
7. Systems must continually learn and renew themselves. A vigorous adaptive organizational system remains so because of the processes of learning and self-renewal. How new members can be integrated into organizational relationships, and how cultures can be produced and sustained are important topics.
However, an organization must learn too, and this is also an important part of self renewal. It is important not only to maintain, but to expand perspectives, to try out new things, to experiment. Opening up organizational systems to learning is critical to their growth and survival. Remaining open to new ideas and opportunities to learn is not always easy or very pleasant. But the organizations that are able to do so reap great benefits.
End
|
No comments:
Post a Comment