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Systems thinking as opposed to our analytical framing and
thinking that we're all taught in schools and rewarded for in terms of education.
In analytical thinking or analysis, we take something and
we take into parts, we try to understand the parts and
we assemble that into an understanding of the whole.
Well, and that works very well.
It's certainly is something that children do.
They take things apart and try to figure out how they work.
And then of course, they have trouble putting it back together,
but they're trying to figure it out how it works.
Systems thinking us such to do something else,
rather than analysis first that breaking things into parts.
We want to take the thing to be explained.
And we want to see how that is a part of a containing hole,
a larger hole, a larger system.
Think of concentric circles, if you will.
Rather than break this into pieces, we want to understand how this thing to be
explained is part of something else, something larger.
There are some good examples of this.
I think, if we looked, if you were looking at an automobile, and
you wanted to look at that automobile,
understand how it worked, you could take it apart, break it into parts.
There's the chassis and there's the compartment where the people sit.
There's the drive train, there's the engine, there's the wheels and the axles.
You can understand the functions of all those parts.
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You can take that car apart from now til eternity,
and you will never figure out why it is the size it is.
Why the size of vehicles has changed in the 1950s and
60s from six-passenger vehicles to four-passenger vehicles?
That has to do with the size of the families that people had.
Who's being carried in the car?
That's seeing how the car as a transportation mode for
not an individual, but the family.
And you don't understand that by taking the car apart.
You only understand that by understanding the car's role in society and
who's using it.
So there is clearly one example of a systems perspective and
how it make sense to do that.
So if you really want to understand the why questions.
Then I think you need to do this synthesis.
Take something to be explained, see it in its containing whole.
Some of the work done by Russell Ackoff would always talk about
the education system.
Why do schools and classes look the way they do?
Why do they have one teacher, and
why do they have 20, 25 to 30 students?
What's that all about?
Well, you can take it apart and you can understand how the education system works.
But understanding how the school system works in society, or the university or
the college works in society, you'll have to use systems thinking.
What is this preparing them to do?
What is being taught?
What role does that play?
And perhaps we need to do a better job of that in terms of the educational system of
our country and other countries.
But this question of understanding the how things work versus why they work and
what purpose they have.
When we want to get the purpose, we need the systems thinking piece.
>> Those are great examples.
And it makes me think of in organizations, often times there's a problem going on and
we try to figure out what it is in that division.
And it usually is connected to other things that are going on in
the organization.
So I think it's such an important reminder.
>> And it's just struck in hearing your response there as well.
When we do focus on the problems, we oftentimes know what we don't like.
And if we work to get rid of what we don't want,
it's not necessarily get the same thing as getting what you want.
So, fixing the problems or removing the problems as opposed to really
idealizing and understanding what it is we would do if we could do anything we want.
Sort of constraint free and really thinking about possibilities,
leads to different solutions.
And it's much the same with this positive framing that Rami had talked about
earlier.
So the question is, when I'm getting all the systemic components in, or
I'm looking at a whole, one of the fears that I have is,
isn't that too much information to consider?
Wouldn't it lead to paralysis because I have so much to comprehend?
>> Well, I guess there's always that question of sort of overload, but
it's a different set of questions that we're asking.
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that’s a different space, you need a different workspace to do that.
When we're trying to fine tune the production system or the delivery
system of our products and services and make sure things are efficient.
That's production mode.
That's what we do very well.
But in organizations, we also need this, I will call it discovery space.
When it's not about solving problems or fixing things, or getting rid of problems.
But understanding possibilities,
formulating the problems in a way that involves different ways of thinking.
We need that five-year-old in our meetings to talk about the playful ways of thinking
about things.
And the more we do that and expand our thinking using systems thinking,
the more we can see possibilities that normally, we're obstructed from.
We don't have the budget for that.
Back in the George Washington bridge story, long ago-
>> Just thinking of that, yes.
>> Yeah.
>> The maintenance department didn't have money to do those things,
that was beyond its budget.
So it's like going, it's going to be constrained.
If we start thinking about the resources we have, then our designs
are always going to be constrained by real time, money, talent issues.
But if we can open these things up and talk about possibilities,
then we can begin to set a goal or a purpose and plan backwards from that.
Really begin to think about, well, we may not be able to that all in one step but
where, we have a target and we can begin to approach that.
And we'll have, in a sense, more degrees of freedom,
more chance to accomplish that than if we just focus on our resource constraints.
>> That's interesting that we think that we have many roots to the same solution,
and not just one way or the highway.
Usually, in the meeting, it's like that.
My way or the highway if I'm the loudest.
>> Right. >> Right.
And as I'm listening to you.
We are talking about very important concepts here in systems thinking.
You're talking about analysis and synthesis, right?
So that kind of, as I was listening to you, Dana.
I thought of an example that came from work back at me.
So I was working in this organization a couple of years earlier.
And there was a time when there were a lot of people leaving a particular group.
And more often than not, we were told that compensation was the problem.
People are leaving because they are not getting enough monetary compensation, or
because of the competition from the market.
So analysis, or an analytical way of thinking is to break down compensation.
And think about what are the various components of compensation,
what's the take home, how can we better what we already have?
But a systemic or synthetic thinking would be to look at compensation from
the context of the larger system.
As the context of the reward system available in the organization,
not just as compensation, but what are the various monetary and non monetary rewards?
So that becomes a larger system.
And then thereon in the organization.
So when you start looking at it in the larger context, and in this particular
case, we discovered that it was not always the compensation that was the problem.
It was the way that employees perceived how they were recognized.
Not just in monetary ways, but also non-monetary ways.
It can be training.
Just a pat on the back from your supervisor, periodic feedback.
So there are a lot of things that we were able to really identify and
reframe the problem than just looking at it as compensation as a main problem.
>> It's interesting, you said that because Dana,
I was discussing with you the other day how, when I was a couch and
a consultant get called and we have parallel notes.
But usually it's a person, fix the person and all the problems would go away.
>> Right.
>> This relates to how we began this class as well.
That we wanted to emphasize and
talk about the system rather than individualizing things.
So I think that's a good segue into wrapping up this first class.
>> Yeah, my last word on this is that it comes across even
in the experiential exercise when we went out and
tried to look at something familiar through unfamiliar eyes.
That I think the take-home for me is that, we often,
in our meetings and groups and organizations,
end up with sort of win-lose struggles, a zero-sum game.
Well, if I'm going to give more to you, where am I taking it away from?
And this win-lose game and
frame is something we oftentimes find ourselves enmeshed in.
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Braking that frame into win-win solutions that, yeah, we can do that and
we can do this if we reconceptualize this.
Systems thinking helps us to do that, reframing helps us to do that.
Win-win solutions are all about adopting that framework.
>> My take away and I'm picking up the thread from you,
I loved how we learned about the discovery frames.
I loved the stories that you shared.
I loved the way we were able to look at
how different frames influences the way we perceive a situation.
And we also think about a certain problem or a challenge.
So for me, a big part is the permission to myself
to try on different frames, experiment with it.
And as I experiment,
also be aware of the reactions that I'm getting from the environment.
So that's been my biggest takeaway from this discussion.
>> And when I think of it as a reflect on how we started this discussion
about the module in the first place, I think in our very own small way,
we are also going to that continuous learning phase and themes.
Because when we started designing this module, what did we do?
We broke it down into parts.
What are the parts that we need to cover in this module?
That's how our initial conversations were.
And as we moved along, as we took these conversations to the next level,
all of a sudden, we're not looking at the part.
We're looking at okay, so what's the overall message that we want to come in,
what are the things that we want to do in here, what's the bigger picture?
So for me, our discussions that are happening through our journey
together is like a mini-subset of what we are talking about.
>> Real time.
>> Like embodying real time continuous learning in our little team.
>> Absolutely.
Alan Barstow, Ph.D.Director and Senior Scholar
Dana Kaminstein, Ph.D.Affiliated Faculty
Ramya Kumar, MSOD, PGDHRM, SHRM-SCPSenior Consultant - Organizational Learning, Development & Change
Amrita V. SubramanianExecutive Coach & Senior Consultant, Doctoral candidate (Ph.D. 2019)
