“Experiments with children show that they quickly learn systemic thinking. Although the tools are new, it is an extremely intuitive world view. ”
Peter M Senge
The advantage of learning and applying the systemic perspective
Have you verified that many times:
- current problems to achieve your goals or to perform effectively derive from past solutions ?:
That colleague who had a full schedule of clients and they begin to diminish him. He had begun to think that his training, prestige, and sympathy were sufficient. Instead, clients did not get the attention or results they expected. You have started a recurring feedback process.
- What more effort do you make to improve your results, the more effort do you require ?:
That client who has managed to quit smoking. To relieve your stress, start smoking more than before. The more you press the more pressure you have suffered: a compensating feedback process has occurred.
- Short-term solutions that worsen in the medium and long term ?:
There is a very funny and significant metaphor published by "The New Yorker" to illustrate this case. A manager pushes with powerful tools a gigantic domino tile that threatens him from the left. You think you can now sit in your comfortable chair and relax. You do not see that the token is linked to a long series of tokens. When falling falls another that at the same time falls another and so on until the last one falls to the head…. on the right.
- very obvious solutions that don't work ?:
Imagine that a person who has no idea of navigation and is very used to driving on the ground has to move the rudder of a boat. Where would you go if you have to turn right? Most likely, it will turn right. But when you know how hydrodynamics works it will automatically move you in the opposite direction. Likewise, high-leverage changes in human systems are not obvious to those who don't understand them.
- Which slow solutions are the fastest ?:
That athlete who wants to beat the record as soon as possible. All natural systems have intrinsically optimal growth rates. Achieving the optimal mark may not be obtaining it as soon as possible. The same is true for most entrepreneurs, they want the fastest growth possible. We can cite many cases that excessive growth has led to stagnation. This is where systemic compensation processes come in.
Observing the characteristics of complex systems, biologist Lewis Thomas has said: “When we approach a complex system such as an urban center or a hamster, which has unsatisfactory details that we yearn to modify, we cannot introduce repairs with too many hopes of helping. This perception is one of the great frustrations of our century ”.
When many professionals understand that these systemic principles have contributed to frustrating many of their purposes, they can be very disappointed. It could become an excuse for inaction, to stop learning, to make decisions that make things worse…
In this case it would be the signal that they have not understood the true implication of the systemic perspective. The systemic perspective does not lead us to inaction but to action rooted in a new way of thinking. The systemic perspective is much more challenging and encouraging for learning than our usual way of approaching goals, current reality and conflicts.
What is systems thinking?
Systemic thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes and interrelationships. It is also a set of patterns and tools that have been distilled over the past century from the physical and social sciences, engineering and organizations. It is increasingly applied to systems as diverse as business, political, economic, urban, meteorological, ecological, physiological, obviously to learning and to any performance. Therefore, advanced coaching.
Systemic thinking is also a special sensitivity to the subtle interconnections that make people unique. When a person or an organization has conflicts, a coach with systemic thinking sees them originated by underlying structures and not by individual mistakes or ill will alone.
The key to systemic thinking is the principle of the lever. Find the point where acts and modifications of structures can lead to significant and lasting improvements.
Coaching with systemic thinking helps us distinguish between high and low leverage changes in complex systems and organizations. It is a great help to see through complexity the underlying structures that generate change.
The increasing complexity of the society that is coming, and that is partly already here, makes many managers think that they lack information to be more effective. On the other hand, with systemic thinking we verify that the information is not only not scarce but often it is excessive. What we need is to distinguish the important from the irrelevant.
The essence of systemic thinking lies in a change of focus: seeing interrelationships instead of linear cause-effect sequences and processes of change instead of snapshots.
At the essence level, the disciplines begin to converge. The special sensitivity of systemic thought unites them. Because we are all learners in an interdependent world. It is not necessary to focus our conscious attention on the essence of the disciplines to learn them. Actually, Tim Gallwey in The Inner Game of Tennis experiences this sensitivity. In the same way, you can verify that you do not need to make this effort to experience love, joy or peace. The essence of a discipline consists of a state of being. It is experienced naturally as the level of mastery of it is raised.
How to see and understand systemic reality
How can you understand the effects of a storm?
If you see the clouds thicken. That the sky darkens. You see lightning and hear thunder, several times, loud and close. That the leaves of the trees seem to flare…. You know it will rain soon.
You know that the storm water will run through streams, rivers, possibly some lagoon and finally reach the sea. This path can lead to destruction and sometimes even catastrophes. But you also know that after a while the sky will be clear again. The sun will shine. And that the shattered landscape will also flourish somewhere.
All of these events are separated in space and time. But they are all connected in the same pattern. Each influences the rest. Although, many times, this influence is not evident. You can only understand the effects of a storm by looking at the elements in their entirety. You would never understand it if you do it individually.
The same is true in our lives and in all personal, social, business and ecological behaviors. Invisible frames act interrelated and can take time to produce mutual effects. As we are part of this warp ourselves, it is very difficult for us to see the patterns of change. We tend to focus on isolated parts of the system.
We see only snapshots. In this way most of our deepest conflicts are not resolved.
Systemic thinking offers us a conceptual framework where total patterns are clearer and helps us modify them. It is a very powerful tool for advanced coaching.
How is reality constituted?
Reality is made up of circles. Although we usually see lines. Herein lies our limitation as systemic thinkers. Western languages favor a linear perspective with its subject-verb-object structure. And, our thinking arises from language. This language is increasingly important to face complex dynamics and strategic options that transcend the facts and allow us to see the forces that shape the changes.
The key to seeing systemic reality is to see circles of influence rather than straight lines. See circles of causality. Each circle tells a story. We see patterns that are repeated over and over again, improving or worsening situations.
Arrows represent influences.
Although the concept is very simple, it transforms our ideas and deeper language. Explain the total feedback process. Which we do not do when we think or say: I am filling a glass of cava. The meaning in this case implies one-way causality, it only describes half of the process. With the circles of causality we describe the whole.
Systemic diagram: Causal circle when filling a champagne glass with a bottle
The diagram represents a story. In this, the story consists of filling a glass of cava with a bottle that we have previously uncorked. We gradually tilt the position of the bottle as the flow of the cava eliminates the gap between the current level in the glass and the desired level….
These diagrams are applied to the representation and reading of three very frequent diagrams that constitute powerful tools for advanced coaching: reinforcement, balance and delay feedback processes. To which we dedicate article II exclusively. They are the building blocks of systemic archetypes: generic structures that contain natural patterns that control events. To which we also exclusively dedicate Article III.
Systemic archetypes allow us to see and confront the structures within which we operate to work with and modify them. They are also another extraordinary tool to face one of the biggest learning problems: the division of knowledge and specialization.
Perhaps the greatest contribution of the systemic perspective is the promise of an elegant unification of knowledge. It is this perspective that originates the implantation, increasingly ingrained, of generic disciplines and competences. As Mark Paich says, it is being verified that the same archetypes are repeated in physics, biology, psychology, business, sports, education, ecology, social sciences, personal domain, family life, business management and in advanced coaching.
