Peter Senge (" The fifth discipline ", Ediciones Granica, Buenos Aires) says that if we put a frog in boiling water, it immediately tries to get out.
But if we put it in water at room temperature, say 21 degrees, the frog does nothing and even seems to have a good time. As the temperature rises, the frog is increasingly stunned and eventually dies even though nothing prevents it from getting out of the water. Why? Because your internal apparatus for detecting threats to survival is prepared for sudden changes in your environment but not for slow and gradual changes. The concept of mental models dates back to ancient times, but the phrase was coined by Scottish psychologist Kenneth Craik in the 1940s.
According to this and other authors, short-term changes in routine and daily mental patterns accumulate over time and become long-term, deeply ingrained changes in beliefs.
This same phenomenon can be frequent in companies: gradual decreases in market shares; lower productivity rates that, in the short term, have little effect on results; growing dissatisfaction in the workforce that is attributed to recent events without analyzing whether it is due to specific actions limited in time, or to structural situations; And so we could go through all business functions. Senge adds that learning from experience can be an illusion, because sometimes we do not perceive the consequences of our actions, which transcend the learning horizon and affect the entire business system and last for years and even decades.
Systemic thinking, the perception of the structural whole and not only of the partial event, aims - and succeeds - to help the strategic approach in the medium and long term instead of being content with the resolution of problems - tactics - in the short term. We could also express this antagonism in terms of controlling results by controlling resources, versus the position that renounces control of resources to achieve more effective control of results. Using a term from Peter Drucker, managing is doing the right things while leadership is doing the right things.
It is relatively common to find business groups in which passively listen or debate and argue. Complex thoughts and questions cannot be integrated by any of these means, because these approaches promote comparison and criticism. If from a situation in which the identity and the maintenance of pre-defined ideas prevail, one moves to another in which all the important ideas and their relationships are modeled and graphically represented, real consensus can be reached on the best decision possible.
Groupthink modeling depersonalizes assertiveness and enables the team to come up with non-compromise solutions. It is much more effective to show a model with our ideas and those of the group than to try to explain them verbally. By constructing “explicit models” of thinking we are understanding our own mind maps and those of others.
We all have a mental activity that we deal with consciously or unconsciously. Thinking is more than the conscious process. In reality, thought comprises a wide variety of mental models, or meaningful connections buried in our brains, that guide our opinions, decisions, and actions. To improve our ability to think we need to be aware of these hidden mental operations and then learn how to generate better systems of thought. If we are able to suspend our habitual thought patterns and introduce new mental disciplines, we are stimulating new approaches that can help us develop intuition and perception.
In companies, we often mix rational analysis with instincts, intuitions and hunches to get our work done. We all have a very wide range of implicit or tacit knowledge. With the graphic representation through idonos (ideas + icons) we can try to make explicit or conscious many of our implicit knowledge.
In practice, the application of systems thinking to business situations can be done in four phases:
- Describe the event. - We begin by expressing the different thoughts and intuitions The simple representation of them can bring us clarity. Let us think of a company whose normal fulfillment department is becoming saturated. The company also has another express delivery department. For these cases, whatever the cost, the company has as a rule to deliver the orders anywhere in Spain in less than 48 hours. To meet this deadline, it is willing to incur extraordinary expenses and the staff is acquiring the culture of knowing that efforts made in the “eleventh hour” are paid or are especially recognized. When customers become aware of the situation, more and more they pass their orders as urgent.Represent the situation on a graph.- In the previous description it can be seen that most of the available energy is concentrated on solving the problems of the moment. If we collect this situation in a graph, we can extend it from the past, through the present and project it into the future. Create a sentence that describes the situation. In this case, it could be: "We function well when it comes to solving problems as they arise, but why are these problems becoming more frequent and intense?" What is the cause? Identify the structure.- Reviewing all the above, representing it graphically, and also by means of "Post-It" type adhesive labels, it allows to go from the description of the question to the creation of a diagram showing the structure.
The professionals who work in this area and with these tools act as facilitators in group meetings in which all participants, without exception, contribute their contributions and all are represented on the self-adhesive labels. The facilitator informs the group that they are not allowed to question any of the contributions; you can only ask the meaning of them if it is not clear. Next, the facilitator invites the participants to look for associations between all the ideas, forming groups or clusters. Finally, using lines of arrows, the interrelationships between the various clusters are analyzed while delving into the causes.
As facilitators, we have to manage the dynamics of the group. Although the system seems objective, we cannot forget that there are feelings, value judgments that may not even be perceived by the participants. The facilitator must be aware of this reality and try to ensure that the group does not fall into an unproductive dynamic that could block their work. Sometimes, a group can quite agree with the ideas that are represented graphically but when it comes to doing the groupings (clusters) arise different perspectives that can give rise to confrontations or discussions. If properly channeled, they can generate other enriching insights.
The advantages of processes of this type can be:
- Sense of ownership. The contribution of each person can be clearly identified as well as the value of that to arrive at the “final product”. Group memory. The process, its starting uncertainties, the interrelationships are remembered and considered because they have been represented graphically. Reconstruction of conflict areas. This method allows the different contributions of the participants to be used to broaden the field of alternatives. No defensive positions are presented when differences are discussed at the beginning of the meeting. Integration of different perspectives. Often times, the people who make up a team, whether they are managers, middle managers or groups that make up different business functions, have different perceptions and values. If we want to solve a business problem in a coherent way, we must combine the different contributions with the best possible alignment, preserving the richness of diversity.
Decision-making in companies increasingly needs measures or creative advances for which systems thinking prepares the way.
