Work on the System

When I say “work on system,” I mean influencing factors that contribute to patterns of events and interactions in your organization. Making work work better.  So, how do you work on the system? Attend to creating an environment where great work is a...

Empowering Leadership

Some pundits proclaim that leadership rests on charisma, the ability to create a vision, or “presence.” Teams do need a vision and a compelling goal.  But do teams need one charismatic leader? No.Teams need leaders of a different sort. Teams need leaders...

Policy Swings and Oscillating Systems

Leaders take action to solve problem in their organizations. They might send out a directive, announce a new policy, or re-organize the department. But, every solutions has the seed for another set of problems. When those problems show up, they reverse course. Policy...

Still No Silver Bullets

Not so very long ago, I made my living writing code. My colleagues and I did our best to understand what our customers needed, and to write code that was easy for other programmers to understand, solid, defect free.  When our managers asked us how long it would take...

Seeing System Dynamics: Beyond Budget Reports

There’s a buzz about systems thinking in the software world these days. Systems thinking isn’t new. Jerry Weinberg’s An Introduction to General Systems Thinking was first published in 1975. Senge’s Fifth Discipline came out in the 90s. Still, we haven’t turned the...

10 Obstacles Middle Managers Face

It’s easy to be critical of middle managers. Some people view middle management as little more than a way station between “real” work and the executive suite. However, I believe middle managers have an essential role in enabling people and enhancing...

Seeing System Problems: Expand Your Field of Vision

One of the biggest mistakes people make is attributing system problems to individuals (and individual problems to the system).  If you try to solve the problem on the wrong level, you are doomed to fail. Here’s a simple yet classic example of trying to solve a...

Curing System Blindness

I’ve been writing about seeing systems, and got to thinking about a company I did some work for a few years ago–because they were a great example of how focusing on events leads to blame and prevents people from seeing patterns. Here’s the story....

Bifurcated Concentration of Knowledge Doesn’t Serve

We’ve long lived with the assumption that the people at the top of the organizations are the ones who understand the business.  They understand the market, the product, the customers.  They hold the financial information about how the company makes money and the...

Influencing the Pattern: A Systems Approach

Systems drive behavior. Therefore, if you want to change behavior in an organization you need to understand the factors that influence the current pattern. An Example The managers in an organization have decided that they want the productivity and morale benefits of...

Musing on Organizational Change

A while back, I sat in on a birds-of-a-feather session on organizational change.  The main theme was bemoaning the difficulty changing even mid-sized organizations. When people talk about how hard it is to bring change there’s a tendency to blame:  people who...

system blindness

One of the big problems I see in organizations is that managers who want to improve productivity pull the wrong levers. For example, one company I know of decided to improve performance by ranking everyone in the company from 1…n, and firing the bottom 10%. Not...

Now *this* is an individual problem

I’ve pointed out in a few posts that the environment (system, processes, structures, culture) and management are a huge factor in performance in organizaitons. And they are. But sometimes, it is an individual problem.Like this woman who works in a health care...

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