I write this blog struggling not to make it sound too academic. The subject is a topic many organizational thought leaders speak about and is foundational to implementing any of the new sciences of leadership. It also sets the stage for some upcoming topics, allowing you to understand and apply them in a much deeper way. So, here we go!

Systems are Webs of Relationships

Throughout this conversation, two visual metaphors help to imagine the organizational systems that exist all around us: the body of any living organism and the web of a spider (the observer stands at the center).

Systems, like all living organisms, are composed of parts and wholes. Parts are events, behaviors, functions (like marketing), people, or even ideas. The parts are arrayed with no particular design or logic except the relationships they have to the other parts, which can be local or global, virtual or co-located. These relationships are what make the system and establish its boundaries.

Often, when the system is hidden, we discover it when we discover the relationship that exists between two of the parts. I was recently talking with a consultant about her work and how she could apply it to healthcare. Many of her ideas and practices sounded familiar and, after looking over her website, I discovered that she is part of an intellectual system that has emerged from the Boston area (Harvard and MIT) over the last 20 years.

First Concept: Systems emerge from the dynamic relationships and interactions between their parts.

Let’s take the example of a team, a system we all participate in. The behavior of each team member (part) has an effect on the overall behavior of the team (whole). This is pretty easy to feel even if we can’t put our finger on why it happens. What we feel is the emotional system that has emerged from the interpersonal relationships between the team members. You have probably also noticed that some people are more strongly impacted by the behavior and ideas of an individual than others, they have a stronger connection within the overall system. In this way, systems can be balanced or out of balance. For those of us on the east coast who stayed up late to watch the Oscars, Monday morning we had a system out of balance due to lack of sleep.

Second Concept: All parts of a system are connected and interdependent.

One property of systems is that the system (the whole team) has an impact on each part (individuals). We experience this as team culture, identity, and context. When part of our team faces a challenge, the whole team experiences anxiety, concern, or tension. When success comes to even one individual, we all celebrate. Our connectedness leads to our interdependence: the behaviors of the parts effect the whole and the behaviors of the whole effect the parts. No one is exempt from being impacted by the system and the system is the result of the impact it makes on us.

Third Concept: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, often far greater.

Every time I talk with groups about what makes a great team the word synergy comes up. In any system, the parts gain some of their properties (vitality and integrity) from the whole system. When one part of the system is separated from the whole, it loses something. We see this all the time in our organizations, we take a member of a high-performing team and put them somewhere else in the organization to take advantage of their abilities, and the team falls apart or the person’s performance is average in their new position. No surprise, they and their team were a product of the system. It may appear to us that one person was a standout star but that is seldom the whole story. If we want what “they” have, as leaders we need to figure out what the system is doing not what the parts are doing.

Fourth Concept: Every system has characteristics or properties that none of the individual parts have.

So leaders, how can you create the conditions for healthy, vibrant, and creative systems within your organization or team? Let me leave you with two quotes to ponder, how can your actions reflect this idea?

If each part of a system is made to operate as efficiently as possible, the system as a whole will not operate as effectively as possible. The performance of a system depends more on how its parts interact than on how they act independently of each other. Russ Ackoff, Creating the Corporate Future

…the performance of an organization depends more on how the parts work together than on how they work separately; if you optimize the performance of the parts, you systematically suboptimize the performance of the whole. …the job of leaders is to manage the interactions of the parts, not their actions. Ray Stata, Chairman, Analog Devices