Communications

Isn’t it interesting how it often takes someone from far away to introduce you to someone in your own neighborhood? Earlier this year, one of our friends from the Netherlands contacted us to suggest a speaker for our annual conference. Each year, a team of Dutch educators makes the journey to the U.S. for our event, and this year, they were hoping we would invite Andy Hargreaves to keynote.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t familiar with Andy, so I Googled him. Imagine my surprise to find that he is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College—which happens to be in the next town over from the Pegasus offices. Small world!

The more I learned about Andy, the more obvious it became that we had to bring him to our audience. Although he is mainly known for his groundbreaking work on educational change, Andy has also done research on sustainable leadership and is currently engaged in an exciting project on organizations in business, healthcare, education, and sports that perform “beyond expectations.” We were delighted when Andy accepted our invitation to present at the November conference.

My colleague Keith McKinnon and I recently had an opportunity to visit Andy and get a preview of his keynote presentation. In the brief video below, Andy touches on some of the themes that he will explore in greater depth on November 9.

You can also click below to read some of Andy’s writings:    

On Sustainable Leadership
This piece appeared in a publication for independent schools, but the principles hold more generally.
This piece appeared in an academic journal.

On “The Fourth Way," a framework for sustainable education reform that integrates teacher professionalism, community engagement, government policy, and accountability. 

Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.

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By Michelle Holliday

Here in Quebec, we are fortunate to have thousands of lakes. The tradition is to spend summer vacation splashing in the water at a lakeside cottage. Tragically, this tradition has been threatened in the past several years. Household use of phosphate-based lawn fertilizers and cleaning products has stimulated massive growth of blue-green algae in the lakes, which has choked out all other forms of aquatic life and turned the water toxic. It's poisonous enough to kill a dog.

It struck me one day how closely this situation mirrors the state of our financial system. We've over-stimulated growth to the point that all other forms of life are being choked out, and our biosphere has become toxic to us.

This isn't simply to say that we need to aim for zero-growth, as many in the sustainability movement propose. Physicist and author Fritjof Capra points out that, “Growth, of course, is characteristic of all life.” But he goes on to offer an important qualification: “[I]n the living world, it has not only a quantitative but also a qualitative meaning. For a human being, for example, to grow means to develop to maturity, not only by getting bigger, but also qualitatively through inner growth. The same is true for all living systems.”

How, then, do we develop an economic model that includes an appropriate level—and type—of growth?

Part of the solution may be found in a model called the Adaptive Cycle. Developed by Buzz Hollinger and elaborated by Frances Westley, the model shows that natural systems exhibit a continuous four-part process (typically depicted as a figure eight) of:

1. Germination followed by
2. Growth followed by
3. Consolidation followed by
4. Death and renewal, returning to germination, and so on.

In our economies, we have plenty of germination, growth, and consolidation. What our system generally lacks is sufficient death and renewal, with resources returned fully into the germination stage. The solution, then, may not be the total absence of growth—it may instead be a proportionate increase in economic death and renewal.

Getting more comfortable with the concept of death and renewal may not be as bad as it sounds. Some options might include:

1. Producing only those goods that can be returned into the system fully and relatively quickly as germination (cradle-to-cradle manufacturing); making such “good” products cheap and “bad” products very expensive.
2. Increasing the proportion of economic value generated by intangibles, which can germinate, grow, and consolidate without taxing the living system. This trend is already underway, both with the expansion of the technological and service sectors of the economy and with the individual shift toward meaning, experience, and connection.
3. Reducing the pressure on companies to grow rapidly and incessantly (removing their legal obligation to do so, encouraging new forms of governance, such as cooperatives, and revising the general understanding of the purpose of organizations).
4. Allowing failing companies to die so that the diversity of the economy is preserved—and so that society is not obligated to prop up companies that are “too big to fail.”
5. Fundamentally reforming the financial industry (the debt and speculative markets, in particular) so that: (a) it no longer overstimulates growth unnaturally and faster than that growth can be processed through to renewal, and (b) it no longer jeopardizes an economy's resilience with excessive debt-to-GDP.  See www.slowmoney.org for one example of how we might make this shift.

With changes of this sort, economic value could continue to grow without limit, but material production would ideally net out to zero growth, in what some economists refer to as “dynamic equilibrium” or a “steady-state economy.”

This vision raises the challenge of determining just how much growth would bring us to an equilibrium state. And it may be that the Earth will give us the answer. As it stands, when consumer spending falls, it triggers the US Federal Reserve Bank to lower interest rates in order to stimulate more spending. Instead, perhaps we'll need a system in which any reduction in the health of the biosphere would trigger a tightening of financial stimulus to growth.

Michelle Holliday has 20 years of experience in brand strategy, with particular expertise in authentic marketing. She founded Cambium Consulting after observing that the predominant organizational concepts and ways of working are neither optimal nor sustainable. And she is driven by the desire to help usher in an expanded set of beliefs and practices based on a view of organizations as living systems.

lake photo: Ian Britton

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by Janice Molloy

How can one person fit so many thought-provoking ideas into four minutes and fifty-eight seconds? When I went to film Peter Senge last week as a preview of his keynote presentation at the Systems Thinking in Action Conference in November, I thought he would give a few interesting tidbits about the impact of systems thinking in the world today and we'd call it a wrap. I mean, what can someone possibly say in the amount of time it takes to go through a car wash?

And, to tell the truth, while Peter was speaking, I was too distracted by the lighting and the camera angle to pay much attention to what he was saying. So imagine my delight when I returned to the office, uploaded the footage to my trusted MacBook Pro, and watched. In less than five minutes, Peter manages to make profound points about:

• health as a systemic phenomenon
• the need for businesses to balance long-term and short-term interests
• the increasing importance of having a systems perspective
• the surprising things kids—and the rest of us—can accomplish by understanding the systems we help to create

So take 4:58 to watch the video below. I'll be interested to hear if you find it as motivating as I do.

Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.

Recently, my husband and I celebrated our 50th birthdays with a hot air balloon ride. Although the intent was for pure fun, systems thinking crept into my experience. How? To be honest, I saw systems everywhere I looked: in the patterns on the ground, the reflections in the bodies of water, and the interconnectedness of the natural environment. Here are some of the “Aha!” moments from our flight.

Seeing Whole Systems: As we lifted off and floated over very familiar terrain, we were struck by how little we actually see while driving in a car. There were wetlands, streams, roads, and buildings we never knew existed. The experience reminded me of the famous Einstein quote, “The problems we have created in the world today will not be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” Why? Because we cannot see the whole system unless we rise to a new level of understanding.

Discerning Patterns: At the altitude of a balloon ride, the patterns of the land stand out in utter clarity. The evening was perfect for flight—warm with no wind. Shortly after takeoff, our pilot dipped us into Lake Fairlee, taking on several inches of water in the basket. As we lifted off again, he asked us to stand at one end to help the water drain. A column of water droplets drained from the corner in a pattern that defies description. Our pilot used those drops throughout the flight to identify imperceptible patterns in the air current that gently pushed us along.

Changing Perspectives to Identify New Leverage Points: One of the most challenging aspects of hot air balloon flight is locating a safe and appropriate place to land that is convenient for the chase crew. As we crossed the Connecticut River into New Hampshire, our pilot had an idea of where we might land, but the air current moved us in a different direction. However, as we moved farther away from the river, the cooler air flowing downhill pushed us back, and we ultimately landed where he had originally expected. He just kept responding to the feedback from the system.

Understanding Delays in the System: Hot air balloon flight is completely based on physics: the movement of air currents, the pull of gravity, and the fact that hot air rises. The propane burner, of course, provides the heat to create the hot air for lift. However, the lift is not immediate. As the pilot maneuvered to land in what appeared to be a fairly tight spot surrounded by trees, he would apply heat to just barely carry us up and over those trees. I kept thinking we would crash into the treetops because I didn’t understand the delay in the lift. I was impressed with our pilot’s patience and deft choreography.

My recommendation? Take a hot air balloon ride some day. It is a concrete and visceral example of systems thinking in action, and it will create a powerful metaphor for what is required to truly be a systems thinker.

Marty Jacobs, president of Systems In Sync, has been teaching and consulting for 20 years, applying a systems thinking approach to organizations. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Marty received her M.S. in Organization and Management from Antioch New England Graduate School in Keene, NH. She can be reached at www.systemsinsync.com or marty@systemsinsync.com.

© Marty Jacobs 2010

Hot air balloon photo

By Chetan Dhruve

In part 1 of this post, guest blogger Chetan Dhruve introduced the idea that, intentional or not, all organizations are “dictatorships.” In part 2, he explores how this structure can lead to crises such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and presents ideas for shifting this dynamic.  

As you know, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster claimed 11 lives and resulted in one of the world’s worst-ever oil spills. What went wrong?

There were equipment failures, of course. But the truth is that subordinates who knew about the dangers were pressured into shutting up. An article in Propublica says, “[M]anagement flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.” The article adds, “A 2004 inquiry [BP’s own] found a pattern of intimidating workers who raised safety or environmental concerns.”

But how do workers feel intimidated? Who, exactly, intimidates them? The answer is, of course, their bosses. Here’s an example of how these pressures are exerted and play out in real life, on the ground.

In August 2006, Stuart Sneed, a pipeline safety technician, found a crack in a transit line just five months after a 200,000-gallon oil spill in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Because of dangerous sparks from work near the cracked line, Sneed ordered the work to stop. He assumed that his employer would be happy, given that he had flagged a safety issue so soon after a major spill. But rather than being praised, here’s what happened to Sneed:

“[I]nstead of receiving compliments for his prudence, Sneed—who had also complained that week that pipeline inspectors were faking their reports—was scolded by his supervisor for stopping the work. According to a report from BP’s internal employer arbitrators, Sneed’s supervisor, who hadn’t inspected the crack himself, said he believed it was superficial.

The next day, according to multiple witness accounts and the report, that supervisor singled out Sneed and harassed him at a morning staff briefing. Within a couple of hours, the supervisor sent emails to colleagues soliciting complaints or safety concerns that would justify Sneed’s firing. Two weeks later, after a trumped up safety infraction, he was gone.”

In other words, Sneed’s boss eliminated the messenger of bad news—precisely the fate of dissenters in dictatorships. Moreover, whistleblowers are usually shunned by the job market. It’s incredible: people who should be re-hired in a jiffy have doors slammed shut in their faces. Why is this? Because every organization is a dictatorship, and dictatorships do not like dissenters.

In May of this year, Sneed wrote in the comments section of a Propubica article: “I stood up and told the truth about BP and their fraudulent careless programs at Greater Prudhoe Bay. My intentions were not to attack BP as a company, only to expose safety issues that if not corrected would surely cost them and the people working for them much harm. Their way of thanking me on two separate occasions, years apart, was only to make sure I was blacklisted and that I would never work again in the Alaskan Oilfields.”

This July, an article in The New York Times stated, “A confidential survey of workers on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded showed that many of them were concerned about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems.” A worker was quoted as saying, “The company is always using fear tactics. All these games and your mind gets tired.”

The reality is that fear is present in all organizations, not just BP. But we have a mistaken notion that a culture of fear is deliberately fostered by managers, when in fact fear is an emergent property of the workplace dictatorship system. As a result, tragedies have happened time and again. Often, these disasters are blamed on the lack of a “safety culture” in organizations, most notably NASA for the Challenger and Columbia accidents.

However, when you delve deep into the investigation reports of such cases, you inevitably find that a safety culture is absolutely not lacking. Far from it. Experts lower down the organization hierarchy always know when safety is being endangered. But their expertise is disregarded and trampled upon in pursuit of “higher” organizational goals such as profit or politics.

Redesigning Our Organizations for Freedom

It’s not that we’re unaware of these issues. Hence, all kinds of efforts are made at “empowering” employees—whistleblower legislation, leadership training, assertiveness training, seemingly flat hierarchies, and anything else you might care to throw at the problem. But all these efforts have failed and will continue to fail, because the system hasn’t changed. To change the behavior of people, we need to change the system.

So how do we get subordinates to behave freely, and bosses to behave as real leaders, not dictators? The answer is quite simple: We need to redesign our organizations so that the emergent property of the system is freedom. And the way to do that is to give subordinates the right to vote for their bosses.

If you have all kinds of reservations about this apparently insane idea, let me end by asking: Would you like to have the right to vote for your boss? Would it change the way you conduct yourself in the workplace?

Chetan Dhruve is the author of Why Your Boss Is Programmed to Be a Dictator: A Book for Anyone Who Has a Boss or Is a Boss (Marshall Cavendish, 2007). He has worked for IBM, Cisco Systems, and the Department for International Development. He is also the cofounder of several Internet start-ups. Chetan has an MBA from Cass Business School (London), an MA in international journalism from City University (London), and a BSc in Mathematics, Physics, and Electronics from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore University.

Photo of oil on water by Creativity103

By Chetan Dhruve

If you’ve worked for any length of time, you’ve almost certainly had a bad boss. A bad boss can blight our existence in a way that no one else can.

The thing is, although bad bosses are a common phenomenon the world over, we still react the same way when we have one. We say, “My boss is bad.” The implication is that it’s the fault of the individual boss. But since bad bosses are everywhere and have been around practically forever, it’s time to address the issue in a radically different manner. We need to ask: “Rather than bosses being individually bad, is there something about the system that automatically produces bad bosses?”

So instead of blaming individuals, let’s examine the system. As a reader of the Leverage Points blog, you’re already familiar with systems thinking (ST). But ST has many variants, offshoots, and philosophies. Hence please bear with me while I describe the version of ST I’m going to be using—the version developed by the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

The Bertalanffian System

In this version of ST, a system is defined as an entity that maintains its existence due to the mutual interaction of its parts. The critical part of this definition is the word “interaction”—without the interaction, the entity cannot exist.

Take water as an example. Water is a system—without the interaction between hydrogen and oxygen, water cannot exist. A property of water—liquidity—is termed an “emergent property.” This is because water emerges from the interaction of its parts (hydrogen and oxygen). The emergent property of liquidity cannot be found in the constituent parts, which are gases. It’s quite incredible, when you think about it, that a gas interacting with another gas produces a liquid.

What does this have to do with you and your boss? Well, every human relationship is a system, because the existence of a relationship depends on the interaction of its parts (human beings). Since all human relationships are systems, the relationship between you and your boss is also a system. What kind of system is it? To answer this question, let’s look at what bosses are called in the workplace.

Bosses in today’s organizations are labeled “leaders”—team leader, group leader, project leader, and so on. Presumably this is done so that bosses behave as leaders. But are bosses really leaders? To find out, we first need to define the word “leader.”

In the context of interpersonal relationships, there’s only one objective definition: A leader is someone’s who’s elected to lead by those s/he is leading. You can be a tremendous orator, a great visionary, an inspiring figure, a consensus-builder, or whatever. But if you’ve not been elected, you’re not a leader.

Similarly, let’s define “dictator.” A dictator is someone with power over you, over whom you have no voting rights. Hence, your boss is a dictator by definition. It’s important to understand that this is true of all bosses—not just the nasty ones. Further, because your boss is a dictator, you are a subject. And the relationship between you and your boss is a dictatorship system.

What are the emergent properties of a dictatorship system? For the subjects, it’s fear. For the dictator, it’s the abuse of power. At the workplace, fear doesn’t have to be body-shaking terror. It could be something as simple as someone not speaking up in a meeting. Remember this is an emergent property of the boss-subordinate relationship—the subordinate could be a very assertive person outside of work. Power abuse doesn’t mean being nasty; it could be your boss stating, “Any questions?” in a way that means, “I don’t want any.” Again, this lack of openness is an emergent property—this boss could be perfectly nice and approachable outside of work.

There’s more to this dynamic. Sometimes, subordinates do muster up the courage to speak, only to be labeled “whistleblowers.” They lose their jobs and have their careers ruined because the dictatorship system hits back with a vengeance. The consequences, while terrible for the individual whistleblower, can be disastrous for organizations too. Take, for example, the recent BP oil spill.

(Check here for the second part of this post, in which Chetan explores how this organizational structure can lead to crises such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and presents ideas for shifting this counterproductive dynamic.)

Chetan Dhruve is the author of Why Your Boss Is Programmed to Be a Dictator: A Book for Anyone Who Has a Boss or Is a Boss (Marshall Cavendish, 2007). He has worked for IBM, Cisco Systems, and the Department for International Development. He is also the cofounder of several Internet start-ups. Chetan has an MBA from Cass Business School (London), an MA in international journalism from City University (London), and a BSc in Mathematics, Physics, and Electronics from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore University.

 Chain photo by Toni Lozano

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By Gregory Hennessy

There’s been a lot of media coverage lately about an apparent dispute between meteorologists and climatologists regarding the evidence of climate change (here's an example). Precipitating the most recent storm of opinion has been the release of a survey by the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Of the nearly 600 members of the American Meteorological Society who completed at least part of the survey, nearly half responded that they did not believe global warming was happening (25%) or that they did not know whether it was happening (21%). Given the visible role that meteorologists play in informing the public (they are largely TV weather forecasters), their perspective plays an important role in how the public forms its opinions on climate change.

On several occasions, I have heard a meteorologist defend denial of climate change through some variation of the argument “I know all too well that beyond four or five days out, our forecast models are meaningless . . . how on Earth am I supposed to believe a model that goes 40 or more years into the future?” For example, see CNN’s Chad Myers. (In this particular clip, Mr. Myers goes so far as to accuse climatologists of inventing climate change for their own personal financial gain). And in a sense they are right—it would be foolish to use a short-term local forecast model to evaluate what might happen 40 or more years into the future. But that doesn’t mean that NO model can be used to forecast 40 years out.

The factors that go into modeling long-term trends and dynamics are different from those of modeling short-term dynamics. Different relationships are important. Different trade-offs matter. Different models are needed.

Consider business models. The model needed to manage a business over the next two weeks is different from the one needed to manage the next two months, which in turn is different from the one needed to manage the next two years. Over a two-week period, cash flow may be the most important consideration, and a good model is going to track expenses and income in meticulous detail. If my horizon is two months, finances still matter, but operational concerns are likely a more important element of the model. And while finances and operations will make an appearance in a strategic model looking at the next two years, competition, market changes, and technological evolution are bound to play a much more central role.

The two-week cash flow model will be largely worthless for forecasting cash flow two years out. Too much will have changed. But that does not negate the value and validity of a two-year model that focuses on long-term concerns.

We already know this, though. Even the climate change deniers know this. And here’s how. Suppose someone is a motor sports fan. Ask her to forecast the winner of the next big race. See if she thinks her forecasted winner is guaranteed to win. “Well, no, there are no guarantees” will be the likely answer. Then ask her to forecast the season champion. She will have no trouble identifying a small number of likely champions, maybe even just one or two. But how can she predict who will win the championship, if she can’t predict the winner of the next race?

You can do the same thing with any sports. Can you predict with certainty who the winners will be for this week’s baseball (or football or basketball) games? No. But does that stop you from predicting who will make the playoffs?

Card games, board games . . . you can use most any situation that plays out over time to highlight the fact that short-term forecasting is fundamentally different from long-term forecasting, and that limitations related to a short-term forecast in no way negate the ability to forecast over the longer term. Other factors might, but mere shortcomings of short-term models are not among them.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to listen to climatologists tell me about the weather over the next few days, and I’m not going to listen to meteorologists tell me about climate change.

Greg Hennessy is a consultant with Forio Business Simulations in San Francisco, CA. He has previously been an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company and was on the faculty of Shell Oil’s Learning Center. Greg earned an MS in management with a concentration in system dynamics and applied economics from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and an MS in social science from the California Institute of Technology.

Global Warming Predictions Map was prepared by Robert A. Rohde from publicly available data.

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By Janice Molloy

In the best-selling book Good to Great, author Jim Collins introduced a notion that should strike a chord with anyone familiar with systems thinking: the “flywheel.” A flywheel is a heavy metal disk mounted on an axle that helps a machine maintain a regular speed. It takes a lot of effort to get a flywheel going, but once it has built up a certain amount of momentum, it is hard to stop.

In systems language, the flywheel is a reinforcing process, a dynamic that builds on itself over time, a virtuous cycle (except, of course, when it is running in the opposite direction than we want it to, but that’s a different story!). Collins uses this metaphor to illustrate the process through which organizations launch and sustain lasting success: “No matter how short or long it took, every good-to-great transformation followed the same basic pattern—accumulating momentum, turn by turn of the flywheel—until buildup transformed into breakthrough.”
 
It’s no secret that the past several years have proven challenging across the board. From economic meltdown to environmental disasters, we’ve all been affected by the complex, big-systems crises that have rocked our world. Things haven’t been much easier on an organizational level. Most of us are facing the challenge of doing more with less, of pushing harder for each small victory, of tackling higher levels of intricacy and urgency in everything we do.

But what if we could set that flywheel in motion in our organizations and lives? What if we could make changes at the structural level—real, fundamental shifts—to turn vicious cycles into virtuous ones? What if we could see underlying trends and intervene before they reached a tipping point? How might things be different if we could understand the role we play in creating the situations we are a part of—and learn to think and act differently to achieve the results we want?
 
In designing this year’s Systems Thinking in Action® Conference, “Fueling New Cycles of Success,” we’ve assembled a stellar line-up of speakers and other contributors to introduce and explore proven tools, inspiring ideas, and hard-fought lessons for accelerating momentum in a positive direction. Keynote presenters include Dayna Baumeister, Andy Hargreaves, Daniel H. Kim, Frances Moore Lappé, and Peter Senge. To enhance the experience, Kelvy Bird will capture the plenary content in vivid graphic recordings, and Tim Merry and Marc Durkee will enliven the proceedings with poetry and music. We’ll be adding videos of many of the conference contributors throughout the summer; see the end of this post for a clip of the amazing Frances Moore Lappé.

As Jim Collins remarked, “When people begin to feel the magic of momentum—when they begin to see tangible results, when they can feel the flywheel beginning to build speed—that’s when the bulk of people line up to throw their shoulders against the wheel and push.” At this November’s conference, we will share ways to spark that magic through the power of systems thinking. 

Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.

Join Pegasus this November in Boston for Systems Thinking in Action: Fueling New Cycles of Success. Meet fellow systems thinkers from around the globe. Keynotes presenters include Peter Senge, Daniel H. Kim, Frances Moore Lappé, and more.

Visit www.SystemsThinkingInAction.com for detailed program and registration information.

By Mark Graban

An editorial written by an American Airlines pilot in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram caught my attention ("Unintended consequences of the Passenger Bill of Rights"). The pilot makes the case that Congress's actions to prevent multi-hour passenger delays on the tarmac give the airlines incentive to proactively cancel flights rather than face the risk of million-dollar fines for a single flight. The result is that, rather than simply being delayed, passengers end up stranded, often not able to book another flight until the following day.

The pilot writes:

"The Passenger Bill of Rights is the wrong answer to the right question that demonstrates two important points. First, a simplistic legislative solution is completely inadequate to a complex problem like tarmac delays.

And second, for all who lobbied for this legislation based on a handful of overpublicized and anecdotally enlarged tarmac tales, when you're in line waiting to rebook your travel, remember that you got what you asked for: You're not waiting on the tarmac. You're simply not going anywhere."

Well-intended actions often lead to unintended consequences. This is a core lesson of the system dynamics field popularized by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. I was fortunate to take a course on this topic during my graduate studies at MIT. We learned many lessons of simple actions that, while locally helpful, made the system worse.

One classic example was towns along the Mississippi River that built levees to keep flood waters back. As our professor said, your town's levee only had to be an inch taller than the levee of the town across the river. This led to a levee arms race that inevitably pushed flooding further upstream. The further upstream, the worse the flooding. Locally brilliant, globally suboptimal.

In the case of the airlines, policy makers framed the problem as "passengers shouldn't have to wait without food, water, or working toilets." At the time, the airlines couldn't create a compelling and workable plan either for providing water, food, and toilets or for calling a plane back to the gate temporarily, so Congress stepped in with a "solution" that sounded great as a sound bite. But now you might be more likely to miss the start of a vacation altogether instead of being delayed for three hours.

We can see similar overly simplistic thinking in healthcare. In the United Kingdom, the problem was seen as patients waiting too long in the "Accident & Emergency" department. So the government set an arbitrary target of a 4-hour limit for waiting in A&E.

Hospitals responded in many cases with dysfunctional behavior--unintended consequences. Ambulances were kept parked just outside the door with the patient still inside so that, by a technicality, the 4-hour clock was not yet ticking. Or, patients were admitted unnecessarily, even if they still hadn't seen a doctor, tying up a bed that might have been needed by another patient who hadn't yet hit the 4-hour limit. Instead of improving the overall flow, a simple "solution" was created that didn't take the whole system into account.

Whether it's an airline, factory, or hospital, we need to combine lean with a system dynamics view of our work and value streams. Instead of local solutions that harm the whole, we need to avoid the "quick fix" and the "easy answer" that might cause more harm than good.

As we move forward with the Passengers' Bill of Rights, here's a chance to see if the government practices PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act). If the law isn't working (or the unintended consequences are worse than the benefit), Congress should kill the law. Now I'm being overly simplistic, eh?

Mark Graban is a senior fellow at the Lean Enterprise Institute and is the author of the book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction, winner of a 2009 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award. Mark is the founder and lead contributor of LeanBlog.org, where a longer version of this post originally appeared.

by Ross Leadbetter

The traditional campfire has a natural draw. In my experience, a warm campfire is a simple invitation to gather around and talk.

Systems tools and processes are natural gathering points as well. Like a campfire or a friendly game of cards, they create a purposeful visual focus that is concentrated enough to be productive while social enough to allow constructive, generative conversation.

Having a group gather around a large piece of paper on a table or a whiteboard on a wall and draw out a story or concept using causal loops or behavior over time graphs creates a loosely coupled, productive dynamic. The drawing is centered and thus a focal point. It is also impartial and non-emotional--it is a simple diagram that people work and rework together to construct a meaning that everyone can share.

A systems diagram prompts discussion and action, and it stays around well after the words have been spoken. It is a reminder--a visual cue--that helps people remember what was said and what will be done as a result.

Why is this visual aspect of systems thinking so important? If I asked you what your car looks like, you would not see a paragraph that explains your car; you "see" your car, then you put that information into words; then you send those words out across the void between us; and I intake the words to create a picture. With luck, my mental picture will look like the car you are trying to get me to see. This is one reason that visual tools, such as causal loop diagrams, can be useful--they give us a way to graphically depict our thoughts and ideas so others can clearly see them.

The visual nature of systems thinking tools is naturally aligned with best instructional practice and simple psychology. It corresponds with the language of our brains and our communication. And what is an organization if it is not communication between members? What is teaching and learning if it is not communication?

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Ross Leadbetter has taught every grade from kindergarten through adult. He has been a principal and vice principal at the high school and elementary levels, and has taught English, acting, mathematics, social studies, and other subjects. He is currently a consultant. Ross is the author of The Edu.Systems Approach to Instruction and The Synergy in Life System: A Practical Life Guide. This blog post is adapted from his website.

Editor's Note: As oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has come under scathing criticism for the litany of errors and omissions that led to the current crisis. In a classic article, "Leading Ethically Through Foresight," Pegasus cofounder and 2010 conference keynote speaker Daniel H. Kim talks about leaders' ethical responsibility to understand the underlying structures within their domain well enough to predict future consequences of current actions. We offer Daniel's timely and provocative article with the hope that his insights might help prevent disasters down the line.

By Daniel H. Kim

Rereading Robert Greenleaf's renowned 1970 essay "The Servant As Leader" is always an exercise in humility for me. His writings are a constant reminder of the high standards leaders must set for themselves if they are to be worthy of people's full commitment. Of all the things that Greenleaf wrote, I have found the following passage to be the most striking and most challenging to live up to:

"The failure (or refusal) of a leader to foresee may be viewed as an ethical failure; because a serious ethical compromise today (when the usual judgement on ethical inadequacy is made) is sometimes the result of a failure to make the effort at an earlier date to foresee today's events and take the right actions when there was freedom for initiative to act. The action which society labels 'unethical' in the present moment is often really one of no choice. By this standard, a lot of guilty people are walking around with an air of innocence that they would not have if society were able always to pin a label 'unethical' on the failure to foresee and the conscious failure to act constructively when there was freedom to act."

I have never heard anybody talk about leadership responsibilities in that way. Others may admonish us for not having exercised better foresight or for incorrectly anticipating the future. They may call it a failure of planning or an error in judgment. But to call such a lapse an ethical failure is such a strong stance that it compelled me to take a deeper look at the issue so that I could come to better understand why Greenleaf used such provocative terminology.

Click here to read the entire article.

This article originally appeared in The Systems Thinker, Vol. 13 N. 7 (September 2002). Click here to receive a free current issue of The Systems Thinker.

Daniel H. Kim is co-founder of Pegasus Communications, founding publisher of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and a consultant, facilitator, teacher, and public speaker committed to helping problem-solving organizations transform into learning organizations. 

photo of Brown Pelican by Alan D. Wilson This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

by Janice Molloy

Like almost everyone else, I've followed the news about the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with horror, disbelief, sadness, and anger. The death of the 11 oil-rig workers, the loss of countless animal lives and devastation of the food chain, the befouling of a beautiful and important natural resource, and the impact on jobs--any one of these consequences would be a tragedy in and of itself.

Of course, there are plenty of fingers to point in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion and ensuing ecological disaster. The folks at Grist even created a pie chart showing their estimation of "Who's to blame for the Gulf oil gusher."

The problem with blame is that, as Marilyn Paul says in an article in The Systems Thinker titled, "Moving from Blame to Accountability," "Where there is blame, open minds close, inquiry tends to cease, and the desire to understand the whole system diminishes. . . . Blame rarely enhances our understanding of our situation and often hampers effective problem solving." She was referring to the organizational setting, but it's relevant in this case, too.

If we focus on casting blame for what happened with Deepwater Horizon and think our job is done, then we'll never get to the real root of the problem and develop long-term solutions. But if we're truly ready to understand the system, even if we don't like what we see, then we may be able to prevent future crises.  

Going back to Grist's "The Blame Game" pie chart, most of what appears is no surprise: BP clearly and rightly bears the brunt of the responsibility, and other parties contributed through acts of omission if not commission. But who did Grist list as the number two contributor to the problem? The answer: All those who drive, fly, heat and cool our homes, use the multitude of products that contain petrochemicals--in short, each and every one of us. Unlike a hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami, this disaster occurred in the course of extracting resources from the earth to support our way of life. At some level--BP's criminal negligence notwithstanding--this crisis is something we have done to ourselves.

But if there's any bright spot, from what I've seen in the media, more and more people seem to be acknowledging our collective role in the larger issue at stake--that of oil dependency. And as systems thinking teaches, when we acknowledge that we are part of the problem, then we can start being part of the solution.

Yesterday was World Oceans Day. Huffington Post, in collaboration with Meetups Everywhere, encouraged concerned citizens to get together to talk about ways to help the Gulf oil-spill clean-up effort, strategies for reducing our reliance on oil, and possibilities for working toward a clean energy future. More than 1,500 people self-organized into 300 Meetups around the country. Other initiatives have been launched around the U.S., as people begin to recognize the limitations to relying on corporations and the government to solve complex problems.

As Stanford economist Paul Romer said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." Let's assume collective responsibility for creating a better future by working to ensure that the current crisis leads to fundamental changes--at all levels.

Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.

Deepwater Horizon photo from the U.S. Coast Guard