3 simple steps to resolve those problems that never go away

There are hard to resolve problems. Although we try to resolve them again and again, they are popping up in new and creative ways. Communication, customer satisfaction, silos, the head of the marketing department that replaced every 6-9 months, all of those are examples of complex problems.

Why complex? They are complex because they result from a system (an organization) that has many independent, diverse and autonomous parts working together to reach one goal. When autonomous parts are working together, the level of unexpected behavior increased, and that what defined complexity. 

Complex systems (such as organizations) are a vast set of connections between parts of the system (people). Those connections are defined and restricted by mental models, the structure of the system, policies, processes and the parts of the system. Connections also serve as the infrastructure for the flow of data and requests needed to execute to reach the system (company) goal. It’s important to understand systems and complex systems because those stubborn problems we are after are defects in the system.

The most common approach to resolving complex problems is to break them into smaller problems, resolve them, and as a result resolve the complex problem. This is the reductionist analysis we are all doing. While this approach resolves many problems, it can’t resolve problems in the way the system/framework was set up. To resolve these problems, one needs to look at the system as a whole, not to break into subsystems. 

There are 3 main simple steps that can help to find the cause of a stubborn, systematic problem and resolve it. Set up the boundaries of the problem and find out who are all the elements of the system. Understand how elements are impacting one another, or what are the causalities between them. Understand the flow between parts of the system. There are many other steps, but those three will reveal the majority of the inherent problems exist in the system. 

Set up the boundaries of the problem and find out who are all the parts of the system: The problem with any systems (organizations) is that they are an integral part of a bigger system. When you think in systems, it’s very hard to define boundaries between systems. Is a company a whole without customers, vendors, and competitors? Is the marketing group separated from other departments in a company? To resolve the problem of a company, you can’t focus on all its competitors all around the world. Therefore, the first step is to create an artificial boundary to the system that relates to the problem and defines all the parts of this system. 

Parts is also a vague definition. With a company, it can be five divisions or fifty thousand employees. Pay attention that you define a high enough level of parts that will help you find a solution. Otherwise, you’ll deal with too much data. A recommendation is to start with a high level of parts, you can always go deeper.

Understand how elements are impacting one another: Although many of us believe that interaction between people (or any other element) are linear, in reality, they are bi-directional. This realization is not just easy to accept. It also takes quite a lot of time to understand it. But once you fully grasp this idea, you found a new way to look at organizations, understand them, see existing flaws and fix them.

Every element in an organization engages in bi-directional loops with other elements. if element A causes something to element B, element B also causes something to element A. If we’ll take a business example. If a manager is happy with an employee, he impacts him positively and causes him a better feeling. This feeling will push the employee to do more work, which impacts the manager and will make him more happy with the employee. Those bi-directional impacts can also be negative.

After you realize the boundary of the system and the element in the system, you need to map all the bi-directional interactions between elements or the causality between elements. To map these causalities, you can use a visual language called Causal Loop Diagram (CLD). This language defines causes between variables (elements that can be measured) if the impact is negative or positive and delays, which are typical to causes. 

Causal loops also have defined archetypes. Those archetypes are known causal loops that will cause issues and how to resolve the issue. Using CLD and archetypes helps to see and resolve systematic issues that cause recurring problems. Even without archetypes, causal loops help to get different levels of understanding of the problem and even the organization you are examining. 

Understand the flow between parts of the system: Stock and flows enable you to capture the flow of information and materials between variables (elements) that you defined as part of the causal diagram loops. This is a powerful model when using computer software for modeling since most software packages will enable running the model as a computer model, change parameters and see how proposed changes impact the system. 

To convert casual loop diagrams to stocks and flows diagram, the following steps need to be followed: Specify the units of all variables in the finished CLD. Variables that involve time usually will be flows, the rest will be stocks. Variables that increase/decrease stock should be “flows”. Connect flows to stocks and stocks to flows. Add and link (to flows and other variables) the rest of the CLD variables. Add calculations to variables and flows (if needed to calculate any value). Add missing variables and connect them. Run the model, if you see results that do not reflect reality, refine the model. If you are looking for a tool. InsightMaker is a free tool available for you.

Like anything new, it sounds complicated, but it’s not. Follow those steps and you’ll see that you are getting understanding and insights that you never got before for a system that you know and operate for many years. After using this method for 2-3 times you’ll become familiar and will use this approach to undercover systematic issues.

If you want to ask questions regarding this important topic, I’ll be happy to get into a discussion and contribute more from our knowledge and experience. please contact me on Facebook, LinkedIn Message, or send me an e-mail to [email protected].