What if I told you systems don’t exist, except as mental models you use to make sense of your world?

Would you tell me I was wrong? Would you argue that of course systems exist, there are loads of systems, and we talk about them all of the time. The education system educated me and my children, the healthcare system fixed my broken leg, the system of government runs the country, the IT systems we use at work, and systems thinking are what this collection of essays is about. Of course, systems exist.

All of that is true, we do have things we call systems and there are numerous definitions of systems. The one I like to use is a system, a collection of things that are interconnected and interdependent?from which stuff emerges. But that idea of a collection of subsystems. Who defines what that collection comprises? Who determines what is inside or outside our system?

As an example, we can take a car, parked by the side of the road. Let’s take a simple system as an example. A car could be called a system. It has many bits within it which all interact to create the movement of the car. If we explore the car as a system, what do we find? Well, there are cars outside my house right now. None of them are moving and so I suppose none of the bits are interacting, so is a parked car a system or is it just a box of 10000 components? I would argue that unless there is a person with the requisite skills and knowledge to start the car then it isn’t a system. Ok so someone starts the car and gets out, leaving the car running. Now bits are interacting and so it’s a system. But it isn’t going anywhere. It is a system to turn fuel into noise, heat, and some gasses. If we want to use a car then a person must drive it. That means including them inside our system.

Ok so now we have a car and a driver as our system, but what about the weather? Is that part of our system? It certainly impacts both the car and the driver so it could be. So, we have the car and the driver and the weather inside our system. What about climate change then? Road surface, the guy who maintains the car, the manufacturer of the components, the oils, fuel, water, air quality, etc. The list could get very long. What about the upbringing of the driver and their mental state or the mechanic? Do they have a part to play? Why or why not? This is an example of synthesis. Putting things together to look at the whole or the bigger picture is often where a lot of people struggle.

We could say we are just one of the blind men describing an elephant.

Each one of us has our own perspective of the car. The driver, the passenger, the pedestrian, the mechanic, the policeman chasing it, the policeman directing traffic, the traffic reporter on the news, the ambulance worker at the scene of an accident, the traffic warden, etc. None of us can hold all those perspectives unless we talk to all of those people and understand the car from their standpoint.??

What you perceive depends on you, your history, beliefs, hopes, fears, and an innumerable number of other variables and assumptions. In the story, each of the blind men was right and wrong in equal measure. When it comes to systems, we are also blind men. A system cannot be seen, it is something perceived. You cannot see the healthcare system or the education system. Could it be therefore perceived wrongly? Do you perceive just what you believe to be there? How do you know??

If you could describe the healthcare, education, or political system, do you believe the CEO, a cleaner of a hospital, a doctor, a teacher, or a politician would describe the same system? There would be many descriptions, all accurate from the perspective and beliefs of the person describing it but also all incomplete.

Do you think you could describe every detail, or do you believe there may be stuff you do not know, cannot know? Is that Important stuff? Again, how would you know? What would be inside the system you describe? What would be outside? Is that important? How do you know? So many questions but no answers. This is one of the features of systems. They only exist as constructs we use to make sense of our world. Each one of us does it and we all do it differently.

Kenneth Ewart Boulding (18 January 1910 – 18 March 1993) was an economist, educator, poet, religious mystic, devoted Quaker, systems scientist, and interdisciplinary philosopher. He was cofounder of General Systems Theory and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects in economics and social science.

Boulding’s Skeleton for Science attempted to create a hierarchy of systems based on their complexity.

Level 1 has bridges and mountains as the simplest systems. While they interact with their environment, they are static structures that interact with their environment. Anyone who has ever been close to a mountain will feel its presence.

Level 2 is an interesting one because it talks about clockwork things. Systems that are predictable and deterministic. The outcomes are known and reliable. This system responds to cause and effect, can be analysed, and is stable. The process fits into this frame. Processes are our way of making the world predictable, predetermined, susceptible to analysis and our plans. This is where our comfort level is. Things we can predict and rely on. These are closed systems or hard systems.

Level 3 is called 1st Order Cybernetics. This could be the thermostat or control system of the previous predetermined system. Again, it is in our comfort zone. Something we can use to control our predictable outcomes. Like the timer that switches on the oven to cook dinner, these are our servants. It is our attempt to reduce everything to this level that starts to cause us some problems. Business systems, automation, processes, and business processes are all represented at these two levels. Notice how this is in the mechanical domain. Things we can build ourselves to be our servants but much more uncomfortable when we become the servants of the machine. Think of how you feel when you are described as just a cog in the machine.

This is all we can do to control things because Level 4 are open systems. They exist in the organic domain.?Open systems take care of themselves. They have internal controls, exchanging energy and matter with their environments. They are the first of the Viable Systems. That is systems that can survive by adapting to their environment. If they can’t adapt, they die.

Level 5 is the organisation of open systems into systems of systems. These organisations allow structures such as plants to exist. These societies of cells have a division of labor, or bits do different jobs within the whole and all the bits interact to create a living whole. Processes such as osmosis and photosynthesis require the organisation of the cells into functions and the cooperation of those functions to create the processes required to sustain the whole.

Level 6 is the domain of animals. Living, moving, and importantly with a nervous system. These systems are self-aware. They can move, learn, plan, and hunt. They can also cooperate with each other.

Level 7 we have the humans. Self-conscious and with language. Ability to read and write, think conceptually, create, invent, organise things, empathise, and make decisions for others.

Level 8 depicts societies of humans. Homeostasis, hierarchy, communication, organisation, attachment, values, etc. These are also companies, corporations, and clubs. Anywhere humans connect to each other. Like the internet where people are connected to many others through social media. These massive networks are so complex that they defy many attempts to define them.

Level 9, is the most complex as here we have beliefs or transcendental systems. Such as a belief in God, spirituality, Theta healing, etc. The belief in things for which there is no scientific evidence. This is of course the most complex system as it all depends on what an individual or group of humans believe to be true to them in their own perspective and context.

Now imagine this. A business is having issues with the engagement of its workforce and the culture is determined to be the problem. You are sent into an organisation to process map the culture. This means reducing the culture into components that can be mapped. What are those components and how do you know you haven’t missed any? But perhaps more importantly, can a culture be broken into its components without losing the integrity of that culture? Do you think that a toolset meant for describing a process could be used to describe a belief system of an organisation? How about how one single individual human behaves? If we look back at the Skeleton for Science, we can see process sits at level 2, but culture would be level 8 (roles, communication & values) or even level 9 (beliefs). If any process has a person in it, can we really map it as a process? We are ignoring roles, communication, values & beliefs. Sure, we are identifying activities and even the physical things which those activities produce. But what about the feelings emerging from doing that activity? What about the beliefs of the person or their values? I have seen several operations where the activities, the way they were measured and incentivised break people’s spirits. These people became ill and even burned out. In these cases, it is invariably where management has been managing the process at the expense of their people.

This is why system thinking is so important. It gives us some approaches for undertaking the most challenging of tasks. To understand, make sense of, and most importantly where to intervene in complex human systems.

That is not to say we don’t use process, of course we do. It’s a mechanical way of viewing work though and this must be only part of our approach. We need organic and mechanistic approaches. Just like we need divergent and convergent thinking. Whilst organic and mechanistic thinking are two complementary views, it is wise to adopt the organic view first to make sense of the complexity of a system and then the mechanistic one to analyse areas of interest to get more information. Before returning to the organic view ensuring it still makes sense in the context of the whole.

This out then in then out-again approach is often missed by those who focus on analysis and data-driven decision-making without taking the time to understand. It is this flaw I believe, which delivers so many failed projects, programs, and transformations. ?

?You can experience a healthcare system or an education system. But it may not be possible to objectify the system, to name or enumerate all the parts, or to verbally articulate aspects of your experience of that system. And different people may experience the system differently – but in all cases, the experience involves perception/sensing to some extent – though it may also include imagination.?