What's Your System?

Jeff Bell

Convener and Chair at Band of Leaders Australia

发布日期: 2021年7月6日

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Do you find yourself confronted by an alarming event, and ask plaintively “Where the hell did that come from?”

The worst part is, it’s a complete surprise!?We never anticipated that this would happen.

For instance, the cataclysmic events wrought by COVID-19 to the health system has gone on to do even greater damage to the economic, the social, the communication, the transport and other systems.?

It may be because we are so confronted by the immediate pressures that we fail to anticipate the implications over the horizon.?Until the scourge has an unshakeable hold.?

Like most things in life, it’s all in our heads.?Systems thinking takes the holistic view, exploring the relationships between linked activities in order to understand the consequences of our actions.

I describe a system as:

a network of interdependent components that exceeds expectations.

It provides a powerful framework for change.

What do you have??Even without conscious intent—and I know this isn’t you—your business will be a system.?

It will have a product or a service that arises from the needs of customers and comes about from a succession of processes, each of which will add value to inputs from suppliers to produce outputs for customers—the Results in my model.?

Your system will be built upon:

your own leadership;
structure;
strategy;
customers;
your people;
their knowledge;
suppliers;
processes;
other stakeholders.

Your challenge is to be aware of what exists, to change what needs changing and be as much in control of each component as you can.?Remember, concentrating on each one will not be enough—joining them up will be the test.?

Your system will be perfectly designed to provide the outcome it is producing.

But is that outcome what you want??The keys will be:

Is your customer happy with that??Are they receiving quality at the right price (effectiveness)?
Are you happy with that? ?Are you producing quality at the right cost (efficiency)??

The operational heart of your system will be the processes.

All work is a process.?We improve the work by improving performance at each stage in the process.?This means we should focus on the process rather than the outcome.?If we get the process right, we usually get the outcome right.?In order to do this, we need to identify all the processes that we are involved in our work.?

With each of these processes we shouldn’t just ‘fix the problem’ but improve that process.?Problems are symptoms of a poor quality process and we must avoid jumping to conclusions about a problem.?We need to slow down our thinking and consider causes and options—the difference between System 1 thinking (gut-feel, the first thing that comes to mind) and System 2 thinking (deep consideration, data assessment and sound decision-making).?

We seek long-term improvement, looking beyond the short-term fix

Some ways of improving processes include removing barriers between departments to allow people to work together more effectively and to reduce waste.?And we should understand the interaction between different processes and that if we only focus on optimising sub-processes, we will not optimise the system.??

Also, variation exists in all of your processes and is cumulative.?

Of course, each step in a process is performed by a person or a machine (or in combination), adding value to what they have received. Therefore, we have a succession of suppliers and customers.

It is also important to remember that a supplier is not always external to our business; and a customer is not always that end user of our products and/or services.?This concept of internal suppliers and customers is just as important when seeking to analyse our business as a system.?

Finally, no action to change or improve a process occurs in isolation to other processes and the entire system.?In fact, cause and effect are not always closely related in time and space.?That is, when a change is made, the effect it has on the business may not be felt immediately, and probably not where it is expected.