LEARN TO LEAD - Civil Air Patrol

12.3 Leadership and Systems ThinkingBy COL George E. Reed, USAOBJECTIVES:9. List three steps in the systems thinking approach.10. Identify barriers to our ability to use systems thinking.“‘For every problem there is a solution that issimple, neat – and wrong.’ This maxim hasbeen attributed at various times to MarkTwain, H.L. Mencken, and Peter Drucker as awake-up call to managers who mistakenlythink that making a change in just one part of acomplex problem will cure the ails of an entiresystem. Everyday management thinking toooften looks for straightforward cause andeffect relationships in problem solving thatignores the effect on, and feedback from, theentire system.”-Ron Zemke,writing in the February 2011 issue of TrainingLeaders operate in the realm of bewildering uncertaintyand staggering complexity. Today’s problems are rarelysimple and clear-cut. If they were, they would likelyalready have been solved by someone else. If not wellconsidered—and sometimes even when they are—today’ssolutions become tomorrow’s problems. Success in thecontemporary operating environment requires differentways of thinking about problems and organizations. Thisarticle introduces some concepts of systems thinking andsuggests that it is a framework that should be understoodand applied by leaders at all levels, but especially thosewithin the acquisition community. It is insufficient andoften counterproductive for leaders merely to act as goodcogs in the machine. Leaders perform a valuable servicewhen they discern that a venerated system or process hasoutlived its usefulness, or that it is operating as originallydesigned but against the organization’s overall purpose.Sometimes we forget that systems are created by people,based on an idea about what should happen at a givenpoint in time. A wise senior warrant officer referred tothis phenomenon as a BOGSAT—a bunch of guys sittingaround talking.SYSTEMS ENDUREAlthough times and circumstances may change, systemstend to endure. We seem to be better at creating new systemsthan changing or eliminating existing ones. SociologistRobert K. Merton coined the term “goal displacement”to describe what happens when complying with bureaucraticprocesses becomes the objective rather than focusingon organizational goals and values. When that happens,systems take on a life of their own and seem immune tocommon sense. Thoughtless application of rules and procedurescan stifle innovation, hamper adaptivity, anddash creativity. Wholesale disregard of rules and procedures,however, can be equally disastrous.When members of an organization feel as though theymust constantly fight the system by circumventing establishedrules and procedures, the result can be cynicism ora poor ethical climate. Because of their experience andposition, leaders are invested with the authority to interveneand correct or abandon malfunctioning systems. Atthe very least, they can advocate for change in a way thatthose with less positional authority cannot. Leaders at alllevels should, therefore, be alert to systems that drivehuman behavior inimical to organizational effectiveness.It is arguable that military organizations placing a premiumon tradition and standardization are predisposed togoal displacement. We need leaders, therefore, who cansee both the parts and the big picture; to this end some ofthe concepts of systems thinking are useful.The Department of Defense is a large and complex socialsystem with many interrelated parts. As with any systemof this type, when changes are made to one part, manyothers are affected in a cascading and often unpredictablemanner. Thus, organizational decisions are fraught withsecond- and third-order effects that result in unintendedconsequences. “Fire and forget” approaches are rarelysufficient and are sometimes downright harmful. Extensiveplanning—combined with even the best of intentions—does not guarantee success. Better prediction is not theanswer, nor is it possible. There are so many interactionsin complex systems that no individual can be expected toforecast the impact of even small changes that are amplifiedover time.GETTING BEYOND THE MACHINEMETAPHORIn her book Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, andPostmodern Perspectives, Mary Jo Hatch provides anintroduction to general systems theory that is useful in23