SYSTEMS THINKING ROUND TWO

Our bloggers wrote some truly inspiring responses last month to our “Systems Thinking” post. A resounding theme seemed to be that leading with a global consciousness and an interdependent view requires time, and moreover, caring. In our minds, many of the current challenges facing both this society and the world were precipitated not by the greed and malice that often gets projected, but rather by a “heads down” narrow viewpoint, probably quite well intentioned and innocent. So our question is, as leaders, what would it take for you to expand your consciousness and your caring beyond immediate boundaries? A role redefinition? Some incentive? Some learning?

SYSTEMS THINKING

I was riveted to my car seat recently as I listened to an interview with Wangari Maathai (2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner). Her description of the relationship between trees and the quality of life was poetry. She described a Kikuyu tradition of protecting fig trees, believed at one time to be sacred. Of course, with the tradition having been lost to some extent, life has become much harder for women. Thus, land is now eroded and water is less abundant due to the absence of those deep roots drawing water closer to the earth’s surface. With the trees’ absence, women have to walk farther to find water sources and the effect cascades – to time, to health, to farming, to local and global commerce. As I listened to her, I wondered about the degree to which people in organizations think about and understand the systems interdependence in their work. Of course, we often help people think systemically within the organizational boundary and perhaps slightly beyond. But it’s apparent, given current business and social challenges, that much of systems thinking practice has been narrow rather than from a position of everything being in some way related to everything else. It seems like time is of the essence to expand the boundary – very widely, in fact. Even for those of us who say that we understand interdependence, I still imagine that other than a little recycling and/or energy conservation, we live our lives from the place of individualists rather than from one of interdependence. I wonder what it would take to shift our perspective to one of true interdependence?