Revisiting Why Systems Thinking Isn't Enough

A Reader Asks Insightful Questions About Systems and Theories of Management

Matsuo Basho, 17th Century Japanese poet, master of the haiku art form.

Reader Yetvart Artinyan recently posed some interesting and insightful questions in response to my June 23/26 post, Why Systems Thinking Isn’t Enough, that I think deserve some attention, so the AIM for today’s post will be to address them and review some past posts for new readers who want to get into Deming’s theory of management to better understand it. For those who are scaling Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, this falls into the domains of Appreciation for a System, Theory of Knowledge, and Psychology.

In my post I argued that contrary to the arguments made in some Forbes articles, systems thinking within the current ways and means of management will not produce substantive, lasting changes because the prevailing system will simply overwhelm and subsume them. I illustrated this with a meme of Coach Vader trying desperately to desalinate a sea of dysfunctions into tidy 2L team bottles with a Brita filter, a metaphor for vainly trying to correct locally what is problem globally in the organization.

Yetvart asks the following three questions:

1. How do we recognize when it is the theory we bring to the system, rather than the system itself, that has become the main constraint on learning?

2. Can organizations become very good at explaining their current system while becoming worse at recognizing when the system should no longer be preserved?

3. What protects a successful management theory from becoming the dominant lens through which every observation is interpreted?

He presents these in the context of a technology company where people and teams are treated in ways analogous to technical systems, ie. by stripping out the humanity.

GREAT QUESTIONS! Let’s tackle them in turn…

When Does Theory Become the Constraint on Learning?

Short answer: when the theory fails to predict or explain the system’s behaviour, even just once, and we choose to carry on regardless. Every theory has the propensity to be used as a shortcut for learning, and in some cases that’s vital for when we need to make quick decisions with rote reflexes so we can stabilize a situation instead of philosophizing about the causes. However, over-reliance on this also carries a risk of prematurely shutting down pausing, observing, thinking, and learning in favour of (re)action. Deming criticized this in his first Faulty Practice of Management:

Reactive: skills only required, no theory of management.

Lack of constancy of purpose.
Short-term thinking.
Emphasis on immediate results.
Think in the present tense: no future tense…
Failure to optimize through time.

The New Economics, 2nd Ed. (p.24), 3rd Ed. (p. 18).

Later in The New Economics, Deming uses the old tale of Chanticleer the Rooster to illustrate what can happen if we choose to shut down learning: we can end up fooling ourselves into believing anything. For Chanticleer, it was his belief that his crowing caused the sun to rise, which worked out great until he was duped into sleeping in. His theory needed to be revised. See my Mar. 24/25 post, Chanticleer Revisited, for a deeper dive on this.

Can Organizations Distract Themselves from Discarding or Improving the System in Favour of Explaining It?

Short answer: absolutely, and it happens all the time. We see this manifest with symptoms like:

• That’s the way we’ve always done it.

• Don’t rock the boat, just row the oars.

• We paid a lot for some consultants to fix this last year, so we just have to follow the process for now.

• We know that it’s wrong, but our policy requires us to reduce costs as much as possible, even if it impacts customers.

• No, you cannot award your team all “Exceeds” for their performance appraisals, irrespective of what they accomplished: some have to be distributed to “Meets” and “Does Not Meet” according to our HR directives.

• No, it’s too much of a hassle to improve things. Besides, we could end up making so-and-so look bad if we do, and that just looks bad on us.

Most famously, we see this play out in Deming’s Red Bead Experiment, where the workers can clearly see the process is rigged but the foreman just keeps incentivizing, rating, and ranking them as if they, and not how they have been put together and instructed, are the problem. See my Sept. 10/21 post, The Parable of the Red Beads, for more details.

What Protects a Good Theory of Management from Becoming Dogma?

Short answer: the ability to challenge its premises in light of evidence. As soon as you can no longer question the theory, or disregard contradicting evidence, it becomes dogma. This is the prevailing style of management that Deming challenged his entire life, and what I call “the world pulled over your eyes”. Under the guise of “common sense” and “wisdom” we get a whole host of dysfunctions that seem to escape serious scrutiny yet are at the root of many apparent issues in our businesses and organizations:

• All seven deadly diseases that afflict management.

• All nine faulty practices of management.

• All sixteen obstacles to improvement (1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16)

Could Deming’s theory of management succumb to such blind dogmatism? Absolutely, and for some who become seized by it, it has, which I think would horrify him were he here today as it would be the death knell of learning. He himself noted in The New Economics that devolving to naively copying a theory —any theory—in the belief that the source must be doing something right is itself a faulty practice of management:

If anyone were to study without theory such a company, i.e., without knowing what questions to ask, he would be tempted to copy the company, on the pretext that “they must be doing some things right.” To copy is to invite disaster.

(2nd Ed, p. 36, 3rd ed. p. 26)

In my Dec. 20/21 post, The Last Time, I reflected on Dr. Deming’s legacy for us today by recalling Ron Moen’s warning against dogmas in his talk at the 2014 Deming Institute Fall Conference where he referred to Basho, a 17th century Japanese poet for guidance:

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the old masters. Seek instead what the masters sought.

I think this philosophy, held firmly yet comfortably in the mind, would best preserve a good management theory from devolving into dogma because it sets the aim to learn rather than imitate — and that can be terrifying for some because it means blazing trails where there are none. Yet, it is also the most satisfying way to live.

The Role of “Soft” Skills

Yetvart also observes in his comments:

Perhaps this is also where so-called soft skills become essential. Not as something separate from management, but as part of the management technology required to notice when our own expertise, assumptions, and explanatory models are narrowing our view of the system.

Short answer: ABSOLUTELY! This is, in fact, the point of the four interrelated domains of Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge: Appreciation for a System, Variation, Theory of Knowledge, and Psychology. You don’t need to be proficient in all of them, but aware enough to start learning, and it is the last domain where so-called “soft skills” reside, because you cannot manage a human-centric system without appreciating how and why they think and behave the way they do, and what to do to bring about lasting improvements.

In this regard, I’ve been working on some condensed “Cheat Codes” to help leaders and managers jump-start their learning on how to lead with a Deming view, one of which is especially applicable there:

Leadership Cheat Code #5: People react and behave rationally toward the system they are in and the incentives and disincentives they are given. Ergo, look to how you have organized the game before reacting to how the players are playing.

Look for a future post on these — I’m working on pulling together about 20-24 of them into a book.

What Do You Think?

Thanks again to Yetvart Artinyan for his thoughtful questions — I hope I answered them to his satisfaction, but I’m always open to corrections, feedbacks, etc. Let me know in the comments below!