“The purpose of a system is what it does. There is, after all, no point claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it consistently fails to do.” ~ Stafford Beer
The system is working exactly as designed.
Mental health. Burnout. A lack of resilience. Toxic culture. Employee disengagement. Manager disengagement. And so on – and on – and on.
We talk about these problems a lot. And a lot of the time, we talk about them as if they’re individual issues – “they” need more resilience, “they” need mental health care, “they” should behave better, and so on.
But these problems aren’t individual issues. That’s victim-blaming: making the individual responsible for what’s going on around and to them.
These are systemic problems: a failure in the system, a broken system.
But is that true – has the system actually failed? That quote from Stafford Beer made me rethink this.
The systems aren’t broken. They’re working exactly as designed. And yes, they cause all those things – burnout, defeatism (the opposite of resilience), mental health struggles, destructive cultures, and so on – precisely because they are working as designed.
As a systems person, as someone who’s analyzed and designed complex systems, this is both fascinating and heartbreaking.
Fascinating, because – well, because systems are fascinating. Heartbreaking, because of the damage these perfectly-working systems cause.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
The question is, can we build new systems that work better?
After all these many years of reports of employee disengagement, why is it still such a pervasive problem?
Why do we still tolerate bad bosses?
We worry about these problems and complain about their intractability and simultaneously cling to our outdated systems.
It’s time to do better.
New systems start with new ways to lead. Want to learn more? Drop me a note through my contact form and we’ll set a time to have a conversation – not a sales pitch!