What is The System?

Those involved in trying to support change in an organisation or society may find it useful to think about 'the system'. This short article explores why.

We can start somewhere simple – with what 'the system' isn't. It isn't the people in charge, men in grey suits, the government, capitalism, the director of the organisation, or the senior managers.

A better way to understand 'the system' is that it is 'the way things are done around here'.

An unrelated (hypothetical) example might be helpful: In the UK almost every parent tells their children about Father Christmas / Santa Claus. Imagine that you are the parent of a young child who is just being introduced to the concept of Father Christmas. Imagine you have come across research proving that children are psychologically damaged when they realise that their parents have lied to them (by the way if you don't know the truth about Father Christmas please look away now). Or perhaps you are rooted in a culture in which Father Christmas doesn't feature. You decide that Father Christmas will play no part in your life – and in fact that you will tell your child that he doesn't exist.

Surely this should be a simple matter? After all, as the parent you have a huge power over your children. No problem then?

There again, in most communities your friends and family are likely to see your action as cruel. Or they may decide you are "a politically correct fascist more interested in imposing your own ideas on your child than in their wellbeing." Teachers at your child's school will find it awkward to know how to handle them at Christmas. Other parents may not invite him/her to their house in case their own child gets upset. Other children may come to dislike your child when he/she marches around the school saying "only little babies believe in Santa".

Of course you may be part of a community of people who share your beliefs, and then the action of telling our child the truth won't be so difficult. You may have support from your friends and immediate contacts. However the whole thing will certainly emphasise a 'them and us' division between different parts of the community.

What does this tell us about what 'the system' is? (By the way before we go on let me assure you that my children very much look forward to Father Christmas's visits.)

The system is 'the way things are done around here', and telling the Father Christmas story to our children is 'the way things are done around here'. Not telling this story (or telling the truth) would be to step out of line. Stepping out of line has consequences – negative ones.

To understand this further it is helpful to ask who is in charge of the Father Christmas idea. Who should a concerned citizen write to? Could the government do something - or would that bring them down? What about the Queen or the President? What about a dictator? Surely even a dictator wouldn't hold the power required – 'Father Christmas' would simply go underground.

That's the nature of 'the system'. Most of what goes on in any network of human beings – for example an organisation, a company, or a country as a whole – isn't determined by rules and policy. Nobody is in charge – we just do things the way we do them because that's 'how things are done around here.'

This example provides an initial indication of why certain changes are difficult to implement, but the key to understanding more is to take note of one of the most surprising behaviours of any human system. Sometimes it seems that 'the system' is actively opposing our efforts. We can almost imagine that there is a conspiracy against us even though we know there isn't.

At first encounter we might put this thought aside as paranoia. However the study of human systems actually supports our conclusion. The idea of 'emergence' refers to the behaviours of a system that seem to make more sense at a system level than when looking at individual system elements. These are the behaviours that the system as a whole exhibits as a result of the huge number of interactions between individual parts of the system.

To give a real example: an ant colony when migrating may choose the best from a set of available nest sites. This doesn't sound like a particularly odd idea until we realise that it is a behaviour of the system of ants that we wouldn't necessarily expect to see if we study individual ants. The choice of site can take place despite no one ant knowing about the existence of more than one site, without any ant or ant committee taking a decision on behalf of the colony, and without any kind of 'conversation' between ants about there being more than one option. Of course this effect is nothing more than the result of the behaviours of many individual ants, and it is reasonably easy to explain how it takes place. Emergence isn't a mysterious effect – but its effects can be surprising.

Human systems work the same way. The system has behaviours that can more usefully be understood at the system level than by looking at the behaviour of individual people. An active opposition to certain types of change is one such behaviour.

Understanding 'the system' in this way isn't just an academic exercise. It helps us to think about more effective strategies for generating change, and to anticipate the nature of the difficulties we will encounter.