SYSTEMS THINKING AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: A PERSPECTIVE

Organizational development “refers to the context, focus and purpose of the change while developing an organization.” Additionally, one recent definition of organizational development states: “Organizational development is a critical and science-based process that helps organizations build their capacity to change and achieve greater effectiveness by developing, improving, and reinforcing strategies, structures, and processes.” In essence, good organizational change and development require a systems-thinking mindset and an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to tackling complex organizational challenges.

Systems Thinking has been gaining significant interest lately as a comprehensive approach to introducing organizational change and development. Through systems thinking, a number of core concepts and practical tools can be applied to better understand the complexity of each organization. There are many competing definitions of systems thinking in the academic literature. As Ross D. Arnold and Jon P. Wade point out in their recent article, “Systems thinking is, literally, a system of thinking about systems.”

Analytical/ Linear Thinking Vs Systems Thinking

The Parts Of A System

Systems are made up of three parts: elements, interconnections, and a function or a purpose. The word “function” is used when talking about a non-human system, and the word “purpose” is used for human systems. The elements are the actors in the system. In our circulatory system, the elements are our heart, lungs, blood, blood vessels, arteries, and veins. They do the work. The interconnections would be the physical flow of blood, oxygen, and other vital nutrients through our body. The function of the circulatory system is to allow blood, oxygen and other gases, nutrients, and hormones to flow through the body to reach all of our cells.

An Example – The School (or) An Educational Institution

A school is a system, with the elements represented by teachers, students, principals, custodians, secretaries, bus drivers, cooks, parents, and counsellors. The interconnections are the relationships between the elements, the school rules, the schedule, and the communications between all of the people in the school. The purpose of a school is to prepare the students for a successful future and to help them reach their full potential.

Unfortunately, some unintended behaviours can occur as a result of Organizational Change when the Systemic interplay is ignored. Consider the purposes of the actors in this system:

In this system, the high-stakes nature of the tests cause school districts to put a lot of pressure on their teachers to teach to the test and base their evaluations on their test scores. Teachers feel the need to compete with one another to earn the highest scores, as well as gain job security and an increased salary, so they no longer share ideas with one another and they may even cheat when administering the tests. Students feel a lot of pressure to earn high enough scores to be promoted to the next grade or avoid remedial classes, so they may cheat on the test.

A government may profess that educating children is a high priority, but if it slashes education funding, then clearly educating children is not a primary purpose of that government. This was not the intention of putting these tests into schools, and everyone agrees that those results are awful. Unfortunately, if the sub-purposes and the overarching system purpose are not aligned and coexisting peacefully, a system can’t function successfully.

The Most Important Part of a System

Perhaps the easiest way to examine how a system’s elements, interconnections, and purposes compare in terms of importance within a system is to speculate how the system would be impacted if each component was changed one at a time.

The least impact on a system is usually felt when its elements are changed. While certain elements may be very important to the system, by and large, if the elements are changed, the system can still continue to exist in a similar form and work to achieve its purpose or function. In a school, teachers, administrators, and other employees may leave, transfer, or retire. Students move away or may enter higher grade levels beyond the school. The elements may change, but the school is still easily identified as a school, and it still has largely the same objectives and sense of purpose.

Changing the interconnections of a system is quite different. If the interconnections change, the system will be impacted significantly. It may no longer be recognizable, even if the elements remain in place. Putting the students in charge instead of the adults in a school setting would undoubtedly change that system dramatically.

Changing a system’s function or purpose also greatly impacts the entire system and may render it unrecognizable. If the school’s main purpose is no longer educating children, but is now to make money by recruiting students to charge tuition, obviously the system is dramatically changed.

Every component of the system is essential. Elements, interconnections, and the purpose or function all interact with each other and each one plays a vital role in the system. The purpose or function of a system is often the least noticeable, but it definitely sets how the system will behave. Interconnections are the relationships within the system. When they are changed, the behaviour of the system is also usually altered. The elements are typically the most visible parts of a system, but are often the least likely to cause a significant change in the system unless changing an element impacts the purpose or interconnections as well. Each part of the system is equally important as they work hand in hand, but changing a system’s purpose has the greatest impact on the system as a whole.

Six Themes Of Systems Thinking

Interconnectedness and synthesis relate to the dynamic relationships between various parts of a whole, the process of obtaining expected synergies between parts of the company. This includes the idea of circularity, which stresses the requirement of a mindset shift from linear to circular. Similarly, the concept of emergence relates to the outcomes of synergies that can come about as the elements of a system interact with each other in nonlinear ways. In the workplace, this often takes the form of the push and pull that happens due to organizational politics and competing priorities. Organizational leaders with a systems-thinking mindset will see this as an opportunity for enhanced collaborations and innovation.

Balancing and reinforcing feedback loops within an organization serve as guidance for making adjustments as we learn more about the interconnectedness of the elements of the system and their outcomes. Additionally, causality refers to the flows of influence between the many interconnected parts within a system. As we better understand the casualty and directionality of these elements, we will have an improved perspective on the many fundamental parts of the system, including relationships and feedback loops.

In the workplace, a skilled systems-thinking leader will ensure that mechanisms for multiple feedback loops are established and effectively communicated to their employees. Furthermore, they will understand correlation versus causation as they use the data gathered from the feedback loops to enhance workplace practices. Finally, systems mapping is a tool that systems thinkers can use to identify and visually map out the many interrelated elements of a complex system, which will help them develop interventions, shifts, or policy decisions that will dramatically change the system in the most effective way.

Ten Enemies of Systems Thinking

Some common thinking statements which act as obstacles to systems thinking may be:

Systems thinking does not come easily to everyone. Many find systems thinking to be a bit unstructured and unorganized when they first begin to look at the world through this lens. It may be overwhelming and uncomfortable at first because they become concerned about taking action when they don’t know the effect that their suggested solution may have on the system and its parts. Rest assured that this feeling is perfectly normal and will begin to ease over time as we reach deeper levels of understanding into the way systems behave.

The ultimate gain is the ability of organizations to be responsive to the changes in ecosystems and to be prepared to fine-tune and adapt parts of their organization on the fly. With this understanding, systems’ thinking provides clear benefits to organizations. It shows alternative directions for improvement with respect to the company’s inner and outer connections. It gives a significant advantage in increasing the organization’s capacity for change and, as a consequence, to fulfill the vision of business sustainability.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

THE LONG VIEW (OR) BIG PICTURE THINKING – CHAPTER 01

Most people fall under either of the two main types of thinking paradigms- big picture or detail-oriented. The big picture thinker usually keeps coming up with ideas of what the ideal world would look like. The detail-oriented thinker on the other hand mostly thinks pragmatically and is organized.

A Story:

Around 1959 or 1960, Dashrath Manjhi, a laborer in India’s Gehlaur village lost his injured wife because the nearest hospital was about 45 minutes away. 22 years later, the same man had carved a 10-meter long path through the rocky ridge – all with a hammer and chisel – that chopped the travel time to 15 minutes.

Manjhi is an extreme example of seeing the big picture — instead of getting overwhelmed by the details of how he was going to get it done, he focused on the broader issue at hand: he didn’t want anyone else to suffer his wife’s fate. So, he worked tirelessly for years to prevent that from happening again.

What Is Big Picture Thinking?

Big picture thinking is the ability to grasp abstract concepts, ideas and possibilities. Big picture thinkers emphasize the system in which they are operating. This includes looking into various stakeholders such as customers, employees and investors but also competitors, social trends and future technological disruptions.

A big picture thinker is someone who mostly thinks of issues from a broader, overview-type perspective. When dealing with any project, they focus on the overall importance of the project and the major steps required to execute it. When big picture thinkers focus on details, they get tired easily. It’s the big picture that energizes and keeps them going. These types of people are often called visionaries or dreamers. They’re usually full of ideas, great at outlining how things could change, and what needs to be done to make the world a better place. Most inventors are big picture thinkers.

Imagine driving on the Howrah bridge at Calcutta (or any bridge). Do we look at the left and the right only? Hopefully not. We would have trained ourselves to cover both our left and right sides, as well as look far ahead in front of us. (If we only focused on a tiny word on the bumper sticker of the vehicle directly in front of us, we risk getting into an accident.) That’s essentially what big picture thinking is — looking at the entirety of a plan or situation.

Seeing the big picture means seeing the whole. The ability to comprehend the context of the matter and the system that is at work. We get to grips with the scope and focus on it, strategizing what will work and what will not. Put another way, big picture thinking is the ability to envision something.

In contrast, a detailed oriented person delves into the specifics of a project or process. In doing so, they may lose sight of the plan or the big picture. But, this does not mean that one thinking modality is right and another wrong. Instead, they are both necessary to function effectively.

The Importance Of Big Picture Thinking

“Take a step back”, “Look at the big picture”, “Think about it in the grand scheme of things”. These snippets of advice tend to go in one ear and out the other if we are naturally a detail-oriented person. Often, they can feel like a waste of time – why invest in all that fluffy thinking when there’s just so much to actually get done?

But scientific research has revealed that big picture thinking is linked to venture success for entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs are 30-48% more likely to think in broad terms than the rest of us. It is not easy to encourage big picture thinking. It takes a ton of work and mental reminders such as, “how will this matter to me in 3 days, 3 years, 3 decades…” 

We might be wondering, ‘what is the benefit of having a solid idea of the big picture?’ While both big picture vs detail-oriented thinking are crucial, they also complement each other. Zooming in on the details only can be a bit messy to deal with. By thinking big, we are less likely to fret over the details that won’t matter in the long run. Not to mention, a big picture person is likely to see how an obstacle impacts the big picture and how that can turn into an opportunity – a real plus if we are leading a team.

Both big picture thinking and detail thinking are important. Anyone who is prone to be in one or other mode by default will limit their ability to contribute to the whole picture.

Detail Oriented Or A Big Picture Thinker- The Difference

We can get a better understanding of big picture vs detail-oriented when we look at them as “universal versus specific thinking.” Some common words and phrases are:

One way to find out whether we are a big picture thinker or a specifics’ person is seeing what we tend to focus on naturally. Do we look at the detailed ins and outs of a project? 

Perhaps we give so many details in our reports that our manager finds it annoying?

Or, do we tend to keep a bird’s eye view on things, and feel frustrated when working on projects where we can’t see how it connects to a broader plan? When we look closely, we see that both types of thinking are needed in a workplace.

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Identifying the Different Approaches, The Balance: Big Picture & Detailed Orientation- Components in Business, Strategies Towards a Big Picture Focus, Self Reflection- The Key) Link to Chapter -02:

THE LONG VIEW (OR) BIG PICTURE THINKING – CHAPTER 02

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

INVERSION AS A CRITICAL THINKING APPROACH: BEHAVIOURS ASSOCIATED

The ancient Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus regularly conducted an exercise known as a premeditatio malorum, which translates to a “premeditation of evils.” The goal of this exercise was to envision the negative things that could happen in life. For example, the Stoics would imagine what it would be like to lose their job and become homeless or to suffer an injury and become paralyzed or to have their reputation ruined and lose their status in society.

The Stoics believed that by imagining the worst-case scenario ahead of time, they could overcome their fears of negative experiences and make better plans to prevent them. While most people were focused on how they could achieve success, the Stoics also considered how they would manage failure. This way of thinking, in which we consider the opposite of what we want, is known as inversion. It is a rare and crucial skill that nearly all great thinkers use to their advantage.

How Great Thinkers Shatter the Status Quo with Inversion

The German mathematician Carl Jacobi made a number of important contributions to different scientific fields during his career. In particular, he was known for his ability to solve hard problems by following a strategy of man muss immer umkehren or, loosely translated, “invert, always invert.” Jacobi believed that one of the best ways to clarify our thinking was to restate math problems in inverse form. He would write down the opposite of the problem he was trying to solve and found that the solution often came to him more easily.

Inversion Vs Reverse Engineering

The Inversion Thinking concept finds its roots in how mathematicians solve complex problems. Look at any problem backward and turn the situation upside down to find the solution. Also, it is not to be confused with reverse engineering.

In reverse engineering we work backward from an achieved solution. For example, if we want to achieve a target of 10 customers, we need to submit 30 proposals, then to give 30 proposals we have to prospect 100 customers and for that every day we should meet 5 customers. This is simple reverse engineering, reversing from a positive result. But in Inversion Thinking, we consider the opposite of what we want. What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation?

Inversion is a powerful thinking tool because it puts a spotlight on errors and roadblocks that are not obvious at first glance. What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation? Instead of asking how to do something, we ask how to not do it. Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. Occasionally, they drive their brain in reverse.

This way of thinking can reveal compelling opportunities for innovation. Art provides a good example. One of the biggest musical shifts in the last several decades came from Nirvana, a band that legitimized a whole new genre of music—alternative rock—and whose Nevermind album is memorialized in the Library of Congress as one of the most “culturally, historically or aesthetically important” sound recordings of the 20th century. Nirvana turned the conventions of mainstream rock and pop music completely upside down. Where hair metal was flashy, Nirvana was stripped-down and raw. Inversion is often at the core of great art.

At any given time there is a status quo in society and the artists and innovators who stand out are often the ones who overturn the standard in a compelling way. In a way, the secret to unconventional thinking is just inverting the status quo. This strategy works equally well for other creative pursuits like writing. Many great headlines and titles use the power of inversion to up-end common assumptions.

Success is Overvalued. Avoiding Failure Matters More. This type of inverse logic can be extended to many areas of life. Avoiding mistakes is an under-appreciated way to improve. In most jobs, you can enjoy some degree of success simply by being proactive and reliable—even if you are not particularly smart, fast, or talented in a given area. Sometimes it is more important to consider why people fail in life than why they succeed.

The Benefits of Thinking Forward and Backward

Inversion can be particularly useful in the workplace. Leaders can ask themselves, “What would someone do each day if they were a terrible manager?” Good leaders would likely avoid those things. Similarly, if innovation is a core piece of the business model, we can ask, “How could we make this company less innovative?” Eliminating those barriers and obstacles might help creative ideas arise more quickly. And every marketing department wants to attract new business, but it might be useful to ask, “What would alienate our core customer?” A different point of view can reveal surprising insights. We can learn just as much from identifying what doesn’t work as we can from spotting what does. What are the mistakes, errors, and flubs that we want to avoid? Inversion is not about finding good advice, but rather about finding anti-advice. It teaches us what to avoid.

Some more ways in which inversion can come into play in work and life:

Project Management: . . . . . Failure Premortem. Imagine the most important goal or project we are working on right now. Now fast forward six months and assume the project or goal has failed. Tell the story of how it happened. What went wrong? What mistakes did we make? How did it fail? In other words, think of the main goal and ask, “What could cause this to go horribly wrong?” This strategy is sometimes called the “kill the company” exercise in organizations because the goal is to spell out the exact ways the company could fail. Just like a Premeditation of Evils, the idea is to identify challenges and points of failure so you can develop a plan to prevent them ahead of time.

Productivity: . . . . .. . Most people want to get more done in less time. Applying inversion to productivity we could ask, “What if I wanted to decrease my focus? How do I end up distracted?” The answer to that question may help us discover interruptions we can eliminate to free up more time and energy each day. This strategy is not only effective, but often safer than chasing success. This insight reveals a more general principle: Blindly chasing success can have severe consequences, but preventing failure usually carries very little risk.

Decluttering: . . . . . . . . Marie Kondo, author of the blockbuster best-seller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, uses inversion to help people declutter their homes. Her famous line is, “We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.” In other words, the default should be to give anything away that does not “spark joy” in our life. This shift in mindset inverts decluttering by focusing on what you want to keep rather than what you want to discard.

Relationships: . . . . . . . . .. . . . . What behaviors might ruin a marriage? Lack of trust. Not respecting the other person. Not letting each person have time to be an individual. Spending all of the time on kids and not investing in the relationship together. Not having open communication about money and spending habits. Inverting a good marriage can show us how to avoid a bad one.

Personal Finance: . . . . . . . . .. . . . .Everyone wants to make more money. But what if you inverted the problem? How could you destroy your financial health? Spending more than we earn is a proven path to financial failure. It doesn’t matter how much money we have, the math will never work out over time. Similarly, accumulating debt is a hair-on-fire emergency to be resolved as quickly as possible. And gradually creeping into unchecked shopping and spending habits can lead to self-inflicted financial stress.

Consider the Opposite

Inversion is counterintuitive. It is not obvious to spend time thinking about the opposite of what you want. And yet inversion is a key tool of many great thinkers. Stoic practitioners visualize negative outcomes. Ground-breaking artists invert the status quo. Effective leaders avoid the mistakes that prevent success just as much as they chase the skills that accelerate it.

Inversion can be particularly useful for challenging our own beliefs. It forces us to treat our decisions like a court of law. In court, the jury has to listen to both sides of the argument before making up their mind. Inversion helps to do something similar. What if the evidence disconfirmed what we believe? What if we tried to destroy the views that we cherish? Inversion prevents us from making up our mind after our first conclusion. Some more examples of Inversion Thinking Questions may be:

It is a way to counteract the gravitational pull of confirmation bias. Inversion is an essential skill for leading a logical and rational life. It allows us to step outside our normal patterns of thought and see situations from a different angle. Inversion is different than working backward or “beginning with the end in mind.” Those strategies keep the same goal and approach it from a different direction. Meanwhile, inversion asks you to consider the opposite of your desired result.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY: ADAPTING TO CHANGE AS LEADERS

Now more than ever before, leaders all over the world are facing change and complexity — the coronavirus pandemic has presented us all with new challenges, new circumstances, and new uncertainties. Adaptability is a requirement. Because change is constant and inevitable, leaders must be flexible to succeed. Adaptability is about having ready access to a range of behaviours that enable leaders to shift and experiment as things change.

Conversely, it may also be argued that inflexible leaders limit the adaptability of others. New initiatives may be halted or stifled. Resistance to change may undermine critical projects or system-wide implementation. Employee enthusiasm, cooperation, morale, and creativity are jeopardized, making it all the more difficult to run the business or organization.

Am I a Flexible Leader?

Consider our personal approach to change. How do we respond when facing change??->

If few or none of these responses describes us, we are not alone. Many of us get stuck, have a hard time letting go, or simply don’t know how to proceed in unknown territory.

The 3 Types of Flexibility That Help You Adapt to Change

We need to practice the 3 components of adaptability: cognitive flexibility, emotional flexibility and dispositional flexibility.

A) Cognitive flexibility — the ability to use different thinking strategies and mental frameworks:. . . . Leaders who have cognitive flexibility are able to incorporate different thinking strategies and mental frameworks into their planning, decision-making, and management of day-to-day work. They can simultaneously hold multiple scenarios in mind and can see when to shift and inject a change. Cognitive flexibility indicates nimble, divergent thinking, an interest in developing new approaches, the ability to see and leverage new connections, and the propensity to work well across the organization. These leaders readily learn from experience and recognize when old approaches don’t work.

B) Emotional flexibility — the ability to vary one’s approach to dealing with emotions and those of others:  . . . . . Leaders with emotional flexibility vary their approach to dealing with their own and others’ emotions — an area that many leaders often fail to consider. An emotionally flexible leader is comfortable with the process of transition, including grieving, complaining, and resistance. Adapting to change requires give and take between the leader and those experiencing the change. A leader without emotional flexibility is dismissive of others’ concerns and emotions and shuts down discussion. At the same time, an emotionally adaptive leader moves the change or agenda forward.

C) Dispositional flexibility — the ability to remain optimistic and, at the same time, realistic:  . . . . . Leaders who display dispositional flexibility (or personality-related flexibility) operate from a place of optimism grounded in realism and openness. They will acknowledge a bad situation but simultaneously visualize a better future. They are neither blindly positive nor pessimistic and defeatist. Ambiguity is well-tolerated. Dispositionally flexible leaders see change as an opportunity rather than as a threat or danger. By learning and practicing behaviors that boost your cognitive, emotional, and dispositional flexibility, you can become more adaptable and, in turn, help others to adapt.

Cognitive Flexibility: Meaning & Ways to develop

Cognitive flexibility refers to our ability to disengage from one task and respond to another or think about multiple concepts at the same time. Someone who is cognitively flexible will be able to learn more quickly, solve problems more creatively, and adapt and respond to new situations more effectively, which is why it’s so important in both educational settings and the workplace. Building your cognitive flexibility is a great way to develop professionally and keep up with the ever-changing work environment of the future. Some ways in which this can be done are:

A) Alter our everyday routine: . . . . . For instance, if we are accustomed to taking the same route to work each day, look for a different route or consider taking the bus instead of driving ourselves. If you usually get your exercise at the gym, change things up by running in the park or going for a bike ride. Even making the smallest of changes like sitting at a new spot at the dinner table or using our left hand to brush our teeth instead of our right can help us build and strengthen new neural pathways.

B) Seek out new experiences: . . . . . Each time we experience something out of the ordinary or learn something new, the brain creates new synaptic connections. New and interesting experiences have also been shown to trigger the release of dopamine, which not only increases motivation but also enhances memory and learning. So going out of our way to experience new things or engage in novel activities can go a long way towards helping us develop cognitive flexibility. This might mean travelling to another country or volunteering in a new industry, but it could also take the form of activities like learning a new language or musical instrument, taking a dance class, or even exploring a part of town we are not familiar with.

C) Practice thinking creatively: . . . . . . Another way to build cognitive flexibility is to make an effort to think in unconventional and creative ways or practice divergent thinking. Divergent thinking usually occurs in a spontaneous and free-flowing manner and involves thinking in terms of unlimited possibilities rather than a limited set of choices.

D) Don’t always take the easy way: . . . . . . . These days we have technology and apps that make our lives easier in countless ways, from spell check and autocorrect to GPS. But the truth is that making things easier for ourselves isn’t always the best thing for our cognitive flexibility. Research shows that introducing so-called “desirable difficulties” can lead to deeper learning, so by making a point of not always choosing the easiest way of doing things, we can keep our mind sharp and even learn through our everyday experiences. For instance, if you’re driving to an area you’re not familiar with, try to navigate your way using a map and asking for directions rather than using your GPS, or instead of reaching for your phone the minute you need to make a calculation, grab a pen and paper, and do it the old-fashioned way.

E) Go out of our way to meet new people: . . . . . Meeting people from different cultures and walks of life whose perspectives and viewpoints are likely to differ from our own can help us to be less rigid in our way of thinking and accept that there may be more than one “right” way of looking at things. Research shows that people who are exposed to situations that challenge their ideas about what’s right and wrong tend to have greater cognitive flexibility. So make an effort to meet people outside of our normal social circles, whether that means travelling abroad, volunteering, teaching, or connecting with people through social media.

F) Transfer our learning: . . . . . Learning to transfer what we have learned in one context into a new context can be a great exercise in cognitive flexibility, because it forces us to form new connections between previously unconnected networks of knowledge and think more creatively. Without the ability to transfer skills and knowledge to new contexts, our learning won’t have as great an impact. If we want to develop our ability to transfer knowledge, research shows that explaining a new concept in our own words not only helps us identify any incorrect assumptions, but also helps us to generalise a concept for future application. Once we are sure we understand the concept, we can look for ways to apply it in real-world situations.

G) Challenge our morals: . . . . . . Seeking out experiences that test our morals and expose us to a variety of beliefs, values, and expectations can give us a better understanding of culturally different perspectives and help us become more flexible in our thinking. Even if we don’t necessarily agree with someone’s point of view or belief system, being cognitively flexible means we will be able to think about why they might see things that way and understand their point of view. This ability will make it easier for us to communicate with people, resolve conflicts, and adapt your thinking to various situations. Of course, travel is one way to challenge our way of thinking, but even just reading about moral dilemmas and thinking about them critically can help us develop in this area.

Tips for Flexible Leaders

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa