THE POWER AND PERIL OF SYSTEMS.

Every organization is a system. So every leader must understand their system context. Some systems are people oriented institutions, and tend to operate more like ecosystems, while others, commodity driven businesses, function more like man-made (or machine) systems (i.e. service providers vs. product manufacturers). Regardless, whether 'eco' or 'mechanical' - as W. Edwards Demings observed - "every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." Demings, a 19th century systems engineer considered to be the father of quality management, made several ground breaking observations about the nature of systems. One of the most notable: "a bad system will beat a good person every time." This is because "Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better." So as leaders seeking to improve our effectiveness, we must primarily focus our efforts on processes, procedures and practices. This doesn't mean ignoring poor performance and poor performers, these things (and people) must still be addressed. Rather, it means shifting the emphasis of improvement efforts and analysis away from blaming people to identifying unintegrated, inadequate, misaligned and ineffective processes that often underlie system-wide performance gaps. #LeadThroughProcess

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