Systems Thinking is Not Optional Lessons From a Pandemic
[Music]
in the early 1950s
there was an outbreak of malaria in
borneo
the world health organization tried to
solve the problem by spraying large
amounts of ddt
to kill the mosquitoes that carried the
malaria
the ddt worked and the mosquitoes died
but other things happened as a result
first
the fats roofs of people’s houses began
to cave in
because the ddt also killed the wasps
that ate the patchy eating caterpillars
with no wasps to eat them there were
more and more thatch-eating caterpillars
other insects that died from the ddt
were then eaten
by gecko lizards which were then
eaten by cats the cats died
which allowed the rats to multiply which
resulted
in outbreaks of two new diseases plague
and typhus
carried by the rats what was the
response
operation cat drop
the world health organization actually
parachuted
live cats into borneo to eat the rats
this is what happens without systems
thinking
the best leaders are typically systems
thinkers
systems thinking helps leaders see the
big picture
and understand and influence the
consequences of their decisions across
the community
since society itself is a complex
adaptive system
systems thinking is the philosophy that
everything
is connected but systems and their
connections
are not always obvious so systems
thinking sometimes
requires us to see the invisible
a system is generally defined as an
organized collection of parts or
subsystems
that are highly integrated to accomplish
an overall goal
now there are many different kinds of
systems are cultural
environmental economic mechanical
electrical
and so on for example the human body is
a system
and contains 11 major subsystems such as
skeletal
muscular nervous and so on the key
principle is that if one part of the
system is changed
the nature of the overall system is
changed as well
a system functions as a whole
for example dividing a human in half
does not give you two smaller humans
even centuries ago the buddha
said nothing ever exists entirely alone
everything is in relation to everything
else
peter singh in his book the fifth
discipline explains 11 laws of systems
thinking i’m going to focus on the
foremost relevant of these laws what
they mean
how they affect our decision making and
how they apply to the coven 19 pandemic
the first law is today’s problems come
from yesterday’s solutions
a solution to the hunger problem was
industrial production of food
but the use of colorants
preservatives nitrates and gmos
cause health hazards today coal was used
to generate electricity in the united
states
in the 1880s and to fuel the
steam-powered horseless carriage
the first car with an internal
combustion engine
another solution changed the demand for
petroleum products around the world
forever
and as we now know fossil fuels are a
finite resource
and they harm the environment contribute
to climate change and lead to
catastrophic effects to our to our
environment
problems caused by yesterday’s solutions
covid today’s problems
come from solutions that were half
measures at best
and didn’t follow the guidance of the
experts
the united states has four percent of
the world’s population
we have 25 percent of coveted cases
and 20 percent of covet deaths
the atlantic magazine published an
article
a year ago stating that we had time to
prepare for this pandemic
at this at the state local and household
level
even if the government was terribly
lagging but we squandered it because of
widespread
asystemic thinking the inability
to think about complex systems and their
dynamics
the next system law is the harder you
push the harder the system pushes back
remember prohibition the war on drugs
criminalizing marijuana
when our initial efforts fail to fix a
problem we just push harder
we’re told that hard work will overcome
all obstacles
but we fail to realize that often we are
the ones creating the obstacles
with covert people pushed against simple
safety measures such as
social distancing and mask wearing or
called mask wearing a political
statement
the system’s just pushed back harder
giving us higher cases of
deaths and higher numbers of cases and
deaths
covet has also highlighted the fact that
deforestation
makes future pandemics more likely
does it make any sense that in our
ecosystem
a tree is worth more dead than alive now
as the human subsystems
destroy wildlife habitat displaced
animals move into closer proximity with
each other and with humans
climate change can also affect where
these animals go
and bring pathogens closer to humans
fast company magazine published an
article entitled why our shrinking
natural world is increasing the pace of
global pandemics
stating that conservation is suddenly a
public health issue
now we know that nature always wins
so is it possible that in our ecosystem
the human race is the disease
and the pandemic is the cure
the third system’s law the easy way out
usually leads back in
you go to the doctor for a headache
doctor gives you some pain pills your
headache goes away
a couple weeks later headache comes back
you go back to the doctor
more pills no more headache easy fix
a couple weeks later your head hurts so
bad you have to go to the er
where the doctors run some tests meaning
acquired data
and they diagnose that you have a brain
tumor
the first doctor took the easy way out
and treated the symptom
without fully analyzing the problem and
treating
the cause
systems thinking is a disciplined
approach to analyzing problems more
effectively
before acting with covid all the experts
agreed that strong
active measures were required to slow
the pandemic
social distancing mass scoring
quarantining avoiding large groups
but these measures resulted in small
businesses closing
many permanently a global recession
and lost jobs and some would argue are
worse consequences
than the safety measures the real
dilemma here is who gets to decide
which is worse and why isn’t the loss of
life a bigger factor in the decision
as sengay wrote sometimes the
easy or familiar solution is not only
ineffective
sometimes it is addictive and dangerous
the long-term consequence of
non-systemic thinking
has increased the need for more and more
of the solution
and we’ve seen this happen when coveted
first fight in the u.s
the president said it would magically
disappear
people resisted quarantining mass
squaring avoiding large groups
leaders didn’t institute safety measures
because of the impact
on people and businesses
they ignored scientists and took half
measures
and the numbers spiked dramatically some
have even called it
pandemicide they took the easy way out
and based decisions on emotions
or politics rather than data
and the easy way out let us write back
in and made things even worse
the final systems law that i’ll discuss
today is
faster is slower every system has an
optimal speed
when growth becomes excessive the system
will try to compensate
by slowing down and that puts the entire
system at risk
we all know the moral of the tortoise
and the hair slow and steady
is better than quick and careless a
quick
fix usually equals a slow cure
i heard many times in the air force
we never have time to do it right but we
always have time to do it over
with covert we fast-tracked
a vaccine within a few months when the
normal clinical trial process can take
years
in may of 2020 the vaccine development
program
was actually named operation warp speed
and yet today 10 months later
we’re still having problems distributing
and
producing the vaccine
there are actually covered mutations
that the current vaccines will not
affect according to the cdc
the covert variant that first showed up
in the uk quote
looms ready to hijack our successes to
date
worse 16 states have just
lifted mass mandates against cdc
guidance
it’s like the rookie air force navigator
on his first mission
we’re lost but we’re making darn good
time
so to succeed in life in business and
society
we must take a systems approach to
planning and decision making
understand that everything is connected
we should learn from covet 19
and avoid a future pandemic or at least
be better prepared to deal with one
remember in systems thinking the critics
are the actual optimist
they always think there’s a better way
if nothing else we should now realize
that measures taken to
protect the general public are not an
infringement on individual rights
we say that every system is designed
perfectly designed
to get the results it gets but how do
you get the results
you want where do you start
first understand your system
compare it to other organizations other
communities
and benchmark against their best
practices
another way is just to start small
pick the low-hanging fruit
a famous sculptor was once asked how he
was able to create such beautiful
sculptures
of of horses and his response was simply
i start with a piece of stone and i just
chip away everything
that doesn’t look like a horse
so you can start today by knowing your
system
and chipping away everything that
doesn’t look like systems thinking
and if you stay with it you will end up
with a system
that gets the results you want thank you
all very much