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UNDERSTANDING HUMANS SYSTEMS

The Heart and Power of Organization Development

The Nature of Human Systems
  1. Everything is connected to everything else beliefs, things, processes, thoughts, feelings, and actions.
  2. For a system to be doing what it is doing everything in that system must be doing what they are doing; therefore, responsibility is always mutual.
  3. The members of systems are diverse. Innovation (in products, services, production technologies, or service delivery) is dependent on the effective use of diversity.
  4. Change in human systems is constant regardless of our desire for stability.
  5. The behavior of a system is driven by the collective behavior of its members. The behavior of the members of a system is driven by their individual belief systems that were created from their experience in previous systems. That experience was determined by the collective behavior of those systems. Accordingly, system behavior is fairly consistent across overlapping systems.
The Goals and Role of Feedback in Human Systems
  1. Goal achievement is the primary purpose. Clarity about those goals and the strategies needed to accomplish team are paramount for effectiveness.
  2. Feedback loops regulate the behavior of systems and keep the system on target toward its goals. Performance data, rewards, penalties, permissions, and constraints are all examples of feedback.
  3. Systems often have more than one goal each with its own feedback loops. Goals that have feedback loops of greater frequency or reward value will dominate over other goals.
The Quality and Productivity of Human Systems
  1. The quality and productivity of human systems are directly proportional to the quality of the alignment, engagement, connectedness, and dialogue among the members of the system. This impacts how well a human system deals with diversity and change.
  2. Systems attempt to create alignment through (1) win/win collaborative, synergetic strategies or win/lose strategies such as suppression of differences (conformity) or (2) contention (power struggles, turf battles). The win/win strategy is preferred for their efficiency. Win/lose strategies diminish productivity.
  3. Patterns of preferential treatment can mitigate engagement of members and groups of members and, consequently, mitigate system quality and productivity.
  4. A problematic human system will mitigate the effectiveness of related human, mechanical, or electronic systems. Failure to frequently attend to the quality of a human system is costly.
  5. Any member or group of members of a system will consistently succeed (or fail) only with the support of the system. Any failure of system members is costly the entire system.
  6. The behavior of leaders (as collectively interpreted by followers) has a significant impact on the behavior (collaboration, competition, conformity) that occurs within human systems,
  7. For systemic problem solving determine the subsystem that contains both the problem and the solution. Look to a larger system definition when problems seem intractable.

Michael F. Broom, Ph.D.
November, 2009