A short look at systems thinking.

A short orientation.

In everyday work, it is natural to respond to what is most visible: a late submission, a missed target, a tense meeting, a quiet stakeholder, or a decision that did not land well.

Systems thinking helps us slow down and look at what keeps producing the visible event. It asks how people, incentives, routines, information flows, relationships, and beliefs are connected.

This matters because effort alone can sometimes leave the pattern unchanged. A team can work harder, communicate more, or add more checks, but still get the same result if the underlying system keeps pulling people back into the same behaviour.

The goal of this preview is not to turn you into a systems expert before class. It is to give you shared language for noticing patterns, asking better questions, and examining your own thinking before acting.

So here is the idea.

The clip is funny because effort is not the missing ingredient. The belt speed, the work design, and the expectations around the work are shaping the outcome.

Levels Perspective helps you avoid staying only at the event level. A late report, a tired team, or a low score may sit on top of repeated patterns, work structures, incentives, and beliefs about what is normal or possible.

The move is to ask a calmer question: not "who is the problem?", but "which level is producing this pattern?"

So here is the idea.

Creative tension is the pull between two honest statements: what is true now, and what you want to create.

The same gap can also create emotional tension: frustration, anxiety, defensiveness, or impatience because current reality is not yet where you want it to be.

There are two common ways to resolve the tension. One is creative: keep the vision steady, face current reality clearly, and learn or act so reality moves closer to the vision. The other is relief-seeking: lower the vision, soften the facts, distract yourself, or explain the gap away so the discomfort fades.

The practice is to notice the emotional pull without letting it quietly shrink the goal. Hold both sides clearly: current reality and desired future.

So here is the idea.

Core Theory of Success is used here as a practical loop for team learning. It brings together a systems view of performance with research on teams: results are not produced by action alone. The quality of relationships affects the quality of thinking; the quality of thinking affects the quality of action; action affects results; and results feed back into relationships.

The first link matters because relationships shape what information enters the room. Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety, and Google's study of more than 180 teams, both point to the same practical idea: when people feel safe to speak up, admit mistakes, and ask questions, the team gets better information to think with.

The loop can also run downwards. If people learn that speaking up is risky, they hold back. Thinking narrows, action weakens, results suffer, and trust drops further.

So here is the idea.

Advocacy is not just pushing a position. Done well, it means sharing your view, the data you are using, and the assumptions behind it. You let others see your ladder, not just your conclusion.

Inquiry is not a question with an answer already hidden inside it. Done well, it draws out the other person's data, meanings, and assumptions. It helps you understand their ladder and check your own.

The balance matters. Too much advocacy can become persuasion. Too much inquiry can become vague or passive. Together, they make disagreement useful.

So here is the idea.

A mental model is the picture in your head of how something works. You may not have chosen it deliberately, but it still shapes what you notice, what you ignore, and what you do next.

In work settings, a mental model might sound like: "this unit prefers detail", "that stakeholder moves carefully", or "this issue is mainly a resourcing problem". Any of these may be partly true. The question is whether they have been checked recently.

They are also one of the deepest levels in Levels Perspective. If a belief keeps shaping the same pattern, changing the surface action may not be enough.

So here is the idea.

The ladder describes how quickly we move from data to action. We do not take in everything. We select some data, add assumptions, reach conclusions, reinforce beliefs, and then act as if our view is the whole picture.

This is useful because it separates what happened from the meaning we made from what happened. The meaning may be reasonable, but it is still worth checking before we act strongly.

There are two directions to remember. In real life, we usually climb up the ladder in seconds. In reflection, we deliberately walk down from our action to the data we selected. Then we expand the pool of available data and choose a more grounded next action.