When the Problem is Structural
September 18, 2016 by marcpierson
It’s important to diagnose the type of problem you have. Better said, it’s important to know the type of cause for problem you have–not only it’s symptoms.
What I see happening is very bright and well intentioned people are grabing whatever tool they are used to using and applying it to every problem. I see almost no one addressing structural problems. Of course unless you’re the founder it takes a huge amount of power and influence to restructure an organization–at least in the way people have been going about it lately. Most avoid diagnosing or addressing the structural problems and are usually using psychology or incentives or threats or business modeling or quality improvement tools to solve problems that are fundamentally structural. One way to know if it is a structural problem is to ask yourself if you were to replace all of the people with new people would you have the same problem. In other words, structural problems do not depend on the individual actors or anything about them. With too little science, Dee Hock and others have tried to address this problem; some with a modicum of success.
If we’re going to create structures that work, my belief is, we need to focus on how one can manage complexity, being very scientific about it. Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model is the strongest starting place I’m aware of. And it has a deep foundation in the rigorous science of complexity–and it works.
