Chapter 3

THE LAWS OF THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE (11 LAWS)

		Today’s problems come from yesterday’s “solutions”. Often we are puzzled by the
		causes of our problems: when we merely need to look at our own solutions to other problems in the past. Solutions that merely shift problems from one part of a system to another often go undetected because, those who “solved” the first problem are different from those who inherit the new problem.

		The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. When well-intentioned
		interventions call for responses from the system that offset the benefits of the intervention. This is a phenomenon in Systems Thinking called ‘compensating feedback’. We all know what it feels like to be facing compensating feedback – the harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. Yet, pushing harder, whether through an increasingly aggressive intervention or through increasingly stressful withholding of natural instincts, is exhausting, mainly because all that pushing keeps us from seeing the subtle parts of the system that created the response in the first place and acting from a place of higher leverage (and less effort). Still as individuals and organizations, we not only get drawn into compensating feedback, we often glorify the suffering that ensues. When our initial efforts fail to produce lasting improvements, we “push harder” – faithful to the creed that hard work will overcome all obstacles, all the while blinding ourselves to how we are contributing to the obstacles ourselves.

		Behavior grows better before it grows worse. Low leverage interventions would be much
		less alluring if it were not for the fact that many actually work. It cures the symptoms, there’s improvement or maybe even the problem has gone away. It may be two, three or four years before the problem returns, or some new, worse problem arrives. Compensating feedback usually involves a “delay”, a time lag between the short-term benefit and the long-term disbenefit. By that time, given how rapidly most people move from job to job, someone new is sitting in the chair. And so we don’t “see” this law.

		The easy way out usually leads back in. We all find comfort applying familiar solutions to
		problems, sticking to what we know best. Pushing harder and harder on familiar solutions while fundamental problems persist or worsen, is a realiable indicator of nonsystemic thinking – what we often call the “what we need is a bigger hammer” syndrome.

		The cure can be worse than the disease. The long-term, most insidious consequence of
		applying non-systemic solutions is increased need for more and more of the solution. That is why ill-conceived government interventions are not just ineffective, they are “addictive” in the sense of fostering increased dependency and lessened abilities of local people to solve their own problems and fundamentally weaker than before and more in need of further help. Over time, the intervenor’s power grows – whether it is the military budget’s hold over an economy or the size and scope of foreign assistance agencies. Some have called Systems Thinking the “new dismal science” because it teaches that most obvious solutions don’t work – at best the improve matters in the short run, only to make things worse in the long run. Yet, Shifting the Burden structures show that any long-term solution must, “strengthen the ability of the system to shoulder its own burdens.” Once that happens, learning how to handle people is mainly a matter of time and commitment.

		Faster is slower. For most business people the best rate of growth is fast, faster, fastest. Yet
		virtually, all natural systems, from ecosystem to animals to organizations, have instrinsically optimal rates of growth. The optimal rate is far less than the fastest possible growth. When growth becomes excessive – as it does in cancer – the system will seek to compensate by slowing down; perhaps putting the organization’s survival at risk in the process. Still the real implications of the systems perspective is not inaction but a new type of action rooted in a new way of thinking, more promising than our normal ways of dealing with problems.

		Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. There is a fundamental
		mismatch between the nature of reality in complex systems and our predominant ways of thinking about reality. The first step in correcting that mismatch is to let go of the notion that “cause” (the interactions of the underlying system that is most responsible for generating the symptoms) and “effect” (the obvious symptoms that indicate that there are problems) are close in time and space. This is a fundamental characteristic of complex human systems: cause and effect are not close in time and space. As players of the beer game eventually discover, the root of our difficulties is neither recalcitrant problems nor evil adversaries – but ourselves.

		Small changes can produce big results – but the areas of highest leverage are often
		the least obvious. Systems Thinking shows that small, well-focused actions can sometimes produce significant, enduring improvements, if they’re in the right place. Systems Thinking refer to this principle as “leverage” – a change, which with a minimum of effort would lead to lasting, significant improvement. The only problem is that high-leverage changes are usually non-obvious to most participants in the system until we understand the forces at play in those systems. They are not “close in time and space” to obvious problem symptoms. This is what makes life interesting. There are no simple rules for finding high- leverage changes, but there are ways of thinking that make it more likely. Learning to see underlying “structures” rather than “events” is a starting point; each of the system archetypes suggests areas of high- and low-leverage. Thinking in terms of processes of change rather than “snapshots” is another.

		You can have your cake and eat it too – but not at once. Many apparent dilemmas are by-
		products of static thinking. They only appear as rigid “either-or” choices, because we think of what is possible at a fixed point in time. The real leverage lies in a whole new light once you think consciously of change over time and seeing how both can improve over time.

		Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants. Living systems
		have integrity. Their character depends on the whole. The same is true for organizations; to understand the most challenging managerial issues requires seeing the whole system that generates the issues. People go ahead and divide an elephant in half anyway. You don’t have two small elephants then; you have a mess. By a mess, I mean a complicated problem where there is no leverage to be found because the leverage lies in interactions that cannot be seen from looking only at the piece you are holding.

		There is no blame. We tend to blame outside circumstances for our problems. “Someone
		else” did it to us. Systems thinking shows us that there is no outside; that you and the cause of your problems are part of a single system. The cure lies in your relationship with your “enemy”.