Government_Leadership-11

=**Systems**=
 * Resolved: To Develop Systems Thinking**

Can you see the picture in the auto-stereogram? (It's suppose to be a person sitting in a chair)

What is a system? It's a consistent way to achieve a specific result. A simple example is to fill a glass of water. This involves PDCA between the person's mind, the faucet, and the glass. Here is the system: First, a person creates a plan to fill a specific glass from a chosen faucet. Second, the person places the glass under the faucet and turns the water on. Third, the person checks the water level in the glass compared the desired level. This is an example of a systems approach. If you do these same steps in the same order, you'll get the same result. This is a very simple example. As our world grows in specialization, the less systematic people think.

__Parts or Whole?__: The fractionalization of human knowledge caused by specialization has taught many to be experts in one tree, while remaining clueless on the forest that one lives in. Consider the following story: Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day, the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today." The blind men had no idea what an elephant was. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them were guided to the elephant, and every one of them touched it. "Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man, who touched the leg. "Oh, no! It is like a rope," said the second man, who touched the tail. "Oh, no! It is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man, who touched the trunk of the elephant. "It is like a big hand fan," said the fourth man, who touched the ear of the elephant. "It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man, who touched the belly of the elephant. "It is like a solid pipe," said the sixth man, who touched the tusk of the elephant. They began to argue about the elephant, and every one of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated, each blind man wondering how the others could be so stupid and each believing he had the truth since he felt it with his own hands. A wise man was passing by, and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them that they were all right and why. This story reveals how snapshots of individual truths must be connected together to receive a larger view of truth. How often do people argue their version of what is true? We must understand all parts - a system.

__Learning to "See" Systems__: An example of a system is mountain climbers tied together. The actions of one effects all. The leader directs the others in the system. In the same way, all organizations require personal and team responsibilities in order to achieve their goals. All organizations have connections - like the rope with the mountain climbers. Leaders need to see and think systematically rather than just cause and effect.

__Solving Challenges Systematically__: Consider the following story of a fisherman rescuing kids in a river. This story was written by Steven Covey and is about a fisherman going to a river to enjoy a day of fishing. Just minutes after getting there, he sees a young boy flailing his arms in the middle of the river, screaming for help. The fisherman quickly jumps into the water and saves the young boy. The boy is shaken up by otherwise fine. The fisherman starts fishing again, and fifteen minutes later, a young girl is flailing her arms and yelling for help in the middle of the river. The fisherman saves her also. At this point, he wonders what the odds are that two children would need help on the same day on the same river. Fifteen minutes later, when a third child needs to be rescued, he is certain that there is more to the picture (system) than the isolated events he is experiencing. At this point, he starts asking questions, no longer believing that the children needing to be rescued are isolated cause-and-effect events. He believes there is more to the system than meets the eye. The fisherman, in an effort to solve the cause at its roots rather than just trim the leaves of the tree, walks the trail upstream and finds a children's camp on the riverside. The fisherman discovers the cause of the distressed kids. A bully is tossing kids in the river every fifteen minutes until he ensures that everyone surrenders their lunch money. The fisherman, a true problem solver, takes the bully by the ear and walks him into the camp's office, solving the root of the problem and, thus, making sure he is able to enjoy his remaining fishing time in peace. Most people run from emergency to emergency in life, never stopping to think if the emergencies have an underlying systematic cause. The fisherman would've had a busy day if he didn't solve the root of the problem.

__Building Business Systems__: The best businesses build a system that can produce consistent results for the customer. We need to be able to produce results systematically, not necessarily personally, in whatever we do. In terms of business, duplication is the goal for the best systematic process to be used across all similar operations, reducing learning curves and increasing output. Find out what works consistently and teach it to others. Leaders work on the system and the team works in the system. Leaders have to be sure not to take it too far. If you hear "Just do it this way and stop thinking," then a team will lose its creativity.

__Scoreboard and PDCA__: In the 1970s, there was an energy crisis when OPEC cut production and raised prices due to support for Israel. Like many others, the Dutch relied on this source of energy for their electricity. Some homes had the electric meters in the basement while others had their meters in the front hall. The homes with the meter in the front halls were using less electricity than the ones with the meters in the basement. It wasn't because the homes were built with more efficiency. It was because unconsciously, the Dutch families were using PDCA. With the homes with the meters in the front hallway, families could see the dial turning and make an effort to use less electricity. The meter was a present scoreboard. The families with the meter in the basement didn't think about the electricity until the bill came.

__Butterfly Effect__: There are scientific claims that a butterfly flapping its wings has the capacity to change the initial atmospheric conditions enough to trigger a series of changes that compound into a hurricane on the other side of the world. This same idea is used in systems in that small adjustments to the system could lead to massive changes.

__Systems Thinking to Change the World__: Individuals can make major change historically. Caesar going into Rome started a civil war and led to an empire forming; Columbus dropping anchor on San Salvador led to colonization; terrorists led by bin Laden attacked on 9/11 leading to the War on Terror. Creating change in the world takes leadership and leveraging a system. What is believed impossible by a non-systems thinker is known to be achievable to a leader who thinks systematically.

In 1972, Buckminister Fuller gave an interview. Fuller was one who believed he had wasted his life. At age 32, his daughter died and he became depressed. He waded into the ocean to commit suicide when he realized he hadn't given life a chance. He resolved to spend the rest of his life using all of his energy to discover what a single human life could achieve. In his interview he said: "Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the //Queen Mary// - the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. It takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, called me Trim Tab."

A trim tab is a small tab placed on the main rudder that turns the rudder, which ultimately turns the whole big ship. It's function is to make it easier to turn the ship by helping to turn the rudder. The larger the ship, the more important the trim tab becomes because it's progressively more difficult to turn the rudder as the size of the ship increases. Peter Senge used the metaphor of the trim tab to explain leveraging a system. One would think to turn a huge oil tanker left one would have to go to the front and push left. That would take an enormous amount of force. The way to turn a ship is go to the back and turn the rudder right and with the help of the trim tab, the ship turns left. It's important for us all to see the trim tabs in our lives in what all we do. The trim tabs are those little pieces that are necessary to impact our entire lives.

Early in 1954, Ray Kroc, a 52-year-old salesman, whose multimixer sales business was plummeting, traveled to California where he discovered his destiny - McDonald's. An order came for a 10th mixer from an unknown San Bernardino-based fast food restaurant called McDonald's. So, Kroc decided to pay one of his best customers a visit. A week later, he called the McDonald brothers. Kroc had a feeling he had the ability to turn the burger stands into something special. He asked if they found a franchising agent yet. They said no. Kroc wanted to sell McDonald's franchises. Kroc recognized that the McDonald brothers created the best fast food system.
 * Ray Kroc and McDonald's:**

In the late 1940s, Dick McDonald and Maurice McDonald were looking to improve profits. Sales receipts showed 80% of their business was from burgers, not their complex barbecue items. Their conclusion would be revolutionary since they created the first mass production assembly process for food. They placed their equipment most efficiently by studying crew members in the process of assembling various foods, an idea they got from Frederick Taylor, the 20th century management guru. They eliminated the carhop and replaced him with a self-service counter and got rid of the barbecue pit. They cut their menu from 25 items to 11 items. In addition, their burgers were often prepared in advance. They were able to cut prices in half (from 30 cents a burger to 15 cents). As a result, their sales increased.

The McDonald brothers came up with a system, but it would take a leader of Kroc's ability to visualize and fulfill the potential. The true genius of Ray Kroc's McDonald's was the business format franchise. This provided a system that worked for anyone who used it. Kroc realized he needed to be a salesman for the system, not the burgers. he saw the franchising system as his product. Entrepreneurs would want a proven system that brings profits. He wasn't competing with other burger stands, but other business opportunities.

In April 1955, he opened the first prototype store in Des Plaines, IL. This gave Kroc a place to test and improve his operating system. His vision drove him to create a system that anyone who followed it could run profitable stores. His agreement with the McDonald brothers allowed only a $950 franchising fee and a mere 1.9% revenue sharing (0.5% went to the McDonald brothers). This business-as-a-product would only sell if it worked. Through Kroc's leadership, McDonald's achieved the benefits of systems and the creativity of the community - a rare combination in the days of command and control management. There would be corporate-like rules along with creativity from franchisee leaders - ideas like the Big Mac, Egg McMuffin, and Filet-o-Fish came from franchisee leaders, not corporate staff.

The key ingredient in Kroc's management formula is a willingness to risk failure and to admit mistakes, which wasn't the typical top-down decision-making corporation. His leadership style encouraged others to make suggestions and test ideas. Videos on best practices were being shown to franchisees on the system's best practices, but it wasn't enough. A full time training facility opened in 1961 - Hamburger University. It's aim was to ensure repeat business based on the system's reputation rather than quality of a single store or operator. All future franchisees attended the university giving McDonald's a leg up on the competition. Every fast food franchise would go on to develop their own training facilities. Kroc proved how successful one can become by using systems thinking.

__Thinking Questions__: 1. How many of you have ever seen an auto-stereogram 2D/3D picture in the mall? Are you able to see the image? Share this experience. 2. An auto-stereogram is an excellent example of what happens in our lives. We often see only part of the challenge, what we experience through our senses, and believe we have the whole picture when actually we are only seeing part of the whole. Describe a time that you thought you were right about something but ended up not having the whole picture. How can knowing this (like the story of the blind men and the elephant) change the way we experience life? 3. Most people run from emergency to emergency in life, never stopping to think if the emergencies have an underlying systematic cause. That's a powerful statement. How or why should we all begin applying systems thinking to our daily life "emergencies?" 4. The trim tab is the small part of the rudder that actually moves the entire ship. In our lives, the trim tab works the same way. It's the small point of leverage that makes your family, your career, your fitness program, your marriage, your finances go in whatever direction you turn the trim tab. How can you begin today, in whichever area you choose, to identify the trim tabs of your life? Why is this necessary in order to achieve success? 5. Sometimes you can't see the whole picture (blind men and elephant example), and that's where often a mentor comes in. Why is another person's perspective important in helping with the situation? 6. What will you take from this lesson and begin applying in your own life?

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