Topic · Complexity and communication

Systems thinking in organizations

A team doesn't deliver, a conflict keeps coming back, a change fizzles out. The first glance looks for the cause in people. Systems thinking asks which interactions stabilize the behavior. Meta-systemic thinking goes one step further and asks how the system in which all this happens is built.

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From the individual case to the pattern

In organizations, problems tend to be attributed to people: The department head can't push things through, sales doesn't stick to agreements, the team isn't motivated. Sometimes that is true. Often, however, different people in the same position behave strikingly alike. Then the explanation lies less in the people than in what surrounds them: in goals, rules, expectations, information paths, and in how all of this acts on one another.

Systems thinking brings these interactions into view. It replaces the question “Who is to blame?” with the question “What keeps this pattern stable?” This takes pressure off, because it makes assigning blame unnecessary, and it opens up room for action, because patterns can be changed at more than one point.

If you only think “if A, then B,” you look for culprits. If you think in interactions, you find points of leverage.

Basic concepts

Behind systems thinking are general systems theory, cybernetics, and the theory of social systems. For work in organizations, a few concepts are enough.

System and environment

A system is a set of elements with relationships among themselves and to their environment. Where the boundary runs is a matter of observation: Anyone who says “the system” has already distinguished what belongs to it and what does not.

Communication instead of people

According to Niklas Luhmann, social systems operate through communication, not through individuals. In this sense, an organization does not consist of people but of the communications and decisions that connect to one another.

Self-organization and emergence

Systems structure themselves through their internal dynamics. In the process, properties emerge that cannot be derived from any single part, such as a culture that no one decided on.

Feedback

Reinforcing feedback drives growth or escalation. Balancing feedback keeps a system in equilibrium, like a control loop. Many patterns in organizations are combinations of both.

Autopoiesis

Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela described systems that produce and maintain themselves. They generate from within what can connect to what already exists, and they observe the environment only through their own distinctions.

The observer in the system

First-order cybernetics (Norbert Wiener) regulates a system from the outside. Second-order cybernetics (Heinz von Foerster) takes into account that the observer is part of the system. Whoever describes an organization has an effect on it.

Variety

According to W. Ross Ashby, control requires at least as much internal variety as what is being controlled. From this, Stafford Beer developed the Viable System Model (VSM), a model for viable organizations that balances the autonomy of the parts with the cohesion of the whole.

Guiding principles of systemic work

An attitude follows from the basic concepts. A few guiding principles sum it up:

Systems organize themselves.

Control acts on a system but does not fully determine it.

Effects cannot be calculated.

The same measure works differently in two organizations.

Every system is unique.

What has worked elsewhere is a clue, not a guarantee.

Better is enough.

You don't have to know what is good to know what is better.

More of what works.

And when something doesn't work: do something different instead of more of the same. The phrase comes from the solution-focused approach of Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg.

Action has a goal.

The question is which one. Even seemingly pointless behavior often serves a function in the system.

Consider the opposite.

If you believe you have the truth, test the opposite. Only the two together show the whole.

Detours are part of it.

They are how you get to know the landscape.

How systems get in their own way

Some patterns show up in many organizations. They are not the failure of individuals but consequences of the system's logic. Some terms come from systems theory, others are working terms. Once you can name the patterns, you no longer have to work on symptoms.

Inherent systemic paradox

Through its own logic, the system creates a paradox that prevents it from reaching its goal.

Autopoietic blindness

A system reproduces only what it already knows and remains blind to what would be relevant from outside (following Luhmann).

Recursive dysfunction

The system responds to a challenge with exactly the means that caused the problem.

Double bind

Two demands cannot be met at the same time, yet both are expected (a term from Gregory Bateson), e.g., “We want innovation, but only by conventional means.”

Structural refusal of cognition

The architecture of the system does not admit new information, even when it is being sought.

Path dependence

Established structures prevent adaptation, even when they have long since stopped fitting (lock-in).

Performative self-obstruction

What a system does prevents it from fulfilling its declared intention.

Referral instead of solution

What is meant to help makes things harder: You are referred to information that you are not given.

Where the observer stands

Whether a problem becomes solvable often depends on where you look at it from. Five observer positions are distinguished here. None is higher or better than another. They answer different questions.

Systemic

within the defined system

How does this system work, and how can the people involved move differently within it?

Meta-systemic

the system as a system

Why is this system built this way, and for whom is that meaningful or limiting?

Trans-systemic

between the systems

How can different logics be compared and translated into one another?

Poly-systemic

systems within systems

Which levels and logics are at work here at the same time, without one being reducible to another?

Fluidly defined

system as a chosen perspective

Which system boundary serves the purpose right now, and does no unit get left out?

Often the first two positions are enough. The others become important where not one system but several are at work at the same time.

Systemic: Movement within the system

Systemic work moves within a defined system: a team, a department, an organization. Typical questions are: Who influences whom? Which patterns stabilize the current behavior? What function does a conflict or a symptom serve? This includes circular questions that make interactions visible, paradoxical questions that work with tension and pattern interruption, and hypothetical questions that open up spaces of possibility. Equally important are clarifying the assignment and context and separating the problem from the person.

The benefit can be tangible: better collaboration, clearer roles, less friction, more effective decisions. Systemic work is especially effective when the system boundaries are clear, the goals are shared within the system, and the issue is coordination, optimization, or development. In many cases, that is entirely sufficient.

All of these techniques have one thing in common: They change the movement within a system, not how it is built. The system itself is not called into question.

Meta-systemic: When the design is the issue

Meta-systemic work begins where the problem does not lie within the system but in the system design. The system itself becomes the subject: its assumptions, its boundaries, its logics of power, and its blind spots. The focus shifts from the relationships within the system to the conditions under which it functions.

	Systemic	Meta-systemic
Focus	relationships within the system	conditions of the system
Guiding question	How do the people involved move differently?	Why is the system built this way?
Typical questions	Who influences whom? What function does the symptom have?	Why is the team set up this way? Which conflicting goals are built in? What, in practice, must not be named? Which logics steer decisions, officially and unofficially?
Fits when	boundaries are clear and goals are shared	the same problems keep recurring despite good work

Signs that the issue is the design:

Teams work well and are exhausted anyway.
Conflicts keep coming back.
Leadership has to compensate constantly.
Change initiatives fizzle out.
Responsibility is defined but has no effect.
Decisions are formally correct and in practice ineffective.

An example shows the difference. A team delivers hardly any results despite seemingly stable conditions. From a systemic perspective, roles are clarified, expectations made transparent, dynamics examined. That helps, but not for long. From a meta-systemic perspective, it becomes visible that the team receives contradictory assignments from two lines of management. The problem lies not in the team but in the leadership structure. Only when this level is included can something change.

When several systems are at work at once

The meta-systemic view, too, tacitly assumes one system. In many situations, however, several are at work at once: the team, the department, the organization, formal governance, informal power, history, location, market, and regulation. These levels interlock, overlap, and partly contradict one another. Not neatly hierarchical, often diagonal.

Trans-systemic

Translating between logics

A team follows different rules than the organization, sales different ones than development. What is needed is the ability to move between these logics, to compare them and mediate between them without getting stuck in any one of them.

Poly-systemic

Holding several levels at once

Formal responsibility works differently from actual influence. Decisions are prepared in one place and made in another. Power rarely runs where the organizational chart shows it. A situation like this can only be grasped if several levels are taken into account at the same time.

Fluidly defined

Choosing the system to fit the situation

In this understanding, a system is not a thing but a chosen perspective of description. The focus changes depending on the question, for example between the functions of the VSM: operational, steering, strategic, on identity and direction. What matters is coherence: The chosen boundary has to fit the whole, the parts, and the people.

This is not arbitrariness, and it is not “everything is connected to everything.” Many people can switch roles. Switching system definitions without losing orientation, responsibility, or relationships requires the capacity for abstraction and, at the same time, being grounded.

Leadership between systems

A common pattern: Leaders are reflective, take responsibility seriously, think systemically, and make an effort for their people. And yet they are under constant pressure, feel ground down, and see little impact despite their efforts. This is rarely an individual problem.

From a systemic perspective, what is expected of leadership makes sense: coordinating, mediating, resolving conflicts, creating meaning. From a meta-systemic perspective, it turns out that leadership is often supposed to balance out contradictions that are generated structurally: contradictory goals, unclear governance, parallel logics of power, expectations from different systems. Leadership then becomes a buffer zone instead of a shaping authority.

What can actually be led here?

In the system

Collaboration, roles, processes: This is where leadership in the classic sense helps.

On the system

Conflicting goals, lines of management, the architecture of responsibility: Personal effort helps little here; what is needed above all is a decision about how it is built.

What is needed is the ability to shift focus, to define systems to fit the situation, to locate responsibility realistically, and to create coherence without carrying everything yourself. More on this in the topic Leadership as a function of the organization.

What it looks like in a company

The occasions are usually concrete. The difference lies in the level at which you intervene.

Recurring conflict

Always the same front lines

Systemic: work on the dynamics between the people involved. Meta-systemic: check whether the organization is making two demands at once without weighing them against each other.

Exhaustion

Good work, no end

Systemic: clarify workload and collaboration. Meta-systemic: ask about the contradictions the team balances out every day.

Change

Lots of energy, little movement

Systemic: improve participation and communication. Meta-systemic: check which existing logic keeps pulling the change back.

Responsibility

Clarified on paper

Systemic: make expectations transparent. Meta-systemic: see where formal responsibility and actual influence diverge.

Where this succeeds, problems can be dealt with where they arise. Decisions can become more coherent because their consequences have been thought through, leadership can be relieved, and change connects more readily with what is already there.

Common misconceptions

Common assumption	More accurate
Meta-systemic is better than systemic.	The two are not alternatives. The question is what is appropriate at the moment: sometimes movement within the system, sometimes orientation above the system.
Meta means: permanently looking at it from the outside.	Meta-systemic is a temporary position outside the system's logic. Where several systems are at work, you stand in the middle of the network, and observation connects the levels.
Systemic means: No one is responsible.	Systems thinking separates the problem from the person. It locates responsibility where it holds instead of dissolving it.
Understanding the system means having changed it.	Orientation is the prerequisite, not the result. Translating it into structure, processes, and decisions is still work.
Better communication will solve it.	Where the problem lies in the design, it is not about better communication but about orientation and a decision about the structure.

Limits

Not a recipe. Systems thinking is a way of observing. It replaces neither expert review nor responsibility for decisions.
No statement about people. It describes patterns and conditions, not the character or abilities of individuals.
Connection before theory. Concepts such as autopoiesis or second-order cybernetics help with thinking. In conversation with executive management, what counts is what they make visible and decidable.
More levels, more effort. Not every situation needs a view of the network of systems. Systemic work within the defined frame is often enough.

Organizations can stop repairing symptoms and start understanding their own logic.

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