Do You Have Systems Intelligence?

Your primary influence is the environment you create. – Peter Senge

Over the past few weeks, I have been packing up my home office as my husband and I recently sold the place we have called home for the past 30 years. It was interesting to see what items distracted me from my task at hand and brought me tumbling into the past.

Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline was one of those inspiring distractions during our move. As soon as I pulled it from my bookshelf, I was transported to graduate school and the first time I heard Peter Senge speak at the National Organization Development Conference.

Dr. Senge is now a household name in organizational development and leadership, but what I remember most about the first time I saw him, was his commitment to enhancing the capacity of all people to work productively toward a common goal. He didn’t focus just on leaders or middle managers, or even companies. His focus was, and still is, the whole system, for which we are all a part.

We Live In an Interdependent World

The four things that stand out for me in this very brief video on the complex subject of systems intelligence are:

• We are all participants in various webs of interdependence.
• We have to take a systems approach to understand how the most vexing problems come about before we can maximize non-obvious leverage points toward a solution.
• We have to find different vantage points from which to view issues that arise.
• It takes time to develop, adopt, and apply solutions which requires a healthy balance of short and long term gains.

The most poignant reflection for me is that at the center of all healthy systems are people who have a deep and persistent commitment to real learning. It may sound obvious, but it is actually a revolutionary view of systems intelligence because it suggests a learning orientation versus relying on the more traditional definitions of “smart.”

I have written extensively about self-awareness as the foundation for emotional intelligence recently. What Peter Senge’s work brought to light for me recently is that emotionally intelligent people are able to contribute collectively to a learning organization and therefore have the capacity to create intelligent systems.

But how can I contribute to intelligent systems day to day, at home, work, and in my community? Peter Senge describes four disciplines:

Personal Mastery

Commit to learning mode. While competence, skills, and knowledge are all part of mastery, this practice is not about dominance but about growth. As Senge states,

“Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs.”

Mental Models

This is the work of turning the mirror inward and flexing the self-awareness muscle. As Senge states,

“Moving the organization in the right direction entails working to transcend the sorts of internal politics and game playing that dominate traditional organizations. In other words it means fostering openness.”

Building a Shared Vision

This is something that is so commonly misunderstood as a shared vision can’t be dictated in an intelligent system. It has to be constructed in a way that galvanizes the system (organization, family, team) at all levels. As Senge states,

“The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared ‘pictures of the future’ that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance. In mastering this discipline, leaders learn the counter-productiveness of trying to dictate a vision, no matter how heartfelt.”

Team Learning

This is perhaps where the magic happens. When two or more people come together and have a persistent commitment to real learning, watch out! As Senge states,

“Dialogue is the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine ‘thinking together’. To the Greeks, dia-logos meant a free-flowing of meaning through a group, allowing the group to discover insights not attainable individually…. [It] also involves learning how to recognize the patterns of interaction in teams that undermine learning.”

Moving Forward

As I placed The Fifth Discipline in the box marked books, it seemed a dark place for a book that has been such a guiding light in my career. I taped the box closed and quietly vowed to give this book a new place on a higher shelf, when I unpack in the coming weeks. Moving stirs up everything. Today, I am grateful for the chaos, as it has led to a renewed deep and persistent commitment to real learning.

So it is a choice we make every day, with each new bend and curve. I leave you with the words of Albert Einstein as you decide how you will frame your contributions today,

“A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of others, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.”