Our modern culture is partly bureaucratic and mechanized, but a lot of our embedded mechanisms are woefully outmoded and dysfunctional. And the political side of our systems of governance are often even more dysfunctional than the ossified bureaucracies.

So here comes system thinkers to the rescue. Let's model our dysfunctional systems, let's get to the root of the problem. Let's solve the system models for ethical best practices and publish our systems theoretic models, our insightful analyses, and our innovative recommended practices for advancing to a high-functioning 21st Century system architecture.

And then we wait for the proprietors of the obsolescent, anachronistic, and dysfunctional systems to shout, "Hurrah! We are saved!"

But the "Hurrah!" never comes. And so we become frustrated and exasperated. Why is our work languishing unattended, unappreciated, and unadopted?

And then the answer smacks us in the forehead. Because all those proprietors of the current systems worry that if we fix the problems at their root, they will be out of a job. Their livelihood has been attending to the messes of our current system, and if we eradicate the messes at their source, they won't have any messes to mop up. What they really wanted was a better mop, but we foolishly proposed solutions that would eliminate the need for any mopping at all.

And so they dither and delay and put off the day of approval and adoption of innovative upgrades that would put them out of job. And those of us who have long labored to analyze, model, and propose innovative solutions are left in a state of frustration, exasperation, discombobulation, disillusionment, chagrin, cynicism, and despair.

And that, I reckon, is why Nora Bateson, Peter Jones, Derek Cabrera, and Benjamin P Taylor are discussing this on Zoom/YouTube these days.

The Inconvenience of Systems Thinking

Nora Bateson, Peter Jones, Derek Cabrera, Benjamin P Taylor