One way to think about this is that an organization is a system. A system is a set of things that work together. Thinking in terms of systems is different than thinking in terms of individual parts. If you just think about individual parts, then when one part fails you’re likely to think something was wrong with just that part. But thinking about the system invites further questions: How did the other parts interact with this one to cause this outcome? And how can the system be designed differently so that each part improves, rather than diminishes, the others?
