ABOUT SYSTEMS

Emotions not making sense in your context?
A systemic issue could be at play.

A system is like a mobile – if one element doesn’t carry its weight (is heavier or lighter than it should be), the whole system is out of balance. To find out more about the definition of a system and to understand where we are coming from, read this page or follow the links.

On this page:

• What Is a System?
• Systemic Principles in Organisations: Invisible Lines of Power
• What Are Hidden Dynamics?
• How Do We Know All This?
• What is Systemic Awareness?

We are powerfully influenced by our surroundings, by the immediate context and by the personalities of those around us.

System (from Latin syst?ma, in turn from Greek σ?στημα syst?ma) is a set of entities, real or abstract, comprising a whole where each component interacts with or is related to at least one other component and they all serve a common objective.
(From Wikipedia: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System)
There are many different types of system, for example:

• Systems in IT
• Systems in engineering
• Systems in a social and cognitive context

Social and cognitive sciences recognise systems in human person models and in human societies. They include brain functions and mental processes, as well as normative ethics systems and social/cultural behavioral patterns.
Systems theory is a particular view of the world. As an interdisciplinary study of human life and social organisation, systems theory is widely spread. For more detailed information on systems theory check out Wikipedia on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory.
In organisational development, human organisations are viewed as systems of interacting components with numerous complex processes and organisational structures. Organisational development theorist Peter Senge developed the concept of the learning organisation in his book The Fifth Discipline. He views an organisation as a dynamic system continuously adapting and improving.
In an organisational context, theorists such as Margaret Wheatley have also described the dynamics in organisational systems in a new context, with metaphors taken from quantum physics, chaos theory, and the self-organisation of systems.
In the field of family therapy , the anthropologist and systems theorist Gregory Bateson developed the ‘double bind’ theory, where individual psychiatric symptoms are thought of as systemic responses to faulty family communications by having received different or contradictory messages.
In systems philosophy, the founder of the ‘Club of Budapest’, Ervin Laszlo looks at systems as models created for an understanding. He posits a field of information as the substance of the cosmos, a fundamental energy and information-carrying field that informs not just the current universe, but all universes past and present. László describes how such an informational field can explain why our universe is so improbably fine-tuned as to form galaxies and conscious lifeforms.
In the context of systemic organisational consulting, a system is a network of constantly changing relationships and interactions between people, information and technology which is closely connected to other networks, such as customers, markets etc. If there is any change in one element of a system, there is a simultaneous change in all other elements of the system. Practice has shown that systemic constellations can be used to find hidden dynamics in these systems. Systemic constellations are stimulating and offer insight in many areas.

Power out of balance in an organisation is adverse to productivity and success. This can be for any number of reasons.
From a systemic perspective, a healthy organisation has certain principles in place; a sort of meta-structure evolves that allows the work and the people in the organisation to thrive. Employees are autonomous and are bound to the organisation at the same time. They are interdependent and there is a balance. A less than healthy organisation might not be functioning to its full potential because, from a systemic perspective:

• The order is not right
• Giving and taking is out of balance
• Contributions are not acknowledged

• The right to belong (birthright). Everyone has a place in the family
• Order. For example; fathers and mothers parent their children and not the other way around
• A balance between what is given and what is received, or taken, by the members of the family

Basically, families are determined by blood-lines; organisations and businesses are task oriented hierarchies. Imbalances in either of these systems can be brought to light through the application of systemic family constellations and systemic organisational constellations respectively.

A healthy organisation needs a clear structure, where no-one prevents anybody else from doing his or her job. This can be from just being inadvertently obstructive, or duplicating effort, to actively trying to prevent someone else from doing their job. In principle, a successful organisation only consists of the functions that are essential for achieving the goal and mission of the organisation.
In relation to the order in an organisation, various dimensions of priority exist simultaneously in the system and are mutually dependent on each other.

• Priority of time: who comes first, who comes later (merger, new boss, etc.), leading from the last place
• Priority of hierarchy: not everyone is equal, priority goes to those who have more at stake in the whole of the company, equal value in membership is not the same as the complete equality of rights, the boss has the responsibility to lead and has to be allowed to do that
• Priority of competence: people who are skilled, competent and talented have to be recognised for their work

A manager, new in a position, needs to be able to respect the other two priorities to be successful. This is called leading from the last place. In systemic organisational consulting and in leadership facilitation we look closer at this phenomenon.

We all have come across outstanding and hard working individuals. They might help out wherever they can, even when some of the work is not in their job description. Others might be exceptionally skilled, but their wage does not reflect this, while others again might be paid much more than what they are worth to the company.
Work has to be distributed fairly. Pay has to reflect the contribution of an employee to the company. Now, how do you keep a balance? How do you recognise when something is not right in the first place?
You might have been given something and you are in debt to this person. How is this for you? What do you do with this? Are you trying to establish a balance? Or are you trying to ignore the fact that you owe something to this person? We can show you ways to:

• Recognise a debt
• Acknowledge a debt
• Settle a debt

For example, if the giving has been positive, have you ever thought that giving back slightly more than what you have been given could ensure growth?
On the other hand, if you have been hurt, have you thought that not to respond would keep an imbalance?  How to reduce animosity? It has been suggested to give back something slightly less than what is received reduces conflicts. But, how do you ask for something in return?
From a systemic point of view, the saying ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive’ does not hold up. If the balance is not there over an extended amount of time, the person on the receiving end will be disempowered.
These are strange propositions but we can help you recognise such imbalances and find appropriate ways to respond.

All members of an organisation have to recognise and to respect each other. They also have to respect reality. But, what is reality? Maybe it goes along the following guidelines:

• Each employee has an equal right to a place within the organisation
• The past needs to be given its appropriate place; this includes people, ideals and events
• Even past members belong to an organisation in their own way; it strengthens the company if they are remembered with good will
• And even those who have been dismissed, have belonged to the company at some stage and have a right to be remembered

Basically, reality is acknowledging how things are, even if there are problems due to injustice and things are not as you would like to see them.
In a living system, domestic chores and creative efforts have to be held in dynamic balance.

A system seeks for completion and takes its owners and members into service and creates a collective conscience. This creates a dynamic which can be dangerous if the culture of a company, any other organisation, or even a country is not addressed consciously. We often only see the impact a dynamic has, and wonder why this is happening. If we are not aware of these invisible forces, they can stay hidden.
We can use wind as an analogy to explain this phenomenon. For example air starts moving from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure; we call this wind. It can’t be seen but a sail on a boat translates the force and makes it visible. This force can used by attaching ropes to the sail. If no-one is holding the ropes, the sail flies away. The forces are generally much greater than an individual sailor can handle. The ropes need to be handled skilfully and with care to guide the boat in the right direction. If you fight the winds and currents, you are lost.
Hidden dynamics are the wind-like forces in relationships, and they can be harnessed by those who know what they are doing, or they can be beaten by them if they don’t. Emotional factors are involved in all human activity and such emotions are often connected to power issues. In an organisational system, hidden dynamics:

• Start when a principle is not respected (Order, Give and Take, Acknowledgement)
• Occur between elements (People, Roles, Products, Tasks, Processes)
• Are an indicator of imbalance in the system
• Are an alarm signal for the survival of the whole system

But, how to recognise hidden dynamics? There might be a restlessness or loss of energy in certain members of the organisation. Also, clarity in order might be missing. Using organisational constellations can help to expose the hidden dynamics and bring forward truth. It creates and overview of the complex situation and a certain meta level is reached. Truth in this context is:

• What wants to come to light, e.g. debt, lost or excluded persons, order disturbed or inverted
  
• The source of a dynamic, a hidden dynamic now out in the open
  

Examples of hidden dynamics:

• An employee, for example a specialist, feels superior to someone in a higher position, for example his or her boss
• A new boss does not respect the experience of long term employees
  

Once the hidden dynamics have been exposed, they can be cleared with statements such as:

• Even though I know more than you, you are my boss and I respect your position in the organisation
• Even though I am your boss, you are the better specialist and I respect your skills
• You arrived after me / before me

These statements need to be expressed sincerely. We are skilled facilitators and can guide you through this delicate process. In tools and techniques we describe some of the services we offer.
Dynamics don’t just happen between people in an organisation. Have you ever noticed that the relationship between a product or service and the customer often mirror what is happening inside the organisation? (see also branding)

Belonging to a group is vital for survival and a precise inner compass tells us what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ according to the system. In every group there is a certain knowledge each member of the group can access. To access this knowledge we need another language, intellect alone is not enough. It can be felt in the body and systemic constellations can be used to create an analogy of this.
There have been several attempts to describe this phenomenon with labels such as ‘knowing field’, ‘morphic field’ or ‘tacit knowledge’. A kind of collective intelligence is at work, solving complex questions, questions that are too complex to be resolved with analytical thinking. This invisible field can be compared to:

• The Internet
• The fields of gravity

In systems created by human beings, such as organisations or families, there is an energetic layer that is not talked about and yet somehow systemic constellations have access to this layer. This layer is most widely knowing as the ‘knowing field’ and is a deeper knowing of a person that appears in every systemic constellation. It is difficult to describe what actually happens and why complete strangers who have been chosen by chance can act and feel things they know nothing about. Referring to a family context, Hellinger, the originator of this work, stated in his interview with ten Hövel that there is no way to explain this.

The curious thing about these constellations is that once the chosen representatives are in place they begin to feel like the real family members. Sometimes they even begin to have symptoms of the real people without knowing anything about them. Once, for example, someone representing an epileptic began to have an epileptic seizure. Often a representative will report a pounding heart, or he or she will feel cold on one side of the body. If we ask about the real person, it often turns out that the symptoms reflect something in the situation of the real people in the family. There's really no way to explain this, but you see it again and again in thousands of constellations. (p. 3)

Hellinger further describes that the soul of a client transmits this ‘knowing field’ and that, everybody can have access to it. Through certain techniques systemic organisational consulting takes advantage of this phenomena.

Rupert Sheldrake approached this phenomena from a very different angle and called it in his research the ‘morphic field’ or ‘morphogenic field’.
As a zoologist he was seeking to explain animal behaviours, particularly amongst large flocks or herds, where he noted many instances of group-wide awareness that were clearly not a function of visual or audible signals – in other words there was some ‘other’ field effect established to provide this group-wide communication. Whilst some in the scientific establishment dismiss this idea out of hand, there is both a wealth of evidence to support it, and a theoretical basis for its existence in modern physics, through string/membrane theory and its n-dimensional universe.
The evidence for telepathy or pre-cognition is widespread but somewhat dismissed because in the main we have, as humans, over-ridden our ‘sensing’ with ‘rationalisation’ – we’ve overridden ‘gut feeling’ with ‘thinking’.  That said, there are few amongst us who can honestly say they have never had the experience of thinking of someone moments before that person calls them on the telephone. Or of suddenly feeling to be compelled to do something only to find out that that was something someone ‘wanted’ them to do.

Classical knowledge management focuses on explicit knowledge and theoretical knowledge, which can be stored in large databases. A lot of effort is put into trying to make these complex systems more accessible and ‘user friendly’. But managers studying ‘lists’ and computer screens often loose an instinctive knowing and the sense for the whole.
There is much more information available, that cannot be stored in a data base. This other form of more personal knowledge, an internal intelligence, works outside of the intellect and is naturally at our disposal. It often comes with experience. The scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi developed the concept of tacit knowledge, a knowledge that people carry in their minds and is, therefore, difficult to access.
Now, how can the expertise of one employee be made available to the whole company? And how do firms create knowledge? The Japanese business experts Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi addressed this issue when describing the innovation process in Japanese companies. In their book ‘The Knowledge Creating Company’ they revealed how knowledge is created in these companies through the interplay between explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and  tacit knowledge, expert know-how learned only by experience.

Systemic awareness is a form of intuition, a ‘blink’. When we ‘know’ something without really knowing why, Malcolm Gladwell calls this in his book ‘Blink’ ‘the power of thinking without thinking’. Everybody has a capacity to sense what is going on below the surface, on a non-verbal level, just by belonging to, or being affiliated with a system. Some know how to access this information better than others.
When we talk about systemic awareness, we are describing what is often referred to as ‘gut feeling’. For example, experts usually know more than just the technical details of machine or an IT system. These days technology is so complex that it is impossible to comprehend and remember everything intellectually. Have you ever seen a technician approach a broken machine and immediately know where the problem could be?
Systemic awareness is not just systemic thinking, which tries to find patterns in a system. Systemic awareness is an expanded world view. Systemic thinking takes time, systemic awareness is instant. Through training and practice systemic awareness can be developed. Sounds complicated? Not at all. Developing systemic awareness is simple. It is about bringing space between racing thoughts, to promote a quietness in the mind to be able to listen to the ‘blink’. Systemic awareness has many benefits in the business world as well as the personal world, such as:

• Ability to listen carefully
• Awareness of nonverbal communication
• Ability to understand the emotions of another person
• Suspended filters of personal opinion and experience
• Enhanced perspective on own questions and processes
• Bridge between feelings and practical thought
• Bridge between analytical thinking and intuitive understanding
• Quicker understanding of colleagues and customers, which creates more acceptance and appreciation
• Change in the perception of problems: instead of looking for the guilty party, a focus on reciprocal effects in the system
• An intelligent or knowing field that connects people in a firm in a productive way
• Mental development to a broader view, an ability to take into account multi level influences – in short the development of emotional intelligence

Systemic awareness is a skill that can be learned and specific exercises are built into our customised team building programs, public workshops, seminars and trainings. Systemic awareness is also developed naturally by participating in as many systemic constellations as possible. For more information on our program please refer to our schedule.