Systems thinking requires the ability to recognize how all the spheres in which we work are interconnected. In the world in which we were formed, almost all business and marketing education has focused for many years on teaching personal or company growth, without looking at the impact that growth itself can have on the rest of the ecosystem. of which it is a part (understanding that an ecosystem is not only the biological part, but also the human part).
Peter Hawkins and Eve Turner in Systemic Coaching. Delivering Value Beyond the Individual write that “systemic coaching recognizes that all learning and development is relational, between a living organism or system and the larger ecosystem in which it nests”, this is to say that “systemic business coaching is focuses on creating value for the individual customer and the teams they are a part of, the organization and the customer they work for, as well as for the organization’s stakeholders and the broader communities and ecology of which it is a part of the organization. The ripple effect of each of our actions. So, we cannot ignore the impact of what is generated outside when working inside any organization, because otherwise we would be continuing to ignore that we are all interconnected. This principle cannot be excluded from any political, educational, business endeavor, whether large or small, if we want to survive on this planet.
I remember hearing Peter, now a teacher and friend, asking to the audience of seasoned coaches what a leader was. His response was one that I will not forget: “A leader is one who thinks on the seven generations before him, the seven generations that come after him and he on all the living beings with whom he shares the world in which he lives”. One can’t help but think that the world would be a very different place now if the people who run the world had lived by such an ethic.”
Systemic thinking is, above all, an ethical axis to follow, to make decisions on how we reorganize the way we think about the world. It requires courage and heart, especially a lot of discipline. At the present time, when important decisions are required to be made about the people who have the capacity to lead our country in political, business, and cultural organizations, the important thing is to think about who has the capacity to think in this way. Who can think systemically beyond the systems that have led us to the current state of affairs, and lead us to the present that we want and need?
Sometimes we think that we require impossible things: like better men and women, better conditions to generate change, but the first thing we need is broader thinking.
(This was published in the Newspaper Excelsior on June, 2023)