An Unsolvable Problem?
Part One of All Crises Are Local: Understanding the COVID-19 Global Pandemic
Published August 2020
Usually, I’m not at a loss for words. Particularly when presented with a problem to solve. I use my Circle of Impact model to resolve the problems and conflicts that are exhibited in virtually any situation.
The other night I spent 90 minutes in a Zoom session with 40 young professionals from Nairobi, Kenya. I really like these young men and women. They are smart, respectful, passionate, thoughtful and willing to learn. And they ask really great questions.
I spoke to them about the Circle of Impact model of leadership. The framework of my presentation was the Five Guiding Principles seen below.
One question from the group concerned “the missing middle”. They mean young, middle class men and women who during ordinary times are able to find work and do a wide range of activities that young adults’ world over do. Where I live, there are many of these same young people who work two or three jobs in order to live in an outdoor paradise.
The specific question concerned the COVID-19 pandemic and their country’s lock-down. They are not poor enough to receive government aid, yet not rich enough to be able to weather the economic impact of a global pandemic. They wanted to know what they should do. What would you tell them?
My thoughts immediately went to all those people whom I’ve coached through job and career transitions. My advice was usually the following.
· Be clear about what you have to contribute to a business.
· Don’t look for a job. Look for opportunities to contribute from your skills and experience.
· Activate your network to help you find the people who need to know you.
I realized that their real problem was a systems problem.
A system is an interdependent network of functions within a social or organizational structure.
A key element for these young adults is their freedom of movement to find work where they can. The systems of the world have mostly shut down their freedom of movement under the rationale of social-distancing. The system is not simply a healthcare system, or a transportation system. It is all facets of a family, a community, and a nation. The result is that there is a global system of interdependent functions that now is an obstacle to these young men and women being able to work.
PART ONE
Looking At The World through a Systems Perspective
In November 2019, a virulent novel coronavirus, COVID-19, emerged in Wuhan, China. It quickly spread across the world in a matter of weeks. The complete story of this global pandemic has yet to be written. My interest is not the virus, but the world’s response to it.
The pandemic response by nations and global health organizations is a case study in a global systems breakdown. In the following pages, I want to illustrate how systems work. We are surrounded by biological, organizational, ideological and social systems. All of them are in play in this coronavirus crisis. To see them is to understand them. To understand them is to be able to solve the problems that are inherent in them.
I also want to show you how to solve virtually every problem that you’ll ever face. All of our problems are mostly simple systems problems. We base our decisions on what we value, who is impacted, and how the structure of our life or work factors into the situation. Many of you are having to do this right now as you manage how your families shelter-in-place. It is also the problem the young women and men in Nairobi posed to me in our conversation.
I train people and organizations to see the systems that impact them, and to learn how to lead by solving the problems that they face. Not only can you learn to solve problems using my simple methodology, but you can also learn how to create case studies about your solutions.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a case study in a global systems breakdown.
Why do I describe it this way?
For over a century a global network of institutions has existed for the purpose of insuring global peace and prosperity. In the aftermath of the First World War, the League of Nations was formed. Then following the Second World War, the United Nations was created, along with other organizations like the World Health Organization. It is this system of organizations that is managing the COVID-19 pandemic response.
Let us look at this network of institutions from a systems perspective. Recall that a system is an interdependent network of functions within a social or organizational structure.
COVID-19 is not simply a global health crisis. Public health is one function among many. As a systems crisis, the coronavirus pandemic impacts every person, organization, and community on a global scale. The crisis is impacting the economies of the world, the political cultures of nations, and the social progress that has advanced world-wide over the past century.
The question that I am asking is how to address one aspect of the system – public health – while maintaining a healthy alignment with all aspects of the system.
Identifying Systems Through Patterns of Behavior
Over the past fifty years, beginning when I was high school, then as a Presbyterian minister, and throughout my career as an organizational consultant and leadership coach, I was able to see patterns of behavior. The simple way to do this is to ask questions.
What am I seeing here? What am I missing? What has changed?
The simple pattern that emerged is that every problem is a reflection of the alignment between three qualities.
· Are we clear about what is happening?
· Are our relationships ones of respect, trust, and mutual accountability?
· Are we structured well to fulfill the opportunities before us?
These qualities represent three dimensions of leadership. They are the dimensions of Ideas, Relationships, and Structure. The three dimensions function as an interdependent system. Here is an example.
If a business has a communication problem, what kind of problem is it?
Do we understand communication as the distribution of valuable information? Or, is communication an interactive relationship between the organization and its market?
How does the organization listen to the market? Are we listening to simply confirm what we already know? Or, are we listening to discover what our market needs to hear from us to better serve them?
Does our way of delivering information work for our customers? Do we know what their preferred method is? Would they rather interact with us in a different way?
If there is a communication problem, then these questions will help us determine the source of the problem.
We need to know whether our information is confusing, poorly designed to be received, or, totally irrelevant to our customers. Once we have established clarity, we can solve our problem.
I identified this trio of dimensions through witnessing the fragmented nature of organizations. When problems arise it is always one or more of these dimensions. Always. In twenty years of practice, it has never failed to reveal the critical problem that must be addressed.
All Organizations are Broken and Fragmented
Organizations fracture in many ways, always along the points of connection between the three dimensions. Often one type of problem will feed problems in the other dimensions. Here’s how.
An organization hires a new executive director to fulfill a specific operational need. Yet, this person is not well aligned with the culture of the organization. Every organization has a persistent, residual culture of values that define it. Conflict with staff and constituents can grow when there is no alignment. In this sense, culture is greater than any technical problem that an organization has.
The Board of Directors were also out of sync with the culture of the company. They saw that their role was to fill the executive director position with someone whom they saw having the technical skills that reflected their perception of the needs of the organization. Without alignment with the ideology of values and purpose of the organization, relationships of respect, trust, and mutual accountability would be much more difficult to establish.
We live in a world that is rich in both human and organizational systems. Yet, we are not taught how to see or understand them. Instead of embracing the interdependency of all aspects of the system, we break them into pieces.
What happens when we do this? We diminish the parts we value, and deplete those that we don’t.
As human beings, each of us is a living system. We are not just a collection of biological functions. We are also mental, emotional and spiritual beings. To treat separately is to diminish the interdependent character of our bodies.
We need more than food to live. We need exercise, sleep, emotional connections with other people, mental stimulation, and a curiosity to embrace the world in action. This is a systems perspective of our lives.
The problem is that we tend to see the world in binary (good vs. bad) and linear (one thing follows another) terms.
Problems are not only harder to solve this way, but we can’t see the whole of what a person or situation is. We need to change the way we look at the world.