Managing people or the system?

This short essay sets out to answer a question raised at an event I attended:

“Should we manage the people or the system?”

A system is a set of agents or elements that maintain a relationship of interdependence to fulfill a purpose or reach a goal. A company is a complex adaptive system, since it is made up of living agents (endowed with free will) and is constantly changing to adapt to market forces.

The System vs. People duality is interesting and dangerous. While it simplifies the analysis of problems (bringing a deterministic bias of splitting the whole into parts), it also creates the false perspective that people and system are two separate or isolated things.

However, each agent (person) is a fractal representation of the very system (company) they are part of. The system’s characteristics are defined by the agents and their relationships, but they are also reflected in each individual.

So, reframing the original question, it would be better put this way:

“How do we build a good system together, doing the work that needs to be done to get better results?”

In companies that adopt organic management, like Webgoal, there are many situations of conflict. On the other hand, it is through conflict that people are able to mature, making the system they are part of better prepared for new challenges and difficulties.

Read also: Webgoal’s management style

When I see traditional management trying to formalize the system, standardize the operation, fix the hierarchical structure and prescribe how everything should happen in order to keep control, I also understand that there is a systemic effort to keep conflicts from arising.

In this context, consensus is the most glaring evidence of the same way of thinking and acting about work. Where there is consensus, there are no conflicts. Where there are no conflicts, there is no collaboration to overcome them. Where there is no collaboration, there are no (new) relevant connections between agents. When we don’t have relevant relationships between living agents, we don’t have a complex adaptive system.

That’s why there’s no point waiting for miracles in traditional management: no processes or tools will save the company from the mediocrity that comes from standardization, planning and predictability.

The system has to be “built” every day, while we “build” ourselves as people and professionals. We need to let the system change (sometimes it will be better, sometimes worse) and quickly pick up the external feedback on how it performs, being agile enough to adapt, reacting to change to find the best fit with the market. We need to create opportunities for conflicts to happen and be overcome, establishing a psychologically safe environment so that people can grow and create new and better connections, because every complex adaptive system is a collective construction.

We need to understand that each person’s need, willingness and pace of maturing are different. Sometimes one person will be more engaged, sometimes another won’t have the same motivation as the rest. Agents will leave the system and other people will come in to bring new capabilities to the company.

Sometimes we’ll have one leader, sometimes there will be several leaders to help the system overcome specific problems. After all, the flourishing of leaders is a sign that the gap in relationships is being filled by someone. Remember: leadership is a social phenomenon that only happens when there is collaboration between people.

People and systems are inseparable. If managing people makes no sense, neither does managing the system. We need to experience the system understanding that, as an agent, you are part of the whole and the whole is also in you.