This post builds on the subject of the last post in which I wrote about leaders not taking the time to accurately diagnose an organization’s problems before jumping into decision mode.

Do you know the arcade game in which you take a mallet and hit the head of a mole sticking up out of the table surface?  Each time you hit one mole another pops up elsewhere on the table.  That game is called “Whack-a-Mole”.

In the interest of being decisive and acting quickly, leaders often fail to take the time to think through their decisions from a systems perspective; as a result, when they fix one problem, another pops up.

Failure to think about organizations from a systems perspective results in ”whack-a-mole” decision-making.  This is what happens when leaders attempt to solve problems without carefully thinking through the impact of their decisions on all aspects of the organization.  They fix one problem and cause another in the process.

Businesses are complex systems.  When you make changes to one part of that system you must be aware of the impact that those changes may have on other parts of that system.  This is a fundamental concept in process improvement technologies such as Six Sigma or Kaizen.  As process problems are analyzed, a process improvement expert creates flow charts or maps of the process.  Inputs from related processes and outputs to others are identified.  As changes to the target process are explored, the impact on related processes are examined to ensure that any planned change does not adversely affect another part of the system.

Organizations are comprised of groups of people (departments) performing tasks which contribute to creating a product or delivering a service.  Each group has a set of processes that it follows to perform those tasks.  Many of those processes require input from other groups in the business.  For example, consider a drug manufacturing facility.  Very simplistically, the bulk manufacturing group is instructed to produce a product.  These instructions are derived from market analyses which identify that the demand will be there to sell the product.  The timing of this request is made with enough lead time to enable the Quality Control group to perform certain testing of the product, and to allow the packaging and shipping to be completed.  Production requires that the appropriate components have been purchased and are available to make the compound, and it requires that the facility has been cleaned from any previous batches so that there is no cross-batch contamination.  In this simplified example you can see that the process to manufacture a batch of drugs requires input from marketing, production planning, purchasing and facility maintenance, and has an output which effects quality control, packaging, shipping and sales.

Now envision a situation in which Quality Control identifies a problem in the technique they have been using to calculate the stability of the product, and they change their process to a more accurate but more time consuming process.  If they do not consider the impact this decision will have on the other parts of the organization and manage that change carefully, it is likely that the company will miss timelines to ship product and stores will run out of stock.  This will damage the company’s reputation with the customers.

Unfortunately, leaders often feel under enormous pressure to act quickly in leading their businesses.  The pace of business is fast.  There are massive amounts of data to sift through and understand.  Technologies and market dynamics are changing rapidly and adding to the pressure and the complexity of making decisions.

Leaders must be conscious of the need to take the time and involve the right people in evaluating situations, drawing the correct conclusions, and making the right decisions.  They need to look at problems from a systems perspective and think through their decisions ensuring that the impact on all related processes is understood before acting.