Team Leadership Culture

In my last blog we began to talk about the need for viewing our teams and companies as systems, the The Fifth Discipline.  In Peter Senge’s book by that title, he said that cause and effect are not closely related in time and space and therefore hides from us the fact that our individual actions have systemic effects across our teams and companies.  That’s one of the reasons why I like business simulations.

Another simulation I enjoy running is “The Beer Game”.  This sounds like a fun (and maybe dangerous) game to run at an executive off-site.  The Beer Game was invented at MIT, referred to in Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline and is still given to MBA students at MIT twenty years later.  It is similar in nature to Paper Planes except that it’s designed to simulate a logistics system with a brewer (manufacturer), a wholesaler, distributer, retailer and customers.  Again, the games helps teams experience in close time and space what plays out in a real logistic system over hundreds of miles and many weeks of time.  All of a sudden, it becomes clear to the participants that optimizing the individual pieces of the system does not optimize the whole.  The problems need to be figured out at a systemic level.

What’s going on with your team or company?  Are you working at maximum effort and efficiency only to see your department or team fail at their overall mission and assignment?  Are you working your tail off in your team but some other department must not be carrying their load because you’re not getting the corporate results that you should?  Are you looking for blame?  Must there be someone else at fault for your corporate failures?  Maybe you’re not looking at it systemically to understand how your actions and approach affect the whole.  The Fifth Discipline.