Allow me to introduce you to Anna Levy, who will be helping me at Group 18.
I met Anna when I hired her at Atlassian over eight years ago. She’s a very capable generalist with high agency. She has a demonstrated history of taking large ambiguous problems and getting them solved. Exactly the kind of person I like to be around.
The first thing we’re doing together is delivering a series of learning sessions. We’re selecting topics that we’re experienced in, and love talking about.
These sessions are an experiment, and we’ll learn two things: - How much will people pay to attend these sessions? - At what rate will attendees convert into customers of Group 18?
The great thing about these experiments is that it’s win-win. If they succeed, then great, we have a source of income and a lead conversion funnel.
If they “fail,” then we’ve still brought forward some IP that we can re-use for future experiments.
For example, I have almost a decade of OKR experience in a complex enterprise business, I’ve read books on OKRs, and taken classes. For me to run a session on OKRs, I’ll need to document this knowledge and experience.
Maybe this content becomes a lead magnet for this newsletter. Or maybe it goes on my website. Or forms the basis for standalone service offerings.
We either win or fail forward. 😁
I used to do sessions like this inside Atlassian. I’d get a dozen leaders from my team in a virtual room, and we’d work through challenging topics together. I called them “Leadership Symposiums.” We always made them fun, and got really good feedback from the team.
To improve our odds of success, I have an ask for you: Can you please take this quick survey and give us feedback on the topics we want to work through?
As newsletter subscribers I’ll let you all know about these first, and you’ll get a great discount to attend.
It’s funny that I referenced the old cartoon, The Jetsons, in a recent newsletter, and here we have a flying car - or, rather, a “personal electric aerial vehicle” - with the same name as the cartoon! If I were rich and lived on a lot of land, you know I’d be flying around in one of these $100K bad boys.
While not for the faint of heart - this book took me an estimated 25 hours to read - I really enjoyed this trip through history, with a focus on a man I didn’t know much about before starting. After reading, I have a very rich picture of a complicated man. He could be aggressive and ruthless in business, but was also a caring and devout man. He would play on all fours with children well into old age, and unlike the Vanderbilts, he remained frugal and practical his whole life.
Alternative Survey Tool Google Forms are ugly. Typeform is fine, but I’m always curious what’s out there, and I found tally.so. It looks and works exactly like Notion, if you’ve ever used that tool. The free plan is really extensive. If you’re looking for a way to do online surveys, check out Tally.
(please enjoy this 6️⃣ minute read)
Deep Dive on Event Thinking
How many times this month have you felt like you were running from fire to fire? 🔥🔥🔥
A client escalates. A project falls behind. A key hire quits. Each problem screams for your attention, and you respond - because that’s what good leaders do!
But if you zoom out, you might notice something unsettling: the fires never stop. You put one out, and another ignites.
That’s the trap of event thinking. We respond to symptoms instead of causes. We react to what’s right in front of us instead of asking what’s driving the pattern. We get really good at firefighting, but never actually prevent the fires.
The alternative is systems thinking. It’s less dramatic, but far more powerful.
Systems thinking asks us to step back, to look beyond the flames and see the fuel, the wind, and the spark that make fires inevitable in the first place.
Fix the system, and the fires stop before they start.
The consequences of event thinking
You’ve probably seen examples of event thinking in your work before: - A business owner has clients who keep leaving. They might get mad at the customer or the employee working on it. - A CEO has a bad revenue quarter, so they fire the VP of Sales. - The head of an organization who thinks his staff all write bad QBRs, so the leader writes them themself. They do this every quarter and wonder why the staff QBRs aren’t improving.
Event thinking is common, but costly.
As anyone who has been stuck in firefighting mode long enough knows, it causes burnout. It sucks to be in a Groundhog Day mode, where each day brings a series of fires to fight. You’re constantly busy, but you’re never getting ahead.
Another obvious cost is that you have to solve the same problems over and over again, because you’re not getting to the root. That’s expensive.
Lastly, it can create a “hero” culture, where people are rewarded for their ability to quickly band-aid a problem. Solving problems is great, but solving them in an enduring way is better.
To more deeply understand the difference in approaches, let’s look at them more deeply.
What’s the difference between the two types of thinking?
A system is commonly described as having three components: elements, interconnections, and purpose. When elements interact, they create events.
A simple systems example is your thermostat. If the room feels too hot, you walk over and turn it down. Problem solved.
That’s event thinking: direct cause and effect, immediate relief.
A systems thinker sees a bigger picture. Temperature is shaped by: - Levels of insulation - Thermostat physical placement - Amount of sunlight through the windows - Efficiency of the system - Outdoor temperature and humidity
Turning the dial works in the moment, but if you want lasting comfort, and lower energy bills, you need to address the system behind the heat.
Event thinking is tactical, reactive, and satisfying in the short-term, but fragile. Systems thinking is strategic, structural, and less flashy, but ultimately where durable change comes from.
In event thinking, you’re reacting to events as they unfold. In systems thinking, you’re looking deeper into the causes of those events.
Let’s contrast how these two types of thinkers see the world.
How do event thinkers see the world?
Time horizon: Short. What happened today? This week? This quarter?
Causality: They look at linear effects and immediate cause. Who touched this last?
Example: Sales are are down because marketing didn’t drive enough volume.
Solutions: Quick fixes. Fire someone and hire someone else. Increase ad spend. Launch a promotion.
Pattern: Firefighting. Each problem is a fire to put out.
Upside: It feels fast! Decisive and responsive. Dopamine!
Downside: Addresses symptoms, not fundamentals. You can make issues worse because you don’t understand the system you’re affecting.
How do systems thinkers see the world?
Time horizon: Long-term. How are things trending over time? Quarters and years.
Causality: Non-linear. Delayed. Circular loops.
Example: Sales are down because we overreacted and built one-off features to close sales, but now our product is confusing and lacks cohesion, so the value proposition to customers is less clear, making today’s sales more difficult.
Solutions: Structural redesign. Change feedback loops, incentives, processes, and policies.
Pattern: Gardening. Nurturing the underlying system so better outcomes emerge naturally.
Upside: Leverage. Fixes last because they reshape the system itself.
Downside: Feels slower. Requires discipline to resist the quick-fix temptation.
How systems thinkers look to event thinkers.
Why are leaders likely to default to event thinking?
Not only is systems thinking difficult, but it’s also challenging because numerous things put pressure on us to stay in event thinking. (btw, is it meta to be thinking about the bigger systems around systems thinking?!)
Psychology: We’re wired to see immediate cause and effect. Lion? Run! These pathways are really well-worn in our brains.
Visibility: Events are obvious. System structures are hidden.
Pressure: Your boss, team, and customers demand quick results. Leaders can resolve this pressure with event-based fixes.
Culture: Many organizations reward the fire-fighting heroes, not architects of systems.
Event thinking tends to dominate for all of the reasons above. Connected with what we learned about incentives in this newsletter about companies ossifying, after a certain company size, what matters most is what your boss wants. And if your boss wants something solved right now, you’re going to solve it right now.
Think about a situation in which a large team, of which you lead one group, is underperforming. Your peer comes to the leadership meeting and says, “Hey, I diagnosed the issue. Randy was the problem, so I fired him. We’ll get someone better.”
Meanwhile, you see all the structural issues that are causing John and everyone else to underperform. Do you think you’re doing to be given time to really investigate the system? And then go through the change management of rolling out durable challenges? No. You’ll be getting pressure to also exit the low performers.
Just because something hard doesn’t mean we can’t do it! Especially here when the rewards for systems thinking are so high. So what are the strategies for shifting into systems thinking?
Strategies for shifting to systems thinking
The most important point is that you need time for systems thinking. If you’re out at sea and your boat gets a hole in the bottom, don’t pause to think about how to prevent holes in the future - there’s no time! You have to fix your hole first.
"Well, let me think. There's the hull, the depth and temperature of the water, the weight distribution of the...glug glug glug."
To have time, you need slack in your system. If everything and everyone is running at 100% capacity, there’s no time for reflection. You’ve set your business up so that everything is an emergency.
You can also create time by solving problems before they flare up as emergencies. Seeing the future would be a newsletter in itself, but one key approach is to use data. Look for trends and patterns. See data over time, not just as a snapshot, so you can predict issues in advance.
The other approach is to reflect after the emergency is over so the team can learn from it when the time pressure is over. Use systems thinking explicitly in your retrospectives to get to the root of a problem.
Lastly, make sure you’re signaling what matters through promotions and other rewards. Are you rewarding the firefighting heroes who run into the burning building, or the quiet people who work to prevent the building from catching fire in the first place? This creates a culture that normalizes systems thinking and limits event thinking domination.
Call to Action
Event thinking is comforting, but won’t solve problems in a durable way. If you want to get yourself out of firefighting mode, you’ll need to shift to systems thinking.
If you find yourself feeling like a firefighter this week, put out the fire, then make space to practice systems thinking. Expand your awareness beyond immediate cause and effect into the larger structure.
What are all the elements at play?
How do they interrelate?
Is there a more durable solution you can provide upstream of the problem?
Put your energy there, and watch as fires stop popping up as much 😀
Kevin
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