The Similarities and Differences of Technical and Human Systems

If you think of a factory, and the goal of this factory is to produce cars that is the final output of this factory. There is an infrastructure, an assembly line that is used to get the final output out the door. In order to that, there has to be certain processes. Processes are ways of behavior of people and machines that combined give rise to the final output that is going to be the automobile. The total quality revolution started when people realized the leverage to correct the defects in the final product was not to catch the product at the door and try to fix it.

The leverage was to go upstream into the process and revise what were the sources of these errors that were found at the end of the line. So quality was not something to fix at the end of the process, but it was something to introduce in the midst of the process. That was really a revolution. It changed the way people thought – from a product way thinking to a process way thinking. But it wasn’t easy. It is very simple to see the defect in the product.

When the car rattled, that was very obvious. But the source of that defect in the process is not obvious. It is usually hidden. It has to be found through some investigation, through some research. So it is much easier to be conscious of the defect at the surface than to understand the sources of that defect underneath the surface. It demanded really a leap of awareness for people to go and to look into processes and make a commitment to try to solve the process as opposed to trying to fix the output. That was the first revolution.

The second revolution is called the business process redesign – to realize that those processes are a consequence of a certain infrastructure. If your machine is out of control, if your plant doesn’t have the necessary equipment, if your computers are not able to run the programs, then no matter how good your process is, you are not going to get a good product.

Going even further upstream, people look for the sources of problems all the way up into the infrastructure. Or you could also say, all the way down, to the foundation. It is very clear to see the infrastructure determines the possible processes that can be run, and the processes determine what kind of product you are going to get. There are a lot of good practices for doing business process redesign. There are a lot of good methods that have been developed to improve on the technical dimension of the business.

But this is not enough to be successful. The assembly plant is not simply run as a technical operation. There are people there. At the side of the technical dimension, there is also the human dimension. And the human dimension is not something separate. Both dimensions are aimed to the same process.

If you picture a triangle to represent the technical dimension (i.e., the plant and equipment dimension) of your enterprise, you can see that there is line going upward from the base, the infrastructure, to the process, and then downward to the product (i.e., the outcome).  Now picture an identical triangle for the human dimension of your enterprise. You can see that there is also an infrastructure, a process, and a product (i.e., an outcome).

Most people when they start talking about the human dimension, they will start rolling their eyes thinking here we go again, the soft skills, we are going to do the lovey dovey thing and talk about how we should all be nice to each other. But that is not why I am advocating for paying attention to the human dimension.

To produce the product, you absolutely need people to be working together. It is not enough for the machines to work in coordination. People have to work in coordination with each other too. The basic process on the human dimension is the process of relationship, the process of interaction, the process of communication. In order for people to work together and produce the product, they have to be able to communicate effectively. So communication tools are almost like total quality management tools, but applied to the human dimension of your enterprise.

 

The same discovery that was made on the technical dimension about the importance of the infrastructure was also made on the human dimension.

Now, what is the human infrastructure? Well, consciousness; the ability of people to think, to pay attention, to notice, to make decisions, and then carry on those decisions through behavior.  If somebody is thinking in very problematic ways, there is no way they are going to be able to communicate effectively. If someone has fear for their identity, they have low self-esteem or a narcissistic wound, and they need to berate everybody around them to feel good about themselves, with that kind of mental model it will be impossible for them to engage in effective communication. If somebody is living in denial and will shoot the messenger whenever this messenger brings bad news, this person cannot be an effective team member or a manager.

 

How many companies have went down because of the arrogance of leaders who don’t want to hear what they don’t want to hear? How many companies have suffered because employees have been shielded from information that could have made a difference in the way they operated? We are talking about very basic business problems that have to do with lack of consciousness, with denial, with the inability to pay attention, to notice what is happening around, what is happening inside, and then to make decisions as to how to respond in accordance with one’s vision and values. That is the infrastructure of the human dimension of a successful business.

Consciousness is not only an individual phenomenon. It certainly starts with an individual; the ability of a person to pay attention, to be aware, and to make decisions. But it also extends to the team, a group of individuals who can also be said to be conscious or unconscious. There are some similarities and there are some very important differences when consciousness is applied to an individual or to a group. I like to make this distinction clear because there are some dangers when we apply these two interpretations of consciousness.

For a team to be aware of something, it is not enough that some member of team be aware of that thing. It is also necessary to have a process where this knowledge can be communicated and shared in a public space. That is precisely what happens when a team has a dialogic spirit. The word dialog comes from Greece and it literally means “meaning moving through.” So a dialogic space is a space where people can share meanings, they can share information.

 

That is the space in which the team consciousness arises; not just each person by themselves knowing something, but that knowledge being shared and at a later time becoming available for future decisions and actions. Then, the team also has to have an awareness of what is happening inside the different members. Each person has their own values, their own feelings, their own desires, and their own vision.

 

Before the team can be said to be conscious, each team member needs to share those values, those feelings, and those desires and come up with a common vision, a shared purpose that can encompass each one of the individuals harmoniously. If the team purpose is totally opposed to the purpose of the individual, this team will not work as a conscious unity – just like if the individuals are not sharing information about their external world. So the same principle of awareness and choice can be applied to a collective subject. That is the similarity.

But then, there is a very big difference. A member of the team is not a part of the team. I want to distinguish member and part. An arm is a part of my body. I can manage my arm just be thinking about what I want to do with my arm. A manager of a team cannot manage a member of a team as though they were parts.

 

This metaphor of a team with the body can be quite dangerous. The team is not a unity. It is a complex unity. There are different individuals who come together and become members of this team. So the team consciousness is not the possibility of centrally managing each one of the individuals as if they were part of a collective organism.

 

So it is very important to distinguish that a team can be conscious without obliterating the individual consciousness of each individual. They have to work in harmony and that is why it is so critical that the individuals have the ability to communicate with each other to coordinate their actions, to share meanings, to dialog, to make decisions together, because the team cannot be managed by a central control. So a conscious team is a team where the members are informed about what each person knows. And a conscious team is one where members have shared enough of their interiority to create a collective space of purpose that gives meaning to their actions.

 

Once a team has that awareness it can make choices together as a purposeful entity. By the same token, a conscious company is a company where the different people have channels of communication that allow them to make each other aware of what they know. It is a company that has communication channels where it is allowed to speak about purpose, about feeling, about thoughts, about deep desires, and that discussion generates a collective vision. And then as a company every member of this company has a set of guidelines that allows them to make individual choices about their behavior in harmony and alignment with the higher purpose.

The dynamic process of expanding our consciousness is what we normally call learning. When we learn something, we might can some facts about the external world, we might discover something about ourselves, or we might acquire a skill that allows us to behave successfully in areas where before we could not achieve what we wanted. So consciousness and learning are very connected. The thirst to learn is really the thirst to expand consciousness. This expands the way we see ourselves, see others, and changes the way we interact with the world.