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July 3, 2025 • 18 mins

This episode introduces the potentially controversial principle that your system is perfectly designed for its current outcomes, urging listeners to embrace greater responsibility for systemic issues. It explores how to redefine system boundaries to holistically integrate all influencing factors, like talent and organisational processes, ensuring that interventions are effective and targeted.

  • Uncover the principle that your system is perfectly designed for the results you are getting, prompting a re-evaluation of what constitutes a "good" system when outcomes are undesirable.
  • Learn why arbitrary system boundaries often lead to critical factors, such as talent, being excluded, and how to consider a system's full scope regardless of traditional lines of responsibility.
  • Discover how incorporating talent and other seemingly external factors into your system design can lead to more efficient and effective solutions, rather than simply patching symptoms.
  • Explore the distinction between judging decisions by their outcomes (resulting) and designing systems that proactively reduce uncertainty and improve the likelihood of success.
  • Understand that system thinking extends beyond technical architecture to encompass processes, policies, culture, and interpersonal dynamics, which collectively influence organisational outcomes.

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