Episode 10: The Tunnel Of Death & The Rebirth On The Other Side

In my last video, I talked about systems and how we’ve actually codified into them privilege for some and inaccessibility for others.

So today, I want to talk a bit more about the topic of systems. 

For whatever reason, I seem to be hard-wired to see systems — it’s apparently how my brain works. 

The Helios team has even been joking that we should probably start some kind of drinking game for every time I say the word “system” in our team meetings — we’re just drinking tea, don’t worry!

But what am I talking about when I use the word “system?”

If we think of organizations as organisms — as a kind of living structure — I think it becomes more clear.

When organizations are formed, eventually, their culture — their operating system — becomes relatively fixed. It can take awhile for the norms and values to become stabilized, but this will happen and it’ll happen pretty organically. 

In biological terms it’s like the organization/organism is seeking homeostasis — a place where it knows how to maintain equilibrium, or status quo, and it’s determining what things it will need to self-generate to keep things there.

The way this happens through the lens of framing stories and language. 

For example, if a prison has the operating system where the framing language is to “keep people in” we institutionalize all sorts of stories about the people in there as a result — they’re bad, they’re going to try to escape, they’re likely to revolt, etc.

If this is the OS, the organization/organism will essentially assimilate the individual people to work toward this end.

And here’s the crazy part — the system will do this to individuals whether or not the people coming in have that perspective to start or not.

As Deming said: “A bad system beats a good person every time.”

The people inside the organization/organism basically become cells who serve the larger entity.

You’ve probably seen this happen…

It’s almost like an organization takes on “a life of its own.”

Just in the past few years we’ve seen the negative side of this effect happen at companies like Enron, DuPont, Wells Fargo, VW, and Boeing, just to name a few.

People start making choices they might not naturally make, but it’s normalized — it’s homeostasis for the system — so people actually end up feeling like it’s OK to go down a path they typically wouldn’t.

Sometimes we also see a really dark side of this, which is when the “life” of a system feels threatened. But it’s actually part of the natural evolutionary process for that system to be “naturally selected” out.

In other words, it’s time for that system to die — but it doesn’t want to.

If there’s some kind of perceived dire threat to the system, the cells (people) start fighting back. 

It’s almost like an immune system, but fighting on behalf of a corrupted entity.

At a meta level, I believe this is what’s happening with most everything that‘s come out of our current federal administration in the last few years. 

The homeostasis of their system is deeply threatened, and for good reason

— that outdated, unjust, and non-inclusive way of life is dying, 

because it needs to — but the cells in that system are fighting back, trying desperately to cling to the life they once knew.

This constant unrest we feel is actually a byproduct of us subconsciously noticing many outdated systems that are in various stages of decay and death right now.

This is the natural cycle, and there’s something beautiful in it — the darkness always gives way to the light, every single day. 

The death of these systems is necessary so something else — something new, something better — can be born.

I promise you that there’s light at th