What I learned at 40 from a speech I gave at age 4
And what you can learn from a 4-year old, too!
Last year, I was texting with my mom while traveling for a speaking gig, and she sent me this:
Turns out that as a nearly 4-year-old, I signed up to perform in the church talent show. (I’m guessing I had some encouragement to do so…) Instead of a song or a dance number, I apparently decided to tell a story.
I’m going to tell you that story now, according to my sweet mother’s recollection:
Once upon a time there was a dark dark house.
And in the dark dark house there was a dark dark room.
And in the dark dark room there was a dark dark closet.
And in the dark dark closet there was a dark dark box.
And in the dark dark box there was… A PINK JELLY BEAN!
I can practically hear the thunderous applause from all the way here in the future. ;)
I’m sure it was adorable, to be honest, because kids that age are hilarious.
But there’s something I found actually funny about that story I apparently told. It’s an illustration of a concept I’ve been writing about for years. It gets at a lateral thinking strategy I wrote about over a decade ago in Smartcuts (Chapter 4: Platforms); it’s what came up as my top strength when playing SYPartners’ “Superpowers” exercise on hidden types of diversity (I highly recommend this exercise for teams, btw); and it’s a key concept I get asked to speak about so much these days that I’m writing a whole section of my next book about it.
The Power Of Thinking In Layers (aka “Systems Thinking”)
Systems Thinking is a problem-solving approach that recognizes that everything is part of something bigger than itself. The cells in your body are part of organs, which are part of an organism, which is part of a community, which is part of a world, which is part of a solar system.
The idea is that sometimes when we combine things, we create something bigger and better than the sum of their parts.
Think of a bike pedal. Pretty cool on its own. As part of a bike, it unlocks even cooler potential.
For a system to work, each of the sub-systems must work on its own as well as contribute to the bigger system. A bike’s pedal needs to be intact on its own in order for it to be part of a bike (a system of intact components that work together to become something bigger than the parts).
Why should we care about systems? Because when we make changes in our lives (in our personal habits, in our work environments, within our teams, within our own bodies) those changes ripple out to bigger systems. Add a new person to a team and the whole team dynamic can change.
Functional medicine is built on this idea. Macroeconomics is built on this idea. And innovative problem-solving is built on this idea.
As humans we often feel “smart” when we intuitively come up with ideas for how to solve problems. But what’s actually smart is when we step back and think about what would happen one layer up or one layer down in the systems we operate in—before we take action on our “smart” ideas.
There’s a classic story in the late 1800s in British-occupied India where the British government wanted to get rid of deadly cobra snakes in the city of Delhi. So they offered money for every dead cobra brought in. What happened? Entrepreneurs started breeding cobras and killing them. India ended up with more snakes.
The system that the British government’s snake plan became a part of had lots of layers—including a layer of destitute people in its economy for whom a snake bounty could create a financial opportunity. Might that financial opportunity lead to behavior that undermines the goal of reducing the poisonous snake population?
(Yes.)
I might have a great idea for how to renovate a room in my house. But I should think through what that’s going to do to the closet—and not just that, but the box in the closet with the jellybean in it.
Since writing my book Dream Teams, I’ve been a fan of saying that our official work teams aren’t our only teams. The larger organizations around us are our team. Our families at home are our teams. Our communities are teams. Humanity is a team. The more we take into account these layers of teamwork and interconnection, the better we’ll be at solving problems.