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Thinking in systems

A business is a systemA business is easier to read when you stop listing its tasks and start watching what builds up, what moves, and how long things take to move. This part introduces five plain ideas from systems thinking: stocks (what accumulates), flows (the rates that fill or drain them), delay (the gap between a cause and what you see), feedback loops (results that circle back and change what happens next) and cadence (the rhythm at which recurring work happens).Seeing what holds you backMost of what slows a business down is not visible on a normal day. Work waits between steps.Systems dynamics applied to businessA business changes through a few patterns: things that feed on themselves, things that push back, waits that make both overshoot, and limits that stop growth. This part applies stocks, flows, delay and feedback to two small businesses: referrals and the morning rush at a bakery, and rework, steel lead time and a bottleneck at a fabrication shop.

Working with the map

Two clocks: work and waitingEvery job in your business runs on two clocks: the hours someone works on it, and the time it takes from start to finish. The gap between them is waiting, and waiting is what customers feel and task lists hide.Ceremonies: what the rhythm costsA ceremony is a gathering that comes back on a rhythm: the morning huddle, the Wednesday order review, the month-end look at the numbers, the yearly planning day. Each one is small on the day it happens and large over a year, because the rhythm accumulates.ChunkingA chunk is a group of things you treat as one thing, so you can think about the group instead of every piece. Chess players, climbers and everyone planning a week do it all the time.Discipline and disciplined processA process written on a wall is a hope. A process that is repeated, on a rhythm, by the same people, in roughly the same way, is something you can look at, discuss and change.Adding up: cost, working hours and elapsed timeWhen you map a process you end up with figures on many blocks: hours of work, costs, durations, waits. It is natural to add them all up, but they do not all add the same way.

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Choosing on something visible

Most decisions in a small business are made in the middle of a busy week, on feel, by one person, and the rest of the team learns about them afterwards. A map changes three things about that.

  • The case for a map
  • 5 min read

It lays the work out so you can rearrange it and see what moves. It keeps what you are aiming for next to the plan, so the aim is not only in your head. And it is one picture the team can read, add to and disagree with, so a choice made on it carries into the organisation instead of stopping at the door of your office. The app does none of the choosing. It keeps the options and the aim in view.

Start with something you know

A catering company calls Maple Street Bakery on a Tuesday: forty boxed lunches, every Thursday, starting next week. Dana says yes on the phone. It feels right: the shop is quiet on Thursdays and the money is good.

Léo hears about it on Friday, when the first order appears in the diary. Priya hears about it the following Wednesday, when the boxes arrive. Nobody is upset, but nobody could have told Dana that Thursday is the day the oven is booked for special orders, or that forty lunches means an extra hour of packing at the counter, or that the aim she had in mind, a steadier week, is exactly what Thursdays no longer are.

Dana did not decide badly. She decided alone, fast, and without the pieces in front of her.

The idea in one line

A choice is better made on something visible. Three things make it visible: the shape of the work, so you can move its parts and see what changes; the aim, kept next to the plan rather than remembered; and a shared picture, so the people who will carry the choice can see it and correct it before it lands on them.

The map is the place where those three sit together. It does not weigh the options for you. It makes sure you are weighing them with everything in view, and that your team can see what you saw.

Try it: switch between the two arrangements of the same forty lunches. Working hours, the clock and each person’s load are shown beside the aim; what to do with that is Dana’s call.

Working hours
4 h
Time on the clock
5.5 h from the ovens starting

The mark is the aim Dana wrote on the block: Out by 11:30, which is 4 h after the ovens start.

Hours added to each person’s Thursday
Priya: 1.5 hLéo: 2 hDana: 0.5 h
Dark is work, light is waiting. Invented figures for Maple Street Bakery; nothing here is saved. The figure shows; the choice stays with the people in the shop.

Three ways a map gives you a better choice

Rearranging. Once the work is laid out as blocks, you can move a step earlier, run two side by side, open one to see what it hides, or draw the same work on another canvas with one thing changed. Working hours stay the same whatever the arrangement; the time on the clock and the load on each person do not. Seeing that difference is what turns "should we take this?" into "how would we take this, and what would it cost us where?"

Keeping the aim in view. Every piece of work exists for a reason, and the reason is the first thing to go missing in a busy week. A figure you are aiming for, written next to the figure you have planned, keeps it in the room: lunches out by 11:30; special orders still on Thursday; nobody's week over what they said they could give. The map shows the aim beside the plan. It does not track whether you reached it; that is for you and your records.

Carrying into the organisation. A choice made on a shared map is already half communicated. Léo can see that Thursday now holds forty lunches and can write under the counter block what that means for him. Priya can see which oven slot the lunches take and move the special orders, or say they cannot move. The figure that shows a person over what they said they could give is a number everyone can see, not a complaint one person has to make. The choice becomes something the team did with you, and the picture stays after the conversation ends.

Illustration to come

The same Thursday twice: lunches packed at the counter in the morning, and lunches packed in the kitchen the evening before, each with its hours, its clock and a small flag for the aim "out by 11:30", with Léo's and Priya's names on the steps they carry.

In the app

  1. Lay it out. Add a block for each step and connect them in order, top to bottom. Drag a block to move it, or open one into a child canvas with a double-click when it hides more than one step. Rearranging is thinking; nothing is lost by trying.
  2. Try the alternative beside it. Create another canvas and draw the other arrangement there. The two can be opened one after the other and their figures compared. Nothing in the app ranks them.
  3. Write the aim next to the figure. In the block's editor, Advanced metric settings → has a Target column. A target on a figure shows in the right panel as Objective (target, not observed) beside the planned value. It is a statement of what you are aiming for, not a record of what happened.
  4. Give each step its person. On the Resources tab, assign the people who carry the step and the hours it takes them. The Resources page then shows each person's planned load against what they said they could give, as a figure the whole team can read.
  5. Discuss it with the team. Walk through the canvas together. As the account owner, record corrections in a block's description, add a Note beside the map or set the Process owner. Multi-user access and collaborative editing are planned; opening a canvas does not grant another person access to your account.

One question to take away

Think of the last yes you said quickly. Who found out afterwards, and what would they have added if the work had been laid out in front of both of you first?

Why a map