Let's take a look at how the connected leadership framework applies at the system level. How can we truly be a change agent, a leader if we're not actively trying to improve ourselves, the people around us, and the systems that impact all our lives? There are whole courses on systems thinking, I believe our small innovation here, is being able to provide you with useful tools that will be hard to forget as you apply the same four P's across the different levels of self, team, and system. We will draw on systems thinking leaders such as Donella Meadows, Russell Ackoff, Water Center for Systems Thinking and more. We'll also realize that many of the skills are already in us benefiting from simple, powerful frameworks to help make those skills more obvious. In this section, we'll learn how to make connections between our individual purpose, the purpose of our team, and how the first two help us create meaningful system level change, tracking our progress along the way. First, we'll build from your individual purpose, priorities, potential and progress, our four P's to identify a system you want to change for the better. We'll learn how to apply key concepts in systems thinking to develop an effective, feasible, and action-oriented plan for system level change. Connecting your purpose-driven leadership skills to the system level. First, what do we mean by system? A system is a collection of elements, they could be people, components, things that interact with each other that's crucial to function as a whole with a specific purpose or function. We tend to think of specific purpose in a human system and function more in the natural world, but whatever word works for you. As Ackoff said, a system isn't the sum of the behavior of its parts, it's the product of its interactions. Consider the systems that are the Brazilian soccer team, the London transport tube network, Yale as a university and yours and many more. In fact, the world around us is made up of systems everywhere we would care to look large and small, and more often than not, can be found nested within other systems. There are community systems such as families, neighborhoods, cities, as well as industry systems such as health care, finance, including banks and money. Perhaps the most obvious examples are explicit systems, such as those many of us might recognize from our life for work. Processes that describe how individuals or teams collaborate or work together, how individuals are promoted or compensated. At the same time, there are many important systems that function implicitly, such as systems of inequity or injustice. These systems may not be easily viewed or formally described, but they can be just as impactful. Why does systems thinking matter? Do we really need systems thinking to solve the problems we care about? Personally, I'm here as it's part of my purpose to help leaders connect their ability to lead themselves and others to a big course, such as protecting the environment and addressing climate change. A world full, or at least much fuller of connected leaders will be on a better, faster track to sustainability for every leader that steps up to take more responsibility. For you, it provides tools to understand what you care about changing and asking better questions. I think it also helps simultaneously make us appropriately humble. There's something really big to change, and we are a small part of multiple systems, much larger than ourselves. I think it also frees us to think about how we might change a problem or opportunity for the better. We may find ourselves on any or all sides of inequality, either as an outsider with lack of privilege or an insider with privilege. What can we do to change the situation for us and others for the better? Maybe by tweaking something small, but which could result in large overall change over time. Thanks to a colleague, take an angle, another resident fellow at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment for pointing me to a wonderful short video from Bell Hooks, which really spoke to me about our starting points on change and how it is the system, not ourselves, that we need to change. You can find that in resources. You might think that many of life's problems are straightforward to solve, fixing a leaky faucet, for instance, doesn't require much big picture context. But even with a simple tap, we have to understand the wider plumbing system of the home if we're not going to flood the kitchen. What about trickier issues with higher-level impact, such as reducing deforestation? Clearly, there are a lot of different factors that contribute to that, both directly and indirectly. It also affects many different communities in different ways. We did a comprehensive nuanced approach if we are to develop effective solutions. If you are taking this course, chances are you care about higher-level problems that have an impact. In most cases, these type of problems are systems that are in turn part of larger and more complex systems. Applying systems thinking to your problem can help you maximize the positive impact of your solution. The good news is that systems thinking can be learned. In fact, many of its fundamental concepts are intuitive. You may already know more about it than you realize.
