In this primary system, can you visualize the subsystems?You know this by now. First make the various systems consciously visible. Second, one at a time, bring them to the foreground for examination. Third, adjust them. Fourth, document them. Fifth, maintain them.
By plucking individual systems out of the amorphous mass of your real-time existence—that intense conglomeration of sights, sounds, and events that is your life—you can examine and then precisely manipulate their workings. But first you must see them.
Reaching the point where you see the systems around you is the first and most significant step. It’s a mini-enlightenment. When the epiphany occurs, you will have internalized the fact that systems make up your life, and you will know that assertively directing them is leadership at the most fundamental level. You will view your existence with new clarity. Details will be sharper and more vivid, the colors more vibrant. No more will you perceive your world as a confused assortment of people, objects, and situations.
What seemed complex will suddenly be revealed as elementary.
Certain in your new vision, you will change your strategy from fire killing to system improvement because it is the most sensible thing to do.
A Summary of the Work the System Methodology
- It starts with your change in perspective, the aha! insight arriving in a moment of time. Deep down, you permanently internalize your new vision. You see each life event as the product of the mechanisms that engendered it, not as an isolated happening, a product of luck, fate, God’s justice, karma, the stars, or the benevolence or wrath of someone else. When the insight arrives, the next mechanical moves are obvious.
- You establish your goals and strategy through the creation of the Strategic Objective and General Operating Principles. You do this to establish firm direction and so there is continuity in your goals and efforts.
- You examine the mechanics of the subsystems that make up your business, job, health, and relationships. You analyze them one by one, looking for opportunities for enhancement. Sometimes you add new ones. Sometimes you discard useless ones.
- You make the revisions, moving each subsystem to peak efficiency. If you are in a business or a job environment, for permanence you carefully create documented Working Procedures to describe the protocols. You create this documentation from scratch. Then, when you’re done, you incessantly coddle your systems and the documentation, always tweaking to perfection. From now on, you and your people spend the majority of time in system improvement.
- A more positive attitude comes naturally because you have developed a solid faith in the reliability of the systems that are at work everywhere. You are powerful and serene because you have successfully harnessed your systems, directing them to do what you want them to do. With subsystems isolated, perfected, and then combined together again, you preside over stunningly efficient primary systems—your business, job, relationships . . . you. At the gut level, without putting your head in the sand regarding the many things that are not perfect in this world, you grasp the great truth that 99.9 percent of everything works just fine.
