As human beings, we gather into groups, and those groups are part of systems.
All systems have basic structures and dynamics that affect how they function. Systems exist to provide a product or a service.
This product is called the output, while the input is the ingredients needed to create the product.
There are components within a system that perform these functions.
IN CONTEXT
To some extent, we’re all familiar with the circulatory or cardiovascular system in the human body. The circulatory system exists to bring nutrients from food and oxygen from air. Thus, the input is the food and the oxygen, and it comes in through other systems in the body, namely the respiratory and the digestive system. The digestive system does things to the food so that by the time it gets into the arteries and veins, and circulates through the body, the food has become nutrients, or things that we need for health.
The heart is the central organ in this system, and it functions as two sets of pumps. One is the upper chambers, or pulmonary chamber, of the heart, which has arteries that pump blood into the lungs. When you think about it, all this system really does is take blood out of the heart and into the lungs, then take oxygen from the lungs and back to the heart. It’s basically a back and forth motion.
The other set of pumps is the lower chambers of the heart, which take blood from the heart and move it all throughout the body, circulating it. In the case of the circulatory system, the system components are the heart, veins, arteries, and capillaries. These components behave in a particular way that leads to an outcome.
When each of these components is performing its particular behavior in the way it’s supposed to, the entire system works brilliantly as a unit, and we don’t even have to think about it.
However, these parts are all interconnected, meaning that an issue with one of them is going to affect everything else.
EXAMPLE
In the case of the circulatory system, a clogged artery is going affect the whole system. Or if the heart isn’t beating quite right, the other components of the system won’t be able to do their jobs properly.With this interconnectivity between all the components, there's a structure. The structure is the relationship between all these parts.
This is true in human systems as well. The elements are operating like a superhighway so that we don't even have to think about; it just works.
IN CONTEXT
Think about airports as a travel system. People are the components within that system, and they serve a lot of different functions that have to work together in order to make the system work. As you’ve probably travelled through an airport, you know that some of these components are security, baggage claim, ticket agents, gate agents, pilots, and flight attendants.
Then, of course, there are the people who perform the more technical functions, such as air traffic control and the mechanics who make sure the planes are ready to fly. All of these people are really components within a system.
Because of the structure and the interconnectivity of the components within a system, anything that affects one component will affect the whole system.
This can happen even in a smaller human system, such as an office or a team at work.
IN CONTEXT
Say you have to give a presentation on an important project that you've just completed. You were waiting for some research that the researcher needed to deliver to you so that it could go into the presentation. There are also a couple of writers who are putting together different sections of the presentation.
They're handing it off to you for review and editing, and then you're going to put it into a PowerPoint. You want somebody on the staff to look at that PowerPoint to make sure it looks presentable. Then, when it’s time to deliver the presentation, you need the IT department to make sure there’s a working projector and laptop.
As you can see, there are a lot of different components involved to make this system operate. There's a structure, and a relationship between these individuals.
All of it is interconnected; if something goes wrong at any point in this system, things might not turn out so well.
If there's a conflict with one of the writers, or if the researcher does not get the research to you on time, that is going to slow the system down and would definitely be an opportunity for conflict resolution.
In conflict resolution, we talk about decomposing a system, which is the process of analyzing a system and seeing it as a collection of subsystems. A subsystem is a system that's part of a larger system.
All of the systems we've talked about in this lesson are part of larger systems, and when you decompose a system, it’s easy to see how all these parts are working together.
Having that insight could be very helpful in determining what might be troubling the system, or making it less efficient than it could be.
Source: Adapted from Sophia tutorial by Marlene Johnson.
