System Speak!

Systems speak all the time. The problem is we do not speak System Speak.

George Orwell in his Animal Farm describes the The Seven Commandments of the Animal's when they launch a revolution against the farmer Jones and overthrow him:

• Whatever goes on two legs is an enemy.
  
• Whatever goes on four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
  
• No animal shall wear clothes.
  
• No animal shall sleep in a bed.
  
• No animal shall drink alcohol.
  
• No animal shall kill any other animal.
  
• All animals are equal.

The pigs take over the role of the farmer in the story, they revise the seven commandments. Here are some of the commandments with the pigs' "revisions":

• Four legs good, two legs better!
  
• No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.
  
• No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.
  
• No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.
  
• All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
  

As a result Orwell describes "No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

Not easy to change the way the system speaks, is it? As long as the system is unchanged, it will speak the same.

Think of any system in your life. How do you get it to speak different? How do you get to understand its speak?

Of course it's not easy to bring in enduring change. Certainly it's not a cakewalk to make enduring impact. Not everyone can create enduring transformations.

Leaders capable of bringing enduring change understand Systems Speak. They understand how to change the system, so its speak will be different.

Every time you want to drive change, you want to make impact or you want to transform the world you cannot ignore Systems Speak.