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Truth right here. His systems thinking advice is phenomenal. Love this quote too: "Throughout my career I've had my antennae up, looking for examples of people

Truth right here. His systems thinking advice is phenomenal. Love this quote too: "Throughout my career I've had my antennae up, looking for examples of people who use systems as opposed to goals. In most cases, as far as I can tell, the people who use systems do better. The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways." He's talking about success as simply a single point in the statistical sampling that is your life. This is an extremely correct, scientific, and most importantly helpful way to look at the world and your work.

DigitalJack 13y ago
It sounds good, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to apply it. I realize this article couldn't contain everything that will be in his book and so I hope that there is more practical advice regarding systems other than "have a system" in the book. For example, the guy that was always looking for a new job... isn't that just a repeating goal? On a personal note, I need to lose weight. I've done it before: I lost 74 lbs, but now several years later I've gained back just over 90 lbs. I reached my goal, and lost all motivation for eating healthy, and steadily gained it all back and more. I'm trying to structure my life around doing healthier things (better food, more exercise). How can I systemize that? Or have I already? I have "goals" of walking X times per week for Y distance. Is that the wrong approach? Should it be "after having walked, walk again as soon as possible but not sooner than 1 day?" I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating goals.
- ImprovedSilence 13y ago
  >>I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating goals. Don't go to the gym or workout or eat good just because you want to lose weight. Do it as a habit. Be motivated by the good feeling you get post workout everyday, not because you want to lose 10lbs or bench 200... Don't weight yourself, don't set a "goal". Just go. five times a week. Just keep going. Find a running club, and run because it's a good way to hang out with friends twice a week. Play a sport. Eat vegetables. But don't force them down, experiment with ways to integrate them into tasty meals. Then keep playing with recipes, and suddenly you're eating super healthy just because it's fun to try cooking some crazy plant from the store and you're making all these cool dishes.
- mden 13y ago
  I'm guessing that a system is just a repeatable goal. So perhaps in your case, the repeatable goal wouldn't be to lose weight as that would invariably lead you to dying, but rather to do something that makes you healthier every day. That could be something like eating healthier everyday or exercising for 15 minutes. This way you shifting from the goal of being X pounds lighter, to a system of being healthy.
  - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
    The beauty of a systems approach is that it takes vastly less willpower. It is very counter-intuitive to most people: "Gee, doing that every day, that sounds so hard. I can barely get exercise twice a week; therefore exercising every single day must be much harder." Nope. Quite the opposite. Hard is deciding every day whether you feel like going for a walk by arguing with yourself over whether you will feel better afterwards. That is effort spent with no satisfying payoff.
    - cJ0th 13y ago
      True. As so often, Linux gives a great analogy. When you start using it chances are you find working with it pretty inefficient and many things seem hard. But the more you learn about the system (which only really works when you do it every day)the better you get at solving your problems whereas people who rely solely on out-of-the box software improve rather little.
- Kurtz79 13y ago
  Make "going for a walk every day" the rule, not the exception. Just go out and walk, don't think "I have to walk because I need to lose weight", do it as an habit. You don't think "I need to wash my teeth because I don't want them to rot", or shower every day because "I don't want to smell". We probably could avoid washing and brushing our teeth for a day, without ill effects. But we do it every day because it's so ingrained in our daily routine that our day does not feel complete if we skip it. It's much harder to break a rule than to break an exception, and routine is much more powerful than willpower.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    > But we do it every day Wait, how long has this been going on? Do most people really take showers every day? Most people I know (myself included) only do it when they get smelly/sweaty, which is roughly every day in the summer, every 1.5-2 days in the winter. Is this a US thing?
    - bemmu 13y ago
      Looked at some online polls, seems like 50% say once a day, 30% every other day and 20% something else.
      - jhome 13y ago
        When I was in Japan, I had to shower at least twice a day but in England I don't sweat quite as profusely. I think there's a distinction between hygiene and social/cultural 'etiquette'. I will always make sure I am very clean before meeting someone, casual or otherwise.
    - cgore 13y ago
      Yes, in the USA, it is considered normal to take showers daily, at least with the middle class, and quite weird to not do so, to the point of being a major social impediment ("hey hippie, take a bath!").
      - 13y ago
- DigitalJack 13y ago
  I appreciate the advice in the sibling posts. I will consider these while I try to work out what the difference is between what Scott Adams calls a goal vs a system. I can be very pedantic, and I think that is getting in the way of understanding. I googled "systems vs goals" and actually found another Scott Adams post on the topic, even about excercise :) http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/systems/ http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/systems/ I'm trying to get a more direct handle on the difference so I can better apply it generally. It seems that when Adams says "goal" he is specifically talking about an endpoint. A destination. And that's a common definition I think. His use of system seems to still have goals, they are just smaller and easily achieved. They also seem to be more related to triggers or starting points. For example, "go to the gym" not "workout" or "do X reps." He also provides a relief valve in this case (not having to work out once he gets there if he doesn't feel up to it), so that the pressure of the expected follow through to "going to the gym" is relieved and thus not a deterrent. So if I were to apply this to walking, it could be something like "put on walking shoes, exercise clothes, and go outside, everyday." Or for better food: "Go to the store, buy some veggies I like," and maybe add on "go through prep work for cooking them." The relief valve could be that "I don't have to cook and eat this for dinner, but i do have to buy and prep."
  - a3voices 13y ago
    To lose or maintain weight, the system is really simple, for me at least. Don't eat too many calories, and make sure you do something in the form of exercise each day. You need to be incredibly self conscious of approximately how many calories you're ingesting throughout the day (no, you don't have to weigh your food. Just a rough estimate). And you have to maintain this system forever, basically. How you actually implement the system, such as specifics of what foods to eat, what form of exercise, etc., can wildly vary, but you need to always remember the fundamentals.
  - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
    Right. Actually doing the exercise or actually eating the vegetables is at worse a minor nuisance, that on most days has enough immediate positives that it is self-reinforcing. Once we have the running shoes on, we probably find ourselves happy with the choice 30 minutes later some 99%+ of the time. Ditto the clean vegetables sitting on the counter. The problem comes at the "meta" level, bargaining with ourselves whether we feel like going to the gym, so we hem and haw over putting the shorts and shoes on. Allowing this self-bargaining process to become involved is adding mostly negative emotional energy in a way that does not pay a useful dividend. Presumably the relief valve has value in cutting short certain kinds of excuses. "Fine. If I am outside with my shoes and gear on, I do not have to go to the gym. Just getting the shoes on is easy enough, right? Once I am outside, maybe I will want to stroll around the block. But I can decide that once I am outside and ready -- no sense in dawdling now."
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- calinet6 13y ago
  Read W. Edwards Deming, and learn statistics. Apply it to how you look at your life. Apply Deming to how you look at work, management, and other people. Yes, it's pretty broad, and it's a neverending learning process. But become a systems thinker and you'll be able to see how the world works scientifically, instead of based on false personal opinions or narrow perspectives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
  - olegious 13y ago
    Any advice on books to start with?
    - calinet6 13y ago
      That's the problem, his books are dry and boring, but they are fascinating once you get into them. Start with Out of the Crisis -- a book basically about the concepts he used to bring Japan out of its post-WWII depression and into a world market power. He basically did that single-handedly, so that should give some weight to what he says. The concepts are aimed at manufacturing, but they're more generally about management and how to create quality as a culture, not simply as a product. It's brilliant, but it clashes against most American business thinking in the last few generations (all about punishment, motivation, raises; basically about tuning the individual), so it largely goes ignored. It's also why you should listen to it, given that most American businesses in the last few generations basically suck. Ignore his hokey names and lack of bedside manner. Pay special attention to his 14 points, and 7 deadly diseases. Think about everything in terms of statistics and process. Apply everything to your own business experiences, and you'll start to see how he's entirely right, and all your assumptions and everything you thought was true about business, manufacturing, quality, and especially people (your workers, your employees) are basically false. Turn it upside-down and start fresh with real science.
- egypturnash 13y ago
  Systemic weight loss: Find a thing you like doing that happens to involve a lot of body motion. Ideally, find multiple things, so that if one stops for whatever reason you're still doing the others. But it can be hard to find that kind of time and energy. Walk/cycle whenever possible. (You may need to move if you live in the car-oriented suburbs.) Start thinking of the entire world as a gym. See a low-hanging branch of a tree? Try doing some pull-ups.
  - rimantas 13y ago
    If you want to lose weight think about your eating, not about your movements. Excericse is very ineffcient way to lose weight (but very good for other reasons).
- gaurav_bubna 13y ago
  I had personally been using thought process the author describes, before I read this article. The way I would describe this is that my "goal" in life to improve my everyday habits, the way I work, the way I manage priorities, how I structure my lifestyle, the broad direction in which I am taking my career, the kind of people I am meeting and attracting in my life (which is a result of my overall lifestyle, priorities etc.) etc. You constantly tweak these things to take your life in a broad direction that you want to take it towards. As a few concrete examples, if you are not meeting enough women in your life, or the type you want, the answer is not to go out to a bar. The answer if to change your lifestyle in a fundamental way which makes meeting women of the type you want a natural outcome. If you are not happy with your health, fitness etc. the answer is not necessarily (in this approach) to join a gym or hire a trainer for 3 months. It is to understand what makes a healthy lifestyle, slowly change your dietary habits, figure out an exercise scheme that makes sense for you, figure out how in your current lifestyle you can get plenty of sleep etc. Basically something that would make being healthy and fit a natural outcome. A necessary condition for this to work is that because it is such a systemic approach, the system has to be congruent with your overall lifestyle, and you have to be happy with executing the system. This is a big reason, why I feel, most dietary plans, or hobbies don't pan out enough. It is very short term goal drives and not something which is seamlessly integrated in a systemic way in your life. These are two examples where I have applied it (with a reasonable degree of success). I am using something similar for my overall work life, but whether it has succeeded or not is something I guess I will only know in another 10 years or so :) I hope that answers your question.
- nl 13y ago
  On a personal note, I need to lose weight. I've done it before: I lost 74 lbs, but now several years later I've gained back just over 90 lbs. I reached my goal, and lost all motivation for eating healthy, and steadily gained it all back and more. You already have a system - you need to change it. Take a look at your eating habits. Systems are habits For weight loss, that's the key. Exercise will help, but the input calories is a much bigger factor. If you are like most people I suspect you will find you snack a lot, and possibly drink softdrinks. Monitor your calories (see the MyFitnessPal app/website) for 2 days, and I bet you'll find if you change your eating system to avoid those snacks and softdrinks you will lose weight.
- kranner 13y ago
  I recently began an app that might help with this. It's laughably primitive right now, but it does help me personally. You can download it and read a bit of the context at http://noisytyping.com/an-app-to-help-lose-weight-by-increasing-spacing-between-meals/ http://noisytyping.com/an-app-to-help-lose-weight-by-increas... (OS X only).
RogerL 13y ago
Hmm, I find it extraordinarily bizarre. My life has been filled with people charging down the wrong path because they have elevated system/process over goals. For example: Agile/Yourdon/waterfall/XP/ISO9001/whatever. Our goal is a working system on time and budget (or whatever your goals are). The strategy is, perhaps, iterative waterfall, or agile, or more likely, some hybid approach (hint: how likely is small scale scrum to work to build a new Boeing, and how likely is the ideal Boeing process likely to create a great social web app). Systems are based on a number of assumptions about your goals; assumptions that may not apply, or that may change over time. If you aren't continually testing your chosen strategy (I prefer strategy over system, but I more or less mean the same thing here) against your goals, you are likely to be anywhere from sub-optimal to completely wrong. So I live in a world where everyone is currently chasing Agile, without questioning whether it even fits the problem, or what its weaknesses are (even if it fits, it has weaknesses, and you should be aware of it so you can mitigate them). I live in a world where people grind through business processes, without questioning whether this is taking us where we actually need to go, or whether things have changed and our goals, which inform the system, still apply. To use the example in the article, it makes no sense to search for another job if you are retiring in a year. If the externals change and system does not, you are in trouble.
- tieTYT 13y ago
  Good post, but I just want to point out that it hinges on your strategy = his system. The more comments I see, the more confused I am about what his definition of a system is.
  - Zancarius 13y ago
    I'm not sure I do either, but the first analogy that popped in my head when I read about Mr. Adams' approach was one of weight loss. I don't think it's a particularly good analogy, but it's the best I can come up with as an illustration of his "system-oriented" approach. In a goal-oriented system, someone might choose to lose 30 pounds as their goal, then they'll work toward that goal through exercise or diet. Upon achieving it, they'll either continue (setting another goal) or fall off the wagon (going back to previous habits and gaining the weight right back). I've known enough people who have tried to diet repeatedly--and have succeeded in their weight loss--only to fail miserably and gain the weight back within a few weeks. In a system-oriented approach (or maybe you could call it a habit-oriented system?), you focus on building up or improving your habits so that they meet whatever goals you set. Using the example of losing weight, you'd focus on diet and exercise by making fundamental lifestyle changes to your behavior and eating habits that simply happens to produce weight loss as a byproduct. People who exploit this system by changing their habits consistently keep the weight off because their day to day behavior has fundamentally changed. To put it another way, their habits would have to be dramatically altered in order to go back to putting on the weight they lost as a consequence of this approach. Now, what I'm at a loss on is how this might apply to businesses, software development, or the likes other than to suggest it's a matter of developing good habits. To use his restaurant example: Instead of focusing on income goals, focus on making the best food in town and serving customers quickly. On second thought, maybe there isn't anything more to it other than habits? Maybe there's no "secret?" Develop good habits and plod along until something falls into your lap as a byproduct.

DigitalJack 13y ago

It sounds good, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to apply it. I realize this article couldn't contain everything that will be in his book and so I hope that there is more practical advice regarding systems other than "have a system" in the book. For example, the guy that was always looking for a new job... isn't that just a repeating goal? On a personal note, I need to lose weight. I've done it before: I lost 74 lbs, but now several years later I've gained back just over 90 lbs. I reached my goal, and lost all motivation for eating healthy, and steadily gained it all back and more. I'm trying to structure my life around doing healthier things (better food, more exercise). How can I systemize that? Or have I already? I have "goals" of walking X times per week for Y distance. Is that the wrong approach? Should it be "after having walked, walk again as soon as possible but not sooner than 1 day?" I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating goals.

ImprovedSilence 13y ago
>>I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating goals. Don't go to the gym or workout or eat good just because you want to lose weight. Do it as a habit. Be motivated by the good feeling you get post workout everyday, not because you want to lose 10lbs or bench 200... Don't weight yourself, don't set a "goal". Just go. five times a week. Just keep going. Find a running club, and run because it's a good way to hang out with friends twice a week. Play a sport. Eat vegetables. But don't force them down, experiment with ways to integrate them into tasty meals. Then keep playing with recipes, and suddenly you're eating super healthy just because it's fun to try cooking some crazy plant from the store and you're making all these cool dishes.
mden 13y ago
I'm guessing that a system is just a repeatable goal. So perhaps in your case, the repeatable goal wouldn't be to lose weight as that would invariably lead you to dying, but rather to do something that makes you healthier every day. That could be something like eating healthier everyday or exercising for 15 minutes. This way you shifting from the goal of being X pounds lighter, to a system of being healthy.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  The beauty of a systems approach is that it takes vastly less willpower. It is very counter-intuitive to most people: "Gee, doing that every day, that sounds so hard. I can barely get exercise twice a week; therefore exercising every single day must be much harder." Nope. Quite the opposite. Hard is deciding every day whether you feel like going for a walk by arguing with yourself over whether you will feel better afterwards. That is effort spent with no satisfying payoff.
  - cJ0th 13y ago
    True. As so often, Linux gives a great analogy. When you start using it chances are you find working with it pretty inefficient and many things seem hard. But the more you learn about the system (which only really works when you do it every day)the better you get at solving your problems whereas people who rely solely on out-of-the box software improve rather little.
Kurtz79 13y ago
Make "going for a walk every day" the rule, not the exception. Just go out and walk, don't think "I have to walk because I need to lose weight", do it as an habit. You don't think "I need to wash my teeth because I don't want them to rot", or shower every day because "I don't want to smell". We probably could avoid washing and brushing our teeth for a day, without ill effects. But we do it every day because it's so ingrained in our daily routine that our day does not feel complete if we skip it. It's much harder to break a rule than to break an exception, and routine is much more powerful than willpower.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  > But we do it every day Wait, how long has this been going on? Do most people really take showers every day? Most people I know (myself included) only do it when they get smelly/sweaty, which is roughly every day in the summer, every 1.5-2 days in the winter. Is this a US thing?
  - bemmu 13y ago
    Looked at some online polls, seems like 50% say once a day, 30% every other day and 20% something else.
    - jhome 13y ago
      When I was in Japan, I had to shower at least twice a day but in England I don't sweat quite as profusely. I think there's a distinction between hygiene and social/cultural 'etiquette'. I will always make sure I am very clean before meeting someone, casual or otherwise.
  - cgore 13y ago
    Yes, in the USA, it is considered normal to take showers daily, at least with the middle class, and quite weird to not do so, to the point of being a major social impediment ("hey hippie, take a bath!").
    - 13y ago
DigitalJack 13y ago
I appreciate the advice in the sibling posts. I will consider these while I try to work out what the difference is between what Scott Adams calls a goal vs a system. I can be very pedantic, and I think that is getting in the way of understanding. I googled "systems vs goals" and actually found another Scott Adams post on the topic, even about excercise :) http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/systems/ http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/systems/ I'm trying to get a more direct handle on the difference so I can better apply it generally. It seems that when Adams says "goal" he is specifically talking about an endpoint. A destination. And that's a common definition I think. His use of system seems to still have goals, they are just smaller and easily achieved. They also seem to be more related to triggers or starting points. For example, "go to the gym" not "workout" or "do X reps." He also provides a relief valve in this case (not having to work out once he gets there if he doesn't feel up to it), so that the pressure of the expected follow through to "going to the gym" is relieved and thus not a deterrent. So if I were to apply this to walking, it could be something like "put on walking shoes, exercise clothes, and go outside, everyday." Or for better food: "Go to the store, buy some veggies I like," and maybe add on "go through prep work for cooking them." The relief valve could be that "I don't have to cook and eat this for dinner, but i do have to buy and prep."
- a3voices 13y ago
  To lose or maintain weight, the system is really simple, for me at least. Don't eat too many calories, and make sure you do something in the form of exercise each day. You need to be incredibly self conscious of approximately how many calories you're ingesting throughout the day (no, you don't have to weigh your food. Just a rough estimate). And you have to maintain this system forever, basically. How you actually implement the system, such as specifics of what foods to eat, what form of exercise, etc., can wildly vary, but you need to always remember the fundamentals.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  Right. Actually doing the exercise or actually eating the vegetables is at worse a minor nuisance, that on most days has enough immediate positives that it is self-reinforcing. Once we have the running shoes on, we probably find ourselves happy with the choice 30 minutes later some 99%+ of the time. Ditto the clean vegetables sitting on the counter. The problem comes at the "meta" level, bargaining with ourselves whether we feel like going to the gym, so we hem and haw over putting the shorts and shoes on. Allowing this self-bargaining process to become involved is adding mostly negative emotional energy in a way that does not pay a useful dividend. Presumably the relief valve has value in cutting short certain kinds of excuses. "Fine. If I am outside with my shoes and gear on, I do not have to go to the gym. Just getting the shoes on is easy enough, right? Once I am outside, maybe I will want to stroll around the block. But I can decide that once I am outside and ready -- no sense in dawdling now."
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
calinet6 13y ago
Read W. Edwards Deming, and learn statistics. Apply it to how you look at your life. Apply Deming to how you look at work, management, and other people. Yes, it's pretty broad, and it's a neverending learning process. But become a systems thinker and you'll be able to see how the world works scientifically, instead of based on false personal opinions or narrow perspectives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
- olegious 13y ago
  Any advice on books to start with?
  - calinet6 13y ago
    That's the problem, his books are dry and boring, but they are fascinating once you get into them. Start with Out of the Crisis -- a book basically about the concepts he used to bring Japan out of its post-WWII depression and into a world market power. He basically did that single-handedly, so that should give some weight to what he says. The concepts are aimed at manufacturing, but they're more generally about management and how to create quality as a culture, not simply as a product. It's brilliant, but it clashes against most American business thinking in the last few generations (all about punishment, motivation, raises; basically about tuning the individual), so it largely goes ignored. It's also why you should listen to it, given that most American businesses in the last few generations basically suck. Ignore his hokey names and lack of bedside manner. Pay special attention to his 14 points, and 7 deadly diseases. Think about everything in terms of statistics and process. Apply everything to your own business experiences, and you'll start to see how he's entirely right, and all your assumptions and everything you thought was true about business, manufacturing, quality, and especially people (your workers, your employees) are basically false. Turn it upside-down and start fresh with real science.
egypturnash 13y ago
Systemic weight loss: Find a thing you like doing that happens to involve a lot of body motion. Ideally, find multiple things, so that if one stops for whatever reason you're still doing the others. But it can be hard to find that kind of time and energy. Walk/cycle whenever possible. (You may need to move if you live in the car-oriented suburbs.) Start thinking of the entire world as a gym. See a low-hanging branch of a tree? Try doing some pull-ups.
- rimantas 13y ago
  If you want to lose weight think about your eating, not about your movements. Excericse is very ineffcient way to lose weight (but very good for other reasons).
gaurav_bubna 13y ago
I had personally been using thought process the author describes, before I read this article. The way I would describe this is that my "goal" in life to improve my everyday habits, the way I work, the way I manage priorities, how I structure my lifestyle, the broad direction in which I am taking my career, the kind of people I am meeting and attracting in my life (which is a result of my overall lifestyle, priorities etc.) etc. You constantly tweak these things to take your life in a broad direction that you want to take it towards. As a few concrete examples, if you are not meeting enough women in your life, or the type you want, the answer is not to go out to a bar. The answer if to change your lifestyle in a fundamental way which makes meeting women of the type you want a natural outcome. If you are not happy with your health, fitness etc. the answer is not necessarily (in this approach) to join a gym or hire a trainer for 3 months. It is to understand what makes a healthy lifestyle, slowly change your dietary habits, figure out an exercise scheme that makes sense for you, figure out how in your current lifestyle you can get plenty of sleep etc. Basically something that would make being healthy and fit a natural outcome. A necessary condition for this to work is that because it is such a systemic approach, the system has to be congruent with your overall lifestyle, and you have to be happy with executing the system. This is a big reason, why I feel, most dietary plans, or hobbies don't pan out enough. It is very short term goal drives and not something which is seamlessly integrated in a systemic way in your life. These are two examples where I have applied it (with a reasonable degree of success). I am using something similar for my overall work life, but whether it has succeeded or not is something I guess I will only know in another 10 years or so :) I hope that answers your question.
nl 13y ago
On a personal note, I need to lose weight. I've done it before: I lost 74 lbs, but now several years later I've gained back just over 90 lbs. I reached my goal, and lost all motivation for eating healthy, and steadily gained it all back and more. You already have a system - you need to change it. Take a look at your eating habits. Systems are habits For weight loss, that's the key. Exercise will help, but the input calories is a much bigger factor. If you are like most people I suspect you will find you snack a lot, and possibly drink softdrinks. Monitor your calories (see the MyFitnessPal app/website) for 2 days, and I bet you'll find if you change your eating system to avoid those snacks and softdrinks you will lose weight.
kranner 13y ago
I recently began an app that might help with this. It's laughably primitive right now, but it does help me personally. You can download it and read a bit of the context at http://noisytyping.com/an-app-to-help-lose-weight-by-increasing-spacing-between-meals/ http://noisytyping.com/an-app-to-help-lose-weight-by-increas... (OS X only).

RogerL 13y ago

Hmm, I find it extraordinarily bizarre. My life has been filled with people charging down the wrong path because they have elevated system/process over goals. For example: Agile/Yourdon/waterfall/XP/ISO9001/whatever. Our goal is a working system on time and budget (or whatever your goals are). The strategy is, perhaps, iterative waterfall, or agile, or more likely, some hybid approach (hint: how likely is small scale scrum to work to build a new Boeing, and how likely is the ideal Boeing process likely to create a great social web app). Systems are based on a number of assumptions about your goals; assumptions that may not apply, or that may change over time. If you aren't continually testing your chosen strategy (I prefer strategy over system, but I more or less mean the same thing here) against your goals, you are likely to be anywhere from sub-optimal to completely wrong. So I live in a world where everyone is currently chasing Agile, without questioning whether it even fits the problem, or what its weaknesses are (even if it fits, it has weaknesses, and you should be aware of it so you can mitigate them). I live in a world where people grind through business processes, without questioning whether this is taking us where we actually need to go, or whether things have changed and our goals, which inform the system, still apply. To use the example in the article, it makes no sense to search for another job if you are retiring in a year. If the externals change and system does not, you are in trouble.

tieTYT 13y ago
Good post, but I just want to point out that it hinges on your strategy = his system. The more comments I see, the more confused I am about what his definition of a system is.
- Zancarius 13y ago
  I'm not sure I do either, but the first analogy that popped in my head when I read about Mr. Adams' approach was one of weight loss. I don't think it's a particularly good analogy, but it's the best I can come up with as an illustration of his "system-oriented" approach. In a goal-oriented system, someone might choose to lose 30 pounds as their goal, then they'll work toward that goal through exercise or diet. Upon achieving it, they'll either continue (setting another goal) or fall off the wagon (going back to previous habits and gaining the weight right back). I've known enough people who have tried to diet repeatedly--and have succeeded in their weight loss--only to fail miserably and gain the weight back within a few weeks. In a system-oriented approach (or maybe you could call it a habit-oriented system?), you focus on building up or improving your habits so that they meet whatever goals you set. Using the example of losing weight, you'd focus on diet and exercise by making fundamental lifestyle changes to your behavior and eating habits that simply happens to produce weight loss as a byproduct. People who exploit this system by changing their habits consistently keep the weight off because their day to day behavior has fundamentally changed. To put it another way, their habits would have to be dramatically altered in order to go back to putting on the weight they lost as a consequence of this approach. Now, what I'm at a loss on is how this might apply to businesses, software development, or the likes other than to suggest it's a matter of developing good habits. To use his restaurant example: Instead of focusing on income goals, focus on making the best food in town and serving customers quickly. On second thought, maybe there isn't anything more to it other than habits? Maybe there's no "secret?" Develop good habits and plod along until something falls into your lap as a byproduct.