Samay Raina Called It a Game. Systems Thinking Calls It Something Else.
In September 2025, I watched Samay Raina perform live in Pune.
It was the same special, "Samay Raina: Still Alive" that he published on YouTube a while back and has garnered over 60 million views as of 12th May. But what I'm about to refer to wasn't in the version that made it on the internet.
It was in the live show.
He was talking about the period post the last episode of his show got banned. The period when his guest Ranveer's statement spiralled into something much larger than itself.
The guests on the show received death threats and constant hate messages on social media. People were storming into Ranveer's mom's clinic. News channel holding debates on where comedy was headed. The Assam police filed an FIR against the panellists. And even the CM of Maharashtra made a public statement against it.
Now. If you were in his position, what would be the easiest thing to do?
Blame the politicians, the news channel, the karyakarthas that vandalised the set. And maybe even out of self-pity, blame yourself.
But instead he described this entire story using the word 'game'. And he said everyone in the story was simply trying to win it, to score more points. The score being recognition and money.
The people who filed FIRs wanted to be seen by their bosses. The news channels wanted eyeballs. The politicians would have been coaxed into saying something by their subordinates, as a way to take a stand.
Everyone punched down because punching down, in that moment, gave them something.
No single person decided to make this a spectacle. The spectacle created itself.
I'm not here to tell you who was right or wrong. That's not the point. The point is that what he was describing, without naming it, is one of the most important ideas in Systems Thinking.
Characteristics of Systems Thinking
Each sub-system has its own goal
Every system is made up of parts. And every part has its own goal, its own incentive, its own definition of winning.
The news channel's sub-system goal: maximise reach.
The politician's sub-system goal: maximise visibility.
The karyakarta's sub-system goal: impress the boss.
Each of them, individually, was doing exactly what their incentive told them to do.
The system goal: A fair public discourse wasn't anyone's job, so nobody did it.
This is what Systems Thinking calls Sub-system Goals vs. System Goals. Every part optimises for itself. And when parts optimise for themselves without accounting for the whole, the whole suffers, even when no one is technically doing anything wrong.
The Room Where It Happened
I was sitting in a review meeting with a client's team. A product launch had slipped significantly. Weeks of delay and a room full of people who weren't making eye contact with each other.
The conversation that followed was predictable.
The product team said the brief kept changing. The business team said the product team kept asking for more time. Someone mentioned that approvals from a third team had taken longer than expected. That third team wasn't in the room, which made it easier to mention them.
By the end of the meeting, there was a clearer picture of who was responsible. And a hazier picture of what had actually gone wrong.
But the fact was that by the time this meeting happened in the room, the system had already run its course. Blaming a person or even a team is still treating the symptom.
The delay was an outcome of several decisions made independently, in different rooms at different times, pursuing their subsystem's goal.
Each sub-system did its job. The system failed anyway.
The question worth asking in that room was what mental model each team hold about how this process is supposed to work and where do those mental models quietly contradict each other?
That is Systems Thinking in action.
Peter Senge's 11th Law of Systems Thinking
There is no blame
Systems thinking shows us that individuals and problems are part of a single interconnected system. When something goes wrong, the instinct to externalise blame is understandable, but it's unproductive. The solution rarely lies in changing the person. It lies in changing the relationship between the parts.
Cultures that understand this stop solving for the surface-level symptoms that pop up. They leverage mental models to change the symptoms.
More on Mental Models in the next few editions.
The Takeaway
As a leader, when you manage multiple stakeholders and teams, there will always be a person you can point to when things go wrong.
And pointing to them will feel satisfying. It might even feel fair.
But the best of leaders have the ability to zoom in and zoom out according to the situation.
Because if the same kind of problem keeps appearing, with different people in the frame each time, the problem was never the person.
The question to ask is: what is it about how this system is built that keeps producing this outcome?
That's not a comfortable question. It implicates everyone, including you.
Program in Focus: Systems Thinking Lab
Change the way you see problems, turn it into a practised skill.
26–27th June in Pune | 1.5 Days
by Adi Raheja
Early bird discount: Use code EARLYWORM to get 20% off
Discounts also available for group of 3 and 5 at checkout
