What Goes on Below the Surface: A System Thinker's Diary
The Elevator Button Syndrome
I was standing by the lift, minding my own business, the 'Up' button pressed, when someone rushed in beside me. He works in the same building, in a different organisation.
Through earlier conversations, I knew they had a strict punch-in, punch-out system. A few minutes late, and it shows up directly in his paycheck. Tough life, I thought. Discipline was never my strength. I admire people who have it. I also, quietly, resent them a little.
But in that rush, he pressed both buttons; up and down.
Maybe it was urgency. Maybe seeing both arrows light up gave him certainty that the lift would arrive. I didn't judge. I thought to myself.
But then it happened again. With a different person, on a different day. And again. The housekeeping staff, a food delivery guy, a sales manager from the next-door office. All pressing both buttons.
By now, I'd stopped calling it a coincidence. If it happens more than thrice it's a pattern.
People from entirely different social backgrounds, different floors, different companies, different levels of apparent patience, all doing the same thing: pressing both buttons to call the elevator.
The question behind the gesture seemed to be: do I tell the elevator what I want, or should it know what I want?
I did some digging. Turns out this is a genuinely documented frustration in building management. However minuscule, the inadvertent pressing of buttons does lead to waste in electricity and wear & tare.
So naturally, it found its way into one of our lunch conversations at ARC.
While I narrated the story, a few heads nodded. Some had been a victim of this crime and some sheepishly were the cause.
The Obvious Solutions
Solutions came quickly, as they always do at lunch.
"Why don't we put a sign that says: 'Press the direction you're going, not where you want the lift to be.'"
"What if there's just one button?"
All solutions were well-intentioned, logical in fact. And almost certainly doomed.
Here's why. India. Multilingual, multi-literate, multi-everything India. A building with diverse visitors: delivery guys, vendors, executives, guests, it is not a homogeneous audience. Not everyone reads the same language. Not everyone reads at all. If you try to cater to everyone with signage, you'd need to cover the wall in instructions before you even get to the button.
Imagine a small elevator button panel, surrounded by signs in 5 languages, 2 pictograms and laminated A4 sheets. All of it for people to get the button right.
This is the 4th Law of Systems Thinking, articulated by Peter Senge:
The easy way out usually leads back in.
Also called the "Bigger Hammer" syndrome. When an initial solution fails, the natural reaction is to apply the same solution with more force rather than questioning the solution itself.
Initial solution: Buttons with up and down symbols
Bigger hammer: Signages (more symbols) around the elevator button.
If a problem is persistent, it is rarely solved by simply pushing harder on the same lever.
So if the obvious solution doesn't work, what does?
Well, days passed, and the reality was that this problem wasn't burning enough for any of us to solve. [In one of the past newsletter's we've spoken about the formula for change- Read here]
But it remained like an itch waiting to be scratched at the back of my mind.
Then one day, I noticed something at one of our clients' offices. It was so understated that I almost walked past it. There were no buttons inside the lift lobby. No usual up/down buttons adjacent to the lift.
Instead, there was a small panel near the entrance to the lift area. You typed your floor number before entering. The same behaviour that was usually demonstrated inside the elevator now took place outside.
The system assigned you a lift. You walked to it. Doors opened. You stepped in. No one is pressing both directions out of habit or anxiety.
Problem solved!
This is the 8th Law of Systems Thinking:
Small changes can produce big results, but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
The building managers didn't run an intervention to fix human behaviour. Or they didn't write better signs or reduce the number of buttons. They used Systems Thinking unknowingly to solve a problem.
This happened because the system stopped allowing them to create the problem in the first place. That's leverage. And it rarely looks like what you'd expect.
The Takeaway
Problems we try to solve in our teams, our organisations, are approached the same way we approach that elevator button. We see the symptom, we reach for the nearest fix, and we're puzzled when the problem comes back wearing a different coat.
Systems thinking helps you solve problems and make decisions differently.
The question isn't "how do we get people to stop pressing both buttons?" The question is "what is it about this system that makes pressing both buttons feel like the right thing to do?"
Answer that, and only then will you start working on what lies underneath a system.
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
PS: In the next few days, expect more articles on Systems Thinking. Casual loops diagrams, laws, characteristics, all applied in a real world context.
