Why are all systems so similar?

I was listening to an author speak about his experiences in the inner workings of a major financial firm—one of the several notorious players in the current financial crisis. I was struck at how familiar the company culture, and the speaker’s experiences in it, were to other corporate contexts. It reminded me of those conversations about how universal the Dilbert cartoons are in hitting the mark regardless of where people work—from a large corporate firm to a small business, from a for-profit conglomerate to a non-profit. It begs the question, “Why are all systems so similar?”

We hear hints about this apparent truth here and there. “Business is business, whether you’re manufacturing cogs, selling cogs, or selling a service.” I’ve been in certain leadership training seminars where the room held representatives from all manner of contexts, with corporate CEOs to clergy attending to the same latest ideas about how to lead better and manage more effectively.

I have some hunches as to why all systems are so similar:

Relationships systems follow universal rules. I first stumbled across this insight when I picked up a book titled How to Run Any Organization. I still have in on my bookshelf, and I must admit it has served me well in all the contexts I’ve worked in: school administration, corporate, congregation, etc. The second place where that idea finds support is in Bowen Systems Theory, which identified universal rules applicable to all relationship systems, from family to business; from government to church.

Complexity emerges from simple rules. While systems and organizations may appear different on the surface they seem all to arise and operation on fundamentally simple rules. The most complex corporation started small and is effective to the extent it can “follow the rules” of its nature. Large congregations look different from small congregations, but ask any pastor and he or she will likely confirm that no matter the size of the congregation, leaders tend to deal with the same problems.

Human nature is the same everywhere. Culture, race, ethnicity, and epochs mediate the universal principles that direct relationship systems, but it doesn’t take much to scratch below the surface and discover that human nature is the same everywhere, and it has been for a while. Perhaps the best place to see this is in narrative—those stories that are so good about depicting the human spirit and its interior world. Reading the works of the Greek poets and playwrights to Shakespeare, to Checkoff and and Dostoevsky to Mark Twain will serve to confirm that we humans laugh, cry, yearn, fear, and hope for the same things—and always have. Idealists who want to create utopias and social organizations that are “totally new” often forget that those new creations will always be populated by the same old people.

The brain is the same everywhere. There may be a biological cause as to why all systems seem so similar. The organic brain, its patterns and its epistemology, are universally the same for everyone everywhere in whatever culture. Hence the educational truism, “Everybody everywhere learns the same way.” For example, barring neurological anomalies or organic brain syndromes, every person’s brain learns language the same way. And, dismissing claims of clairvoyance and ESP, everybody’s brain processes phenomenon the same way, for the most part. Given that fact, we can expect that when a group of individuals gathers together to form Group A, they’re pretty much going to be more similar than different to the group of individuals that gather together for form Group B. That’s a great convenience to teachers who find they can effectively re-cycle a well-designed courses year after year with little change and still achieve desired learning outcomes with little variance from the norm.

What are some of your hunches as to why systems are so similar?

From, Perspectives on Congregational Leadership: Applying Systems Theory for Effective Leadership, by Israel Galindo. Check out the Perspectives on Congregational Leadership blog.