Saw this tweet today that stretched my horizons further:

OUTCOME MINDSET prevents you from making that ONE mistake again.

SYSTEMS MINDSET prevents you from using the mental models that caused that mistake.

SYTEMS MINDSET prevents that one mistake AND 100’s of other potential mistakes by addressing the root cause.

H/T @SafiBahcall

One thing you learn at work is dealing with people with output mindsets. Especially prevalent in large bureaucratic corporations. People just concerned with their individual outputs, they fail to see the forest for the trees. That’s why silos and fragmentation exist, collaboration fails, turf guarding rife. Getting people to see beyond their own work desk to the larger outcome that the organisation is trying to achieve, is probably someone’s or some departments fulltime jobs. 

Outcome mindset was something to take pride in.

But reading the tweet, made me realised there’s one more level up. Systems perspective, in the realm of mental models. Because looking just at the outcome just helps the specific outcome you want to achieve, and the particularities of the situation. Whatever you learn might not carry over well to the hundreds of other slightly different situations that might crop up due to the same mental models or underlying systems that’s pulling the strings in the background.

It’s a bit like the intervention models in social work that I learned about when I was in the sector many years back. Remedial, preventive and developmental models. Outcome mindsets might remedy things, but might not prevent future occurrences.  Systems mindsets go upstream, all the way to developmental interventions, where you build capability, train, or develop skills and mental models to see things anew, and address root causes all the way upstream, cutting off the problem before it even has a chance.

So, systems mindset. Something useful to incorporate into entrepreneurial journey. For example, since I’d not been very successful at earning MRR, I might have looked at it from an outcome perspective, and what kind of targets I need to have to address that. But from a systems mindset, I should really be asking, what mental models and inner narratives am I holding on to, that’s actually holding me back from the success I yearn for? Could it be money narratives? My preconceptions of what I can or should do as an entrepreneur? Perhaps even mindsets about how I work?

Hmmm, Much food for thought.