Throughout this book we have demonstrated how Systems Leadership Theory (SLT), and the derived models and tools, can be applied to a wide range of different organisations: community groups, not-for-profits, public sector organisations and commercial businesses. We should note, though, that it is rare nowadays to encounter a situation where SLT is being introduced into an organisation that is not already implementing, or planning to implement, other organisational change programmes. It is important, therefore, to understand the relationship between SLT and these other approaches. Where implementation is disconnected, people are understandably confused as to how and if these approaches are complementary.

Typically, organisations will implement a change programme for one or more reasons; such as to secure cost reductions, performance improvement, customer satisfaction. Our experience, however, is that these programmes tend to focus heavily on one specific area of work – for example, redesigning a system, or restructuring, or culture change, rather than providing an integrated and comprehensive approach to creating and sustaining change integrated across the organisation. Although the operational changes may be specified in some detail, the impact on the people concerned, and their behaviour, is often underestimated or misunderstood. Since the required improvements will inevitably depend on people changing their behaviour, it is concerning that few initiatives are underpinned by a sound theoretical understanding of social process and human behaviour. A change programme may describe, in some detail, what behaviours are required, but it is rare to find an explanation of why or how behaviours will actually change.

We consider that SLT can strengthen any implementation by providing an overarching framework which is based on a sound theoretical understanding of human behaviour. This enables an accurate diagnosis to be made of relevant past and current organisational issues. It also provides the opportunity to predict how current behaviours might change in response to changes in organisational strategies, structures, systems, and new leadership behaviours.

We, like others, have noted that this field of organisational effectiveness and design is influenced by current fashion. One year ‘leadership’ is the answer, the next ‘teamwork’, the next ‘collaboration’, the next (and currently) ‘innovation’. It is attractive to think that one approach will ‘fix the problem’. We are not saying that these ideas have no merit. Clearly all organisations need leadership and innovation, we cannot work together without teamwork and collaboration. However, what these terms actually mean can vary significantly. What actual behaviour is required can be very vague or interpreted in many different, even contrary, ways. Whether such behaviour is encouraged or discouraged by the organisation’s structure and systems may not be understood or even analysed.

However, we do need to examine these approaches and consider how and if they are complementary to Systems leadership. In general terms we have found that ‘Lean’ manufacturing in its various guises; business process re-engineering, Six Sigma and so on can benefit significantly from being integrated with SL. This is because our approach offers a deeper understanding of why people behave as they do and predicts responses to systems changes especially in the technical and commercial domains.

As we have mentioned there is a website associated with this book (ref). We have posted a paper largely written by a colleague Richard Joss with a section by another colleague David Dadswell that examines Systems Leadership in relation to:

a.the related fields of systems and system leadership;

b.Lean Manufacturing including a case study;

c.Innovation;

d.Agile, Scrum and other similar approaches;

e.Big Data.

We are grateful to our colleagues for this work which could easily form a book in itself.

No one has a monopoly on the best way to organise and manage the myriad of institutions that make up advanced industrial and post-industrial societies. Because our work has been applied in businesses, social service agencies, hospitals, city governments, national governments, armies, churches, public utilities and other unique organisations, we find a quote from Drucker particularly apt ‘The function of management in a church is to make the church more churchlike, not more businesslike’ (Byrne, 2005).

We of course acknowledge that there are many other approaches being used to understand and improve organisations. However, we have argued that many of these approaches concentrate on only a part of the organisation. We would like to say that if anyone is considering any approach they might start off with a few questions (clearly related to the system design questions):

1.Are you clear about your purpose?

2.Why have you chosen this approach? How does it relate to others?

3.Does the approach clearly explain why it should or should not work?

4.Is it based on sound theory? Is it predictive?

5.Where is the evidence?

6.How does it fit with the current systems and structures and what might need to be changed?

7.Do you have the capability and determination to implement?

Many approaches are fads and/or rebadged techniques that are implemented because of ‘best practice’; which may mean everyone else is doing this so I suppose we should. Or perhaps it is sold as the silver bullet. We appreciate that creating, sustaining and improving an organisation is hard work. There is no way round that. We would argue it is very much worthwhile spending the time at the beginning working out the desired outcome(s) and why any approach might be expected to deliver these. That is the work of the leadership and we have found that SLT can not only help in that process but also help to understand what other approaches may or may not be complementary.