Note: The aim of this nine-part series is to define and describe the basic structure and components of a system. This is the sixth post in the series, which is excerpted from Chapter 4 of my recently published book, Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools.

United Schools, where I work, is a system made up of four public charter schools and a nonprofit hub that serves as the central office for the schools. It is also a subsystem of the system of education in Columbus, in Ohio, and in the United States. This illustrates the point that a system contains subsystems and is itself a subsystem of a system in which it is contained.

The point is not to go off the rails with divisions smaller and smaller or inclusion into larger and larger systems. Instead, the point is that it is nearly impossible to see the whole system all at once because it is spread over many places and operates over time. Too often we overemphasize the people and processes that are within our view presently without an appreciation that actions and consequences for those current problems may have occurred in other times and places.[1]

When we draw the boundaries of a system to tackle a problem, it is critically important to operationally define that system prior to beginning the improvement work. Equally important is recognizing that no matter where those boundaries are drawn, there is always a larger system beyond that is impacting the one that is within those boundaries. A useful way for thinking about this hierarchy of embedded systems is to look at it as three levels including the core system, the subsystem, and the supra system, each of which is described in Table 1.

Table 1. Hierarchy of Embedded Systems

Think here about the arbitrary boundaries you have drawn or seen others draw in various educational improvement efforts for which you have been a part. In the No Child Left Behind era, the most typical example of this was drawing the boundary around reading and math to the exclusion of science, social studies, and enrichment classes. Even if you weren’t explicitly thinking in these terms, you can likely in hindsight see how systems thinking would have been beneficial.

As you begin to view the world through a systems lens, the idea of improving the core system of which you are a part becomes more challenging. However, seeing the world in this way also opens a number of possibilities for improvement for which you may have been previously unaware. At the very least, this helps in understanding the various system levels in which your organization is situated. This in fact will be the topic of next month’s post where we’ll look at the implications of the hierarchy of embedded systems on school improvement work.

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John A. Dues is the Chief Learning Officer for United Schools Network, a nonprofit charter management organization that supports four public charter schools in Columbus, Ohio. He is also the author of the newly released book Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools. Send feedback to jdues@unitedschoolsnetwork.org.

Notes

1. Edward Martin Baker, The Symphony of Profound Knowledge: W. Edwards Deming’s Score for Leading, Performing, and Living in Concert (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2017), 118.