Colin (00:01.903)

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of The Growth System, the podcast that looks at B2B growth through a systems thinking lens. Now, we're aware that some of you will already be wondering what the systems thinking have to do with business growth and some of you will be wondering what the heck is systems thinking anyway? Well, that's exactly what we're gonna kick off the series with. We're gonna do a bit of a special episode where we'll find out answers like what do we actually mean by

system and why should we, crucially as growth professionals, actually care? So we'll dive into a bit of the theory of systems thinking and why we believe it's so valuable to us in our high stakes game of B2B growth. So later in the series, we'll look at some common organizational patterns that I'm sure you'll all be painfully familiar with and how we can solve them with bit of systems thinking. But today, our resident systems thinking nerd, Chris.

is going to answer some of the big questions to help us figure out how to think about systems. So I'm Colin Shakespeare. I'm head of growth at RevSpace. I've always had a big interest in understanding the world and how it works as a complex system made up of interconnected elements, which is why I originally trained as a historian. And then a roundabout way this has brought me to an interest in systems thinking. And in my business career, I've experienced firsthand all of the issues that we'll be discussing on the podcast.

Now I've taken on this role at RevSpace because it gives me the opportunity to work with systems thinkers like Chris and to get to the bottom of these endemic problems and actually help B2B organizations solve them.

Chris (01:46.754)

Thanks, Colin. And hi, everyone. So I'm Chris Bayliss. I'm managing partner at Repspace. And also, think perhaps more importantly for this podcast, I am a, as Colin said, a dyed in the wall systems nerd very much guilty as charged there. As we're to explain, not systems in the software sense, albeit a lot of our day is perhaps dominated by software, but systems thinking and system dynamics and

Systems thinking is really a big part of how we go about doing what we do at RevSpace on a day -to -day basis. And it's that that we really want to share with you on this podcast. So RevSpace, just by way of introduction, is a growth consultancy. It's been working in the B2B space for eight plus years, and we've worked mostly with kind of scale up B2B organizations. We've worked with organizations all over the world, some very, very large ones, billion plus, some a little smaller. But what we have seen and...

And this is really, really critical is what we've seen on that journey is that some organizations succeed and others simply don't grow at the rate that they should. And what we came to realize is that the reasons for these successes and failures is actually the same thing. It was the way that the organization created an effective operating system for how they did business.

And for us, big focus was of course how this impacted, you know, sales and marketing teams, how it impacted the growth team. And in a nutshell, the problem and indeed the solution to these successes and failures was actually all about systems.

Colin (03:22.796)

So Chris, I'm pretty sure everybody listening already thinks they know what a system is. But if we ask 10 people, we get 10 slightly different or sometimes very different answers. Perhaps you could answer what seems on the surface to be a very simple question, what is a system? Or rather, what do we mean when we're talking about this concept of systems?

Chris (03:54.326)

Well, systems are all around us, you know, as a person is a system, a company is a system, a football team is a system, the economy is a system, a rotten tree full of bugs is a system, and our everyday life is dominated by them. So I think what's really important is that, you know, we just consider that when we think about systems, they are

literally all around us, they govern our lives. And when we think, what is a system? Well, from a definition perspective, it's a set of things, people, cells, whatever, you know, interconnected in such a way as that they form their own pattern of behavior over time. And this concept of sort of forming their own pattern of behavior is really key in understanding systems.

it's what we call in the systems world emergence or emergent properties. And emergent properties, which is a phrase that's kind of sometimes interchangeably used with the word purpose or function in describing systems, are what I think actually are better described by a phrase that we use all the time, which is systems are more than the sum of their parts.

So a system is a set of interconnected elements that create an output or indeed outcomes that would not obviously be detected from just looking at the elements of that system in isolation. And this leads us on to another really important system concept called Holism, which we're going to talk about later on, I suspect.

And what this sort of more than the sum of its parts concept also highlights is that the magic in systems doesn't come from the elements in the system. comes from the interconnections. comes from the way that those elements are bound together. interconnections can be lots of things. can be information flows, like a meeting.

Chris (05:50.168)

physical contact, policies, regulation, the rules of a game, conversations, emails, technology integrations, even political decisions, they could all be described as interactions. Anything essentially which governs the way the elements come together to create behaviors can be described as an interaction. when we talk about this in the systems engineering context,

It really is interactions that are where the gold is buried in terms of how we maybe modify behavior in systems and certainly understand the behavior of systems. I could go on a long time for this as you probably already gathered, but I think probably the final point to make, I really can, probably the final point to make in terms of what a system is, is to kind of pull this together by saying that a system has a structure.

Colin (06:29.59)

He can.

Chris (06:44.514)

which can be described and sometimes it's easy to see, but it also has behavior. And it's this behavior, which is a byproduct almost of the system structure and its interconnections that creates the immersion properties that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, when we think not just about describing systems, but modifying them,

we need to look at the gap between the intended behaviour or purpose of the system and the actual behaviour that emerges from it. And understanding this gap is the first step in thinking about how we might modify a system to create different and potentially more desirable behaviours and outcomes.

Colin (07:30.604)

Okay, great. I guess the question on everyone's lips is, and he kind of touched on that at the end, is why should we as growth professionals actually care about systems? Like how does this actually help us in our world?

Chris (07:51.382)

It's a great question and I think perhaps from that slightly academic intro it might be difficult to kind of see that immediate application but ultimately as we've discussed a company is a system and what we didn't kind of mention in the first bit is the systems have hierarchy. You know there are systems within systems we call these subsystems and potentially subsystems within subsystems and further subsystems.

We'll talk later about how useful maybe it is to look at things in that much detail. But ultimately, a growth team, typically comprised of sales and marketing and account management, success functions, is a subsystem of the company. Teams within those departments, such as maybe an SDR team or an email marketing team, are nested subsystems within that growth team.

And within all of these systems are elements, people, software. know, what they all have is a kind of a unifying purpose, which is normally to make money and hit targets. But as we will no doubt discuss as the sort of series progresses, as we kind of get on with the show is that

when every system, every subsystem has its own purpose, has its own emergent properties, and those don't always align. And, you know, I think that that's a really, really key thing because when we have this kind of common, stated common purpose, making money, generating leads, hitting targets, well, actually doesn't always go to plan. So I think, you know, now that we've kind of...

Colin (09:31.241)

does it ever go to plan? would be another question.

Chris (09:36.844)

I think that's a great question that we probably should cover, we probably will cover. Yeah, so now I guess we've described the characteristics of the system. It's pretty clear to see that all of the elements have interactions. As we said earlier, interactions are one of the key drivers of behavior alongside how those elements are arranged. And what's also, I think, very common is that growth teams, like so many other teams, as we've kind of just touched on, they're not

optimally efficient. They might not be hitting target. There might be friction. might be poor alignment. You know, things might not and probably are not going as well as they could be. And ultimately, systems thinking gives us a set of tools to fix these problems. And

all they really need to do is be applied. As we will cover, there are some quite big academic concepts in here, but really the tools to do the job are just a mechanism of seeing the world in a slightly different way. And those tools can be applied and near universally in my experience are not applied within organizations and therefore understanding systems as a growth team professional can be a huge source of competitive advantage.

I think, I think for me, at least, there's an interesting question. Well, why aren't these these tools kind of applied if they're so simple and as we'll kind of cover that they're not they're not difficult things to get your head around. I think the reason actually can be traced all the way back to the Industrial Revolution, know, managers got taught that the key to solving problems is reductionism. You know, how many times have you heard someone say, let's break this down? Yeah, let's be reductive about this.

it's like a muscle memory, it's a reflex behavior we've got to just like chunk things down into smaller things. And even in systems, that's not a problematic approach. But if you only see the world by breaking things down into the smallest possible parts to solve problems, and sort of apply this seemingly sensible logic, then ultimately, you don't

Chris (11:50.926)

see the forest for the trees, to use the American version of our English phrase, which I think in systems one certainly makes a lot more sense. So what reductionism tells us is that if a machine isn't working properly, then a part is to blame. Finding the issue can be achieved by dismantling the machine, identifying the defective parts, swapping it out for another one.

And this is rampant in businesses, rampant in growth teams. the email marketing performance isn't where we needed to be. Let's buy a new bit of software. Strategy is not working. Time for a new CMO. We try to fix problems by changing elements, by swapping the parts in the machine. And I think really there's a human psychological reason for this, which is that, and perhaps a political reason with a small p.

is that it's easier and better and more desirable to think that the problem is kind of out there rather than in here. And we're hardwired, I think, possibly slightly, you know, uncomfortably so to blame someone or blame something to look for a quick fix, a magic pill, a kind of technical solution that's going to make all of our problems go away.

And that really is the byproduct of a sort of reductionist way of thinking. And I mentioned wholism earlier and wholism is a way of seeing the big picture. It's a way of seeing the forest. And that really is what systems thinking.

is all about. So, know, B2B growth teams, they're complicated beasts, often made much more complicated by layers of management, split representation at board level, you know, a CMO and a CRO duking it out for the same resources, sort of unification and alignment is fractious when it should be absolute. And really, when you start seeing that whole problem as a system, then we can start viewing that

Colin (13:34.302)

You

Chris (13:51.572)

as something to be modified using systems thinking tools and really that's what this podcast is aiming to be about.

Colin (14:02.877)

Well, actually, sounds like it's pretty important to us growth professionals then to be systems thinkers. Now, I guess systems thinking is a phrase that a lot of people listening will have actually heard of already, but maybe don't have a clear understanding of the concept or how it relates to ideas like systems dynamics, for example. So could you spell it for us just right here what the difference between systems, systems thinking?

systems dynamics and systems engineering as well.

Chris (14:39.98)

Yeah, absolutely. mean, it's a great question. I'll do my best to try and answer it because I think it's a really important one. But in my experience, there's even confusion about this within the academic world of systems. But I'll give you my take. hopefully, I've just done a reasonable job of describing what a system is and to some degree, how they work to create patterns of behavior.

And systems thinking is often interchangeably used with system dynamics. In fact, many universities offer systems thinking courses that are really about system dynamics. You know, I've been on one of them.

But for me, there's a really critical difference and actually sort of for sure to sleep perhaps in you asking this question. I was on a webinar just last night with a really, really incredible guy, Professor Edward Crawley. He's professor of Ford professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT. He's just an incredibly clever guy. He still plays a really key role at NASA.

Colin (15:54.2)

He's more or less a rocket scientist.

Chris (15:56.718)

And he is in fact a rocket scientist, absolutely. He is also the kind of originator of all the systems thinking education that comes out of MIT. He's a really cool guy. He's done some pretty cool stuff. But he said something on this webinar last night that he described systems thinking as the cognitive skill of the 21st century. And I

don't think that's an overstatement. And I think what he also said about systems thinking is that it's applicable to everyone. And I think self evidently things like systems dynamics and system engineering are not applicable or indeed desirable for everyone, but systems thinking absolutely is. And I think the reason he thinks this and I would wholeheartedly agree.

is that the rate of change in the world, particularly the world of business, is driving previously unimaginable levels of complexity into everyday decision making. The amount of choice that we've got, buy anything, procure anything, there's not three options, there's 300. When we look at, I don't know,

global distribution of teams, number of software systems we interact with. mean, software systems, of pet subject of mine, I guess. I love the chief MarTech maps that done by Scott Brinker. I think now there is something like just in the sales and marketing space, 14 ,000 SaaS solutions just serving sales and marketing.

Colin (17:31.61)

That's where my mind went as soon as you started talking about it as well.

Chris (17:39.214)

That's insane. you know, complexity, technical integrations. It seems some businesses we work with have worked in have most of those 14 ,000 in production at any one time. They all got to talk to each other. We've got to understand all of this information that's between them. You know, the profession of comms channels, multi -channel, omni -channel, you know, customer success solutions. Dare we even say AI? You know, that.

Colin (17:45.574)

Ha ha ha!

Chris (18:08.65)

AI will be, is already a complete paradigm shift in how we view systems, certainly in the business context. And really what this, by -product of all of this complexity is, is that it's just much more difficult to understand how things fit together and therefore how you're going to achieve the things that you want to achieve in everyday life.

I mean, even outside of business, you just want to get from your house to the other side of the city. okay, well, we've got to think in a system about that every day. Where is the traffic going to be? What is going on? Is there a football match kicking out somewhere? Is it going to be faster on the underground or is it going to be faster on the bus or should I get an Uber? Other ride sharing apps are available.

Colin (18:56.816)

It's okay, we're not on the BBC yet.

Chris (19:03.756)

Well, that's a relief. So, you know, we think in systems every single day and the systems that we have to think about are getting insanely more complex. And, you know, to be successful in any role, I think that being a systems thinker.

is more than just an advantage, it's becoming a necessity. So systems thinking really is a way of thinking that helps us deal with complexity. Simple as it's just a way of seeing problems and unpacking them in our mind to make decisions. So that's systems thinking. And you apply that to this view of understanding what a system is, which I talked about earlier on. Now, system dynamics, which I think

and probably system dynamicists would disagree with me here, but system dynamics I feel sometimes interchangeably used with kind of system modeling, maybe even system architecture. That's really a technique for describing and understanding and simulating systems and how they behave over time. So it's really a method of applying a lens into a system's problem, drawing a boundary around it, what we would call a system's boundary.

and really then analyzing the things within that boundary. So it really leads up to a kind of modeling techniques, system architecture, describing systems, and it enables us to kind of classify them. crucially, I think for systems, dynamicists create simulations about how a system does or could work.

I think could work actually is quite an important factor there. And actually the interchangeability between systems thinking and system dynamics is so absolute that actually when you sometimes see a definition of systems thinking, and if you recall, which you've forgiven for not, the three parts of a system, purpose or emergent properties, interconnections and elements.

Chris (21:10.68)

there is actually a fourth component that a lot of systems people add, and that is an architect or an observer. They almost sort of say that system dynamics, that systems are almost a sort of fictional academic concept. You know, if a tree falls in the wood, does it make a sound? If someone's not observing a system, is it a system? Well, for me, that is somewhat

disappearing up your own academic fundament. systems are real, systems are out there, systems are things that we experience every day. But system dynamics is a method of putting those things in a box, drawing a line around them, and then working out what's going on. And that is not to indeed underplay in any way the role of system dynamics. It's, it is incredibly fascinating, personally fascinating feel to me at least. But it's quite theoretical, and even somewhat mathematical.

And understanding system dynamics is in no way for me a prerequisite of being a systems thinker. So the, what it does lead us on a journey towards, I think the final part of your question is like, what's the difference with systems engineering? Well, systems engineering, the way it's taught is typically applied to non -human systems. So we're about system function. We might actually even be going back to talking about things like software. And

it's a method for sort of planning and developing systems across the systems development life cycle. And actually for us in rev space, systems engineering is a big part of what we do. And we use it perhaps atypically in the context of predominantly human systems like growth teams. So in essence, systems thinking is a pattern of thought. It's a way of viewing the world and it's something that

that we are big fans of internally. It's a culture and a behavior and a muscle that we try to build up in our teams. But not everyone will do the doing when it comes to engineering and systems dynamics.

Chris (23:20.076)

So systems dynamics building models of the systems that we observe and systems engineering is about conceiving of new systems or ways to modify systems. And that is very much almost a project planning methodology. You know, how are we going to analyze and understand a system? How are we going to?

Launch that system. are we going to embed it? How are we going to maintain it? How are we going to retire it indeed across that sort of life cycle view of the system? So it's system engineering really about building systems and.

You can't build a system without understanding systems and you probably shouldn't launch a system without having simulated how that system might work, which is the system dynamics part. So they're all really part of a sort of continuum of tools and within each one of those kind of fields, you've got a whole bunch of other tools for getting the job done. hopefully that wasn't too boring. You know, as I before, I could go on and on and

And it's certainly, you'll probably be relieved to know, it's not going to be what our normal episodes are like. But it's these ideas and patterns of thinking that we're going to apply to the organisational issues and patterns that we're going to discuss on each episode.

Colin (24:46.125)

For me, that wasn't boring at all. think as we get further into the series and the listeners can see how all this applies to like real life, everyday professionals that really we all face, everyday situations, sorry, that we all face as growth professionals, that's really when the penny will drop. But this sort of theory episode, I think was really very useful, very interesting. So thanks, Chris.

Chris (25:13.87)

Thanks, Colin, and you're probably too kind. Well, the good thing for me is, I suppose, at least that one person got something from this. I think at this point, it's probably all that's left to say is that that's all we've got time for. And be sure to join us next week, where normal service will begin. And we're to be talking about how systems thinking can save us from the perils of the MQL.

Colin (25:35.363)

Save us from the MQL, Chris, save us from the MQL. Well, if you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to follow and rate the podcast. It will really help us to share these ideas and insights with your fellow growth professionals everywhere. So thanks for listening.

The growth system is brought to you by RevSpace, which is an applied growth consultancy that connects B2B organizations with the future of growth with consultancy, education and delivery services. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Chris (25:56.75)

Thanks everyone.

Chris (26:14.574)

See you next week.

Colin (26:16.363)

We do that bit where you stack your papers like a newsreader.

Colin (26:25.027)

Trish you've gone, did you mean to go?

Colin (26:41.379)

Chris, can you hear me?

Colin (27:17.443)

So that's weird. What was that there? Looks like your recording didn't finish uploading to Riverside. It's no problem. You can finish it now.

Colin (27:34.701)

Can you actually hear me?

Colin (27:52.301)

Hello.