Go4yourGrowth · Angela Baucke
Go4yourGrowth · Angela Baucke
Why we think in fragments – and where we can begin
Today I’m venturing into completely different territory, because something is weighing heavily on my heart.
For quite some time now, the news on radio and television has been revealing that the world is increasingly coming apart at the seams. And this is not just about forces of nature, but about “homemade” problems – something humanity has caused and that only we humans are able to reverse and turn back toward the positive, or at least put right. This development affects all areas of life – from society and business to politics – and it is all the harder to understand the better we humans become at gathering information from all over the world and making it available.
So we have more knowledge than ever. Why, then, does so much still fail? My thesis: it is less often a lack of information than a lack of the ability and the willingness to connect the dots. We tackle problems one by one, each within its own remit, and are surprised when the solutions get in each other’s way or create new problems elsewhere.
On a smaller scale, many organizations know this pattern: a reorganization is meant to improve processes, a digitalization project to speed them up, a new bonus system to boost motivation. Each measure is understandable on its own. And yet what emerges in the end is often not what was intended, but friction, duplicated work, and the impression that “the others” are the problem.
For this view of the whole there is a recognized concept: interconnected thinking (German: vernetztes Denken), known in academia also as systemic thinking or systems thinking. This article explains what it is about, asks why this kind of thinking is so hard for us, and makes suggestions for where we can begin. At the end there is deliberately no ready-made solution, but an invitation to discussion.
Interconnected thinking regards a problem as part of a system with feedback loops: a decision in area A affects area B, and B feeds back on A. Whoever thinks this way asks not only “What is the problem?” but also “What is it connected to, and what does my solution trigger elsewhere?” In the German-speaking world it was above all the cyberneticist Frederic Vester who shaped this way of thinking. In his book “Die Kunst vernetzt zu denken” (literally: “The Art of Thinking in Networks”, 1999) he presents, with the Sensitivity Model, a set of tools meant to make interactions in complex systems visible. Internationally, Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline, 1990) stands, among others, for applying this thinking to organizations, and Donella Meadows for the question of where in a system one can intervene effectively at all.
The counterpart is fragmented thinking: it breaks a problem down into individual parts and treats each part on its own, usually along existing lines of responsibility. For clearly delimited tasks this works well; in complex situations it overlooks the interactions. Worth knowing: “interconnected thinking” is not a uniformly defined technical term but a principle used in systems theory, cybernetics, and management theory with differing vocabulary. The basic idea is the same everywhere: keep connections and feedback in mind.
The obvious answer is: because everyone thinks of themselves first. “Me first,” in other words. That is not entirely without merit, but research suggests a more nuanced answer, with four building blocks.
Our minds are limited. The scientist Herbert Simon coined the term “bounded rationality” for this: we have neither all the information nor the capacity to think through every decision completely. So we usually look for a solution that is good enough rather than the best one. Dietrich Dörner describes in his book Die Logik des Misslingens (English edition: The Logic of Failure) a mechanism that makes a lot of sense to me: complexity creates uncertainty, uncertainty creates fear, and we protect ourselves from this fear by having our brain block out everything complicated, opaque, and unpredictable. The problem: the section we see remains tied to the whole we do not see. And so we make mistakes. Thinking in fragments is therefore, first of all, not a character flaw but a protective mechanism.
Our structures encourage it. Organizations are divided into departments, knowledge is specialized, goals and bonuses apply to one’s own area of responsibility. The anthropologist Gillian Tett describes in The Silo Effect how institutions become so absorbed in their own world that they can no longer see what lies outside: closed, self-referential networks in which self-created truths prevail and habits go unquestioned.
We think in terms of belonging. Social-psychological experiments since the 1970s show: even an arbitrary division into groups, for example based on an estimation task, is enough for people to favor their own group, even without conflict, competition, or shared history. That is less “me first” than “us first.” Why this is so is still debated in research, and in the same experiments the wish for fairness also plays a role. So we are not quite as simply wired as that.
And yes: self-interest exists too. The reviewer Maia Green points out that power and political interests help ensure that structures stay as they are. Even in Tett’s own case studies, interests keep certain arrangements alive. This is where “me first” does come into play, but more as an amplifier than as a cause.
Fragmented thinking is therefore only partly egoism. To a large extent it is overload, structure, and belonging. That is an encouraging insight, because structures and habits can be changed without us humans first having to become better people.
Whether we really reach out to one another less than we used to is hard to measure clearly. There are, however, indications. The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s “Cohesion Index” for Germany fell between 2017 and 2023, in all nine dimensions examined, most strongly in solidarity and helpfulness. In fairness, it must be added: this is survey data on perceived cohesion, and the study itself still rates cohesion as solid.
Why this is so, I cannot prove. But I have two hunches that follow from what has just been said:
Perhaps ask yourself once: when did I last ask someone how they see a problem without already knowing what I was going to answer?
When departments work side by side instead of together. An Accenture study from 2020 of around 1,550 executives at large companies shows: three out of four said their departments compete rather than collaborate on digitalization. The consequences were higher costs from duplicated investments and considerably less additional revenue than expected. Companies with good cross-functional collaboration achieved, according to the study, roughly four times as much additional revenue. Such studies show correlations, not proven causes. They come from a consulting firm and rest on self-assessments. Yet many people know the pattern behind it from practice: each department optimizes its own goal, and nobody notices that three departments are solving the same problem three times over. No ill will is required for this. It is enough that the question “What does this mean for the other departments?” belongs to no one.
When incentives produce something other than what was intended. A drastic example is the US bank Wells Fargo. According to the findings of the US consumer protection agency CFPB, employees secretly opened around two million accounts over a period of years without the customers’ consent. The agency itself draws the connection: driven by sales targets and compensation incentives, employees boosted their numbers this way. The case is extreme, but the basic pattern is commonplace: when what is measured and rewarded and what is actually wanted drift apart, behavior generally follows the reward system. Interconnected thinking therefore asks not only “Who behaved wrongly?” but also “What behavior does this system make likely?”
When societal questions are connected. Almost one in four employees paying social security contributions in Germany is now between 55 and 65 years old, and the number is growing. Nevertheless, after losing a job, older people on average find it harder to get back into employment, as the Federal Employment Agency reports. The economists Claus Schnabel and Juliane List, after evaluating statistics, surveys, and field experiments, conclude that older people are demonstrably disadvantaged in hiring, often because of outdated stereotypes, while companies that have hired older people mostly have good experiences. That is precisely the systemic point: demographics, selection procedures, mindsets in HR departments, and further-training offerings are connected. Whoever starts at only one point, for example with a campaign, will achieve little.
Donella Meadows described in her essay “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System” twelve places where one can intervene in a system, and ranked them by effectiveness. Put simply: adjusting parameters such as budgets or subsidies achieves the least. Information flows (who learns what?) and rules (incentives, sanctions) achieve more. The goals of a system are more effective still, and most effective of all are the shared mindsets from which a system arises. Meadows also points out that a system resists change more strongly the higher the leverage point lies.
Applied to companies (this is an interpretation, not a quote from Meadows), this would mean: an adjusted budget changes little if information stays in the silos. New rules change little if the goal behind them is unclear. And a new organization chart changes little if the mindsets stay the same. Here systems thinking meets the distinction made by William Bridges (Managing Transitions, 1991) between Change, the external alteration, and Transition, the inner process by which people adjust to the new situation. Structures can be changed by decree; mindsets cannot.
The good news: according to Meadows, shared mindsets are the most effective lever, and anyone can change them in their own environment without waiting for a decision from above. Here are three levels on which it is worth starting. They are suggestions for further thought, not ready-made recipes.
Starting with myself. Five questions you can ask yourself before your next decision:
In the team and in the company. Bring the affected departments to one table before a decision is made, not only afterwards. Check regularly what is actually rewarded through goals, bonuses, and metrics, and whether it fits the behavior you actually want. And clarify explicitly who is responsible for the interfaces, so that the question “What does this mean for the other departments?” belongs to someone.
In society. There are no simple answers here, and I do not claim to have them. But in debates we can ask one additional question: What else is connected to this topic, and what would my preferred solution trigger elsewhere? This question can change conversations. And, by the way, these insights could be applied quite superbly to our political incompetence as well.
The world will not become less complex. Whether we meet it with individual measures that get in each other’s way, or with the courage to understand connections first, is a decision we cannot delegate. Interconnected thinking is no miracle cure and does not dissolve complexity, but it helps to depict it more honestly before we try to regulate it. I do not believe there is one right solution. But I do believe we will find better ones if we talk about it, across the boundaries of departments, disciplines, and generations.
Now it’s your turn: Where do you experience problems being handled one by one even though they are connected? And where have people managed to think them together? Write to me about your experiences and ideas. I am curious about the discussion.
Note: Figures and findings come from the sources cited; the classifications, hunches, and transfers to companies and society are meant as food for thought.