Our System

The concept of "our system" enables an individual or a team to identify their own system or their place within a larger collective activity. This could involve the activities of your own enterprise or of many enterprises. In the latter case, we can speak of an extended enterprise. For example, a wide variety of enterprises participate in sending a person into space.

Note that our system may be a subsystem of the system of interest or one of the creation systems. In this way, the activities of a large enterprise can be divided into numerous projects, each responsible for creating different "our systems." At the same time, every "our system" has a specific connection to the system of interest.

The systems team and systems specialist must understand how they participate in the broader activity of creating the system of interest. An important systems thinking technique is the ability to identify your own system among many others, as well as to understand its relationship with other systems and with other teams that are creating those systems.

In an extended enterprise, a large number of teams work, each engaged with their own system ("our system" is unique for each team). For example, one team may be developing a car engine, so for this team, "our system" is the engine. In this case, the team will still consider the car as their system of interest. This establishes the team's connection to the larger collective that produces the car. For this team, the engine is "our system." In this situation, "our system" is a part of the system of interest. However, for another team within the automotive corporation, "our system" might be the assembly line, and in relation to the car, the assembly line is part of the creation system.

Let us emphasize once again that "our system" and the system of interest help people within an enterprise to see their specific area of work and to understand how their work is connected to the main result for the entire enterprise.