Map the system around a problem, not its single cause
Trace the people, rules and feedback loops (chains in which an effect feeds back into its own cause) around a recurring problem, and where its boundary seems to sit, before you settle on its cause.
Why it works
The third habit, seeing systems, shifts a leader away from cause-and-effect narratives toward the patterns and emergence within a whole system. The Integral Leadership Review’s summary describes seeing the system as recognising “ever changing and shifting boundaries and patterns”. This page’s inference, not the review’s: a single-cause account closes the question early when the cause is itself part of a pattern, while a map keeps the situation open to what the interactions produce.
How to do it
- Write the recurring problem in one sentence, then list the three to five people, rules or loops that influence it.
- Draw an arrow for each influence, and mark the arrows that loop back to where they started.
- Mark where you think the boundary of the system sits, and name what sits outside it.
- Note one thing that would change if you moved a single piece, then test it on a small scale if you can.
Evidence
The third habit, seeing systems including emergence, is named in the Integral Leadership Review summary and in the Cultivating Leadership summary of Garvey Berger and Johnston (2015). The phrase about shifting boundaries and patterns comes from the review. The mapping method in the steps is a practical suggestion, not a method reported by the authors in the sources read. (anecdotal)
A map is a simplification too. Its value is in showing where a single fix will not hold, not in being complete.
Sources
- Integral Leadership Review (2015). Book review of Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston, Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders.
- Cultivating Leadership, book page for Simple Habits for Complex Times (Garvey Berger & Johnston), accessed 2026-10-14.
Common mistake
Drawing the map once and treating its boundary as fixed, when the review describes boundaries as shifting.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Jennifer Garvey Berger’s Simple Habits for Complex Times
- Ask what can we learn here
Before you give an answer, ask what can be learned from the situation in front of you.
- Hold feedback as one partial view
Treat each piece of feedback as one partial view of the situation, not the final verdict on it.
- Take a view you disagree with seriously
State a position that clashes with yours in terms its holder would accept, and find what it shows that yours does not.
- Sort the situation by its domain before you decide
Before you choose a response, decide whether the situation is simple, complicated, complex or chaotic.
- Act on what the present shows and let the next step appear
Take the next small action you can see, observe what it does, and let that observation decide the step after it.
- Notice when you reach for a simple story
Catch the moment you explain a messy event with one tidy cause and a confident prediction, and write the story down as a story.
- Test the sense that you are right
Treat a strong feeling of being right as a claim to check, and name in advance what would show you were wrong.
Related concepts
- Vertical Development Practices: How Adults Grow, Not Just Add Skills
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- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
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- Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical
Distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical problems — and leading accordingly
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- The Immunity to Change Process, Step by Step
Why a change you truly want keeps not happening, and the step-by-step way Kegan and Lahey take it apart
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
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