#129: Stop Putting Out Fires—Fix the System

Get 20% off any STSI course with code PATTERN20 — become a systems thinker today!

In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera of Cornell University explore why the same problems keep showing up in organizations, relationships, and teams—even when they look different on the surface.

They break down the difference between an instantiation and a pattern, showing how people often get stuck solving individual conflicts, communication breakdowns, or “fires” without seeing the deeper structural issue that keeps producing them. Using systems thinking, metaphors, analogies, fractals, and shared mental models, they explain why repeated problems are usually not separate problems at all—they are manifestations of the same underlying system.

The conversation also explores why culture is the real unit of analysis in many organizational issues, how shared mental models help people coordinate even when they are not directly interacting, and why being “too busy” is often a sign that you are stuck at the symptom level.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re dealing with the same issue over and over again, this episode gives you a systems thinking lens for finding the pattern—and changing the structure that keeps recreating it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Cabrera Lab podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

What's up?

SPEAKER_00 0:06

How's it going?

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Excellent. Nice. Really, really good. Awesome. There's a lot going on.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

There is a lot going on.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Okay, listen.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Speaking of which, I think this episode is going to be the last episode in this studio.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

That is very exciting.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

The next episode will be coming from our studio in Montana.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Because we are moving Westward Expansion.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Yeah. Manifest destiny.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Manifest destiny.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Uh to Montana.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

So it's both kind of like.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

What's the old saying? Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. Yeah. Yeah. And and it's an exciting shift.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

It's an exciting shift for us.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Uh, professionally, personally.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Getting back to the mountains.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Yes. We may we have always said at a certain point in our lives when our children at a certain ages.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

We would head back that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Yes. And the kids are coming.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

And I had promised you that you would have mountains in your view at some point in your life. So now we are.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Because on the East Coast, it's just hills. That's a distinction.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Well.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

There's no mountains on the East Coast.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

There are what some people call mountains, but they're just different than the ones out there. Let's not be a battle, but it's not a mountain. Listen, remember I summited that mountain in New Hampshire before I turned 50, and that to me was a mountain.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Well, that was Mount Washington, and that that's kind of like close to a mountain.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

So let's be careful with how you say things.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Because I climbed a mountain. It was a small mountain.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Well, it was a it's a but it was a mountain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Yes. So that's exciting because there'll be a new look to the studio.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

And we'll be the same, but different.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

But different, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Alright, so listen, I was having a conversation with somebody that I know and respect very highly, a leader.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

That we've been working with for a long time. She was describing some. She wanted me to do sort of a live think it through on a phone call. So we did a thirst. So we're going to reproduce sort of what we were talking about here because I thought it was a really interesting question.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

She's in a place that has several different divisions. She's the head of one of them. And there's all kinds of issues across division division-to-division communication, which also is happening desk to desk, person to person. So it's starting to permeate their culture that they have a communication problem across many different levels.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Got it.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

She's also starting to sense that all of this conflict at the local level is sort of distracting away from the larger purpose and vision that they all share. And when we were talking, I said to her something that you and I had talked about earlier, which is the instantiation versus the pattern. And I said, so you need to see the pattern across these levels of scale, not just focus. Because she said that everyone's trying to solve the person-to-person at the local base level communication problem. And they're focusing on every single conflict, feels like a different conflict, but it's actually the same conflict. Do you get what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

100%.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

And so I thought it would be interesting to talk about why it's so easy for us to stay at that instantiation level, the local level, when we're trying to solve problems, and not sort of see it as a larger fractal. You know what I mean? Am I making sense? Because you gave me a funny face.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

No, you're making total sense. Um I'm I'm worried I'm gonna go on a tangent that seems not related to what you're actually asking.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

You're worrying about that now. Yes. 100 and some episodes in.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Yeah. But it'll come back around. I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

I will trust you. We're gonna go on a bike ride. Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

So it's important to understand. I want to take like a thought experiment.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Imagine if you couldn't and never and didn't and had never heard of a metaphor.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Or an analogy.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Right? Yeah. Like it's so hard to even imagine.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

It would be an almost impossible for a human in this day and age to imagine a time or a place or a situation where they were not aware of this thing we call a metaphor. And a metaphor is that something is some other thing. So this thing is this thing. That's a metaphor. And an analogy, which is very similar to a a metaphor, that this thing is to this other thing as in the same way that this thing is to this other thing. A is to P as B is to Q. Let's say that's and what's really important here is an analogy is this whole thing on the left, this relationship, is like this whole thing on the right, this relationship, right? And of course, the simile is the same as a metaphor where it's just A is like B. And the reason this is so important is because what these things reveal is a common structural pattern. Yes. And if you didn't know about this pattern, then every time you heard a metaphor or an analogy or a simile, you would think it was something totally new. And you would you would mistake what the person was saying. Like Shakespeare, for example, said, all the world is a stage. He was making a m-metaphor. Right? All the world is a stage. Is the world is a stage.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

And the men and women, actors, the players.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Another metaphor.

SPEAKER_03 6:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

And then he said they have their and their exits and their entrances.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Right? Yeah. He's talking another metaphor.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Right? And inside of the metaphor, a nested set of analogies.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Right? Yeah. Amazing.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

Yeah, it's very important.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

An amazing line, part of the brilliance of Shakespeare. Well, so he's just nesting analogies inside of metaphors and metaphors inside of analogies. And all of that comes from seeing the structural pattern, not the instantiation.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

100%. The crux.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

I see your connection. We want everyone in the world on the path to pro. White belt, yellow belt, blue belt, landing in the PST credential.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

The professional systems thinker credential. And that's not just personal, it's also part of a wider vision of 8 billion systems thinkers above the standard, which is the professional systems thinker or PST. Count yourself into it and let's change ourselves. And when we change ourselves, we change the world. The connection I'm trying to make is not just the pattern, because a pattern is just a repeating instantiation. An instantiation is, you know, this thing happens, an instance, an instance happens, an instance of X, and then another instance, and then another instance, and anything past two is a pattern.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

So this is the pattern. The instance is different than the pattern. And in order to see the pattern, you have to see the structure. That's why structure is so important. Or another word for structure is organization.

SPEAKER_03 7:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

When we say M equals IO, we're talking about mental models or meaning is in equal to the information organized. So when we organize information, we make meaning. And organization is made up of these four patterns.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

If you don't see the patterns, if you don't see the structure, they're structural patterns, you don't see the underlying structure, then you get confused by the instantiations. And this is honestly happening to all humans all the time. We're constantly thinking that different that instances of the same thing are totally different when they're actually just repeating patterns of the same structures. And then you use the word really important word, fractals. Fractals are just patterns that are going across part whole.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Levels of scale, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

They're structural patterns that are going across levels of scale. The instantiation that we're seeing at the individual level and the instantiation that we're seeing at the or at the departmental level of silos, right? Yeah. So department, department, department, silo, silo, silo, and at the individual level, two people communicating conflict, conflict, conflict, or conflict, conflict, conflict across the silos, that is a structural pattern that is happening fractally across scale.

SPEAKER_03 9:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

And what it communicates to you is it's not really about all the instantiations, it's about the culture.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Yes. And here's the problem though. We start to solve the instantiations as if they're all different.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Totally.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

We miss the fact that we have a problem that's a pattern of behavior across our culture.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

People struggle to move beyond what's right, what's happening today, what's right in front of me today.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Instantiation.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

A to B, or you know, this department to that department. And so I I get as a leader, I'm like, I've got to solve this problem.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah. This is what putting out fires looks like. You're putting out fires while you're dragging a muffler that is sparking behind you and creating fires. Yes. At some point, you got to solve the pattern. Otherwise, you will be putting out fires for the rest of your life. And by the way, you're the structure, the structural patterns are creating those fires. And there's no limit to the amount of fires that can be created. It's a fire creation machine.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Well, and that's why you get workforces that are demotivated, frustrated, feeling ineffective, lacking efficiencies.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

But you know what they are? They're busy.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

They are busy.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

They're busy. And they feel like they're working hard. And they feel like they're working hard. And they are working hard. Yeah. They're putting out fires. They're working too hard. And they're busy. And this is why busy should never be the litmus test for effective.

SPEAKER_03 11:17

That's true. That's true. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Because when you're effective, you go to the you go to the you understand the fractal, you understand the patterns, and you fix the systemic structures that are leading to those patterns and all those instantiations.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

And this is as true in organizations as it is in life. I mean, we've talked about it before. It's like if you if you if you in your life are, you know, you date this person and and you know, you have this train wreck of a relationship, and then you have another train wreck of relationship and another train wreck of and but the problem is that's three relationships. This one was named Bob, this one was named Frank, and this one was named, you know, John. And so you go, well, Bob is not Frank, is not John. And you're like, yeah, but there's a pattern.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Of the type of relationship I get into.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Bob might as well be Frank, might as well be John.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Which means this conflict might as well be this conflict, might as well be this silo. And so let's go back to what you said earlier, which is you said something, I can't remember how you said it, solve for the pattern or something. I can't.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Solve for the underlying structural pattern.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

So how do you do that if you're talking to a person and saying, This is my life, how do they do that?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

The first thing you do is you learn the moves and DSRP because those are the those are the ontological structural patterns that are universal across all these structures. And so if we if we learn those, it's a lot easier to see the patterns. It's a pattern-seeking language, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

That will help you see the patterns. That'll instead of instead of Frank, Bob, John, or whatever the words were, you're you're going, oh, relationship, relationship, relationship, structure, structure, structure, what I'm attracting, what I'm attracting, what I'm attracting, what I'm attracted to, what I'm attracted to, what I'm attracted to, change the signal, change the signal, change the signal, attract something different, attract something different, attract something different.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Right. In this case, then it seems to me the commonality is the breakdown of relationships at this level, this level, and this level.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Which means to solve for the pattern, the pattern is the relationships are failing. The relationships aren't there, the relationships are whatever you want to say.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Yeah, the pattern is there's no shared mental models.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

That's the pattern.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

So to solve for the pattern is you have to say we have to.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

You got to work on sharing mental models. You got to work on what is the mental model that we need to share, and let's let's work on getting everybody on the same page. And if everybody's sharing the same mental model, they will be on the same page. Even if they're not in the same room, the same department, the same building, the same whatever, they will be on the same page because they're they share the same mental model. That's the power of culture.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Right. So that means the unit of analysis for the solution for her is the culture articulating the sh mental model she wants shared across her division, among the divisions, and at every level of scale. Right. At every level of that fractal that we were talking about.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

And you know what's really ironic? In most organizations, not this person's, but in most organizations, if you said, hey, solve, get everybody on the same page, take the time to build the right mental models that are shared and get everybody to share those mental models, they would say that that takes a lot of time, and we're busy.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

That's what they would say.

SPEAKER_03 14:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

We're busy. What are you busy doing? Oh, putting out fires. That's what they would say.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

That's what they would say. And that's that will be the reason why they don't fix the pattern. Is that they're too busy putting out fires.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

And you and I Which the pattern is creating.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

And they are the circle of and then you're in a circle of ridiculous busyness. And exhaustion and demotivation and extremely costly. Like it doesn't get any more costly than that.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

No.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Right? I mean, because you because you're making all those things externalities. Imagine just putting out fires and starting new ones and putting out fires and starting new ones and putting out fires and starting new ones. It never ends. So it starts to be demotivating, it starts to be exhausting. It starts to be just like a grind. And what is and all of those things are externalities of cost. We don't factor those in when we factor in how effective we were at fighting this fire and that fire and this fire. We're not factoring in the cost of our entire firefighting force is exhausted. Our entire fighting firefighting force is ineffective.

SPEAKER_03 16:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

We don't factor those in in the cost. But the cost is immense.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Yeah. And I think one of the things that people have a hard time understanding is you can people say all of the time they're fighting out, they're putting out fires, blah, blah, blah. This came up, that came up, blah, blah, blah. I think what a lot of people don't know is that you can actually design your systems to not ignite in the first place, right? To reduce that use it as spark on a muffler or something like that. Absolutely. And I think the question is, okay, well, what do you have to do to do that? You have to take a step back. You have to actually see that you're in a pattern, a structural pattern of problems, issues, however you want to say it. So first you have to recognize that there is a pattern.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Totally.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Then you have to say, okay, what's the common structural breakdown that's manifesting across levels of scale from this pattern? When in this case we see it's all in the relationships, right? The RDS barbells.

unknown 17:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Well, that's where you're seeing it manifest, but it's really in the lack of sharedness of mental models in this particular case.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Right. But are you saying then yes, culture, shared we want a shared mental model in the culture around that? But the sort of on-the-ground work is you've got to you've got to focus in on all of these relationships, attending to, oh, what is the relationship between this two? And how do I concretize it? How do I develop it? What's the relationship between these two people? How do I concretize it? How do develop it, right? Here across these two. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

It seems like well, what not and what is the mental model of this relationship?

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Right? How do these two departments interact? And does this person and this person share that mental model? This person may never may never actually interact with this person. This interaction may never happen because this person's in this department and this person's in this department. But if they both share the same mental model about how these two departments should work together, they will effectively be working together because they share the same mental model.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

I love that. I think that's really smart. I think that's really good.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

I think they never have to even know each other exists and they're working together. They're on the same team. Yeah they're they're not just getting a paycheck from the same company.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

They're on the same team because they share the same mental model. And they might never talk and they might never know each other.

SPEAKER_03 18:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

But they share the same mental model of how these two departments should work together.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

And that shared mental model of how they work together affects how they do their work at their desk and affects the strength of that relationship in and of itself.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Which makes the work better.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yes. Imagine, imagine if you had a a, you know, if you had a big lake and you had a rowboat that was super long.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

That is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

And let's say that you had like a a blind black black screen that cut the rowboat in half, and you had a person back here and a person up here. They're never gonna meet each other. But they're two oars. If they have the same mental model of where they're going, they're gonna both, they're both going to that tree, then they might never know each other. They might never see each other, they're not purposefully coordinating, they're not talking to each other and saying, wait, hey, we gotta do this, do different. But they will they will effectively and efficiently get to this tree in almost a straight line because they will adaptively correct for the shared mental model of the goal.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yes, even though they can't see each other, aren't talking to each other, etc. That's the same thing here. The power of shared mental models of being on the same page is is absolutely that is what culture is. Culture is mental model shared by some statistical.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

I think also um group the importance of culture cannot be overstated, especially in today's world where teams are so distributed geographically.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Culture is your superpower as an organization. The problem is people think it's this amorphous thing. They people think that they don't they're too busy to build it.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

You're too busy not to use that superpower. That is your superpower. Culture will trump all other things.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

If you if you build it.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

If you don't build it, it'll make the boat go in circles.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Yes. But think about it also literally to this example if you don't build it and you don't focus on that pattern, you're just gonna live in that hellish nature of instantiations over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

It's groundhog day.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

And that will be very demoralizing.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah, I mean it I mean that's what the being at the instantiation level is groundhog day.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Right? It's the you're living the same day over and over again. You're putting out the same fires, and you're not seeing the pattern, which is that you're living in a, you know, in a fake world.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Whatever that movie was.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Truman Show?

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Yeah. I mean, but I think it's like, you know, uh so many times I hear people say, same stuff, different day. Same stuff, different day. And I I I just want to say, stop.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

What I would say is different stuff, same system.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Different stuff, same system.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Different stuff, same pattern. Different stuff, same pattern.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Meaning the every one of the things is different. But what's the same is the pattern. You gotta flip it.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Yeah, no, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

You want to see that the thing that's the same is the pattern that underlies all those different instantiations. Because the instantiations will be dressed in different clothing. They won't look the same. That's how that we get tricked by the instantiations. They look different. Today they're wearing blue, tomorrow they're wearing red. They look different.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

So we think of them as different, but they're not different, they're the same manifestation of pattern, which means that your system structure is determining those instantiations.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

So find the look for that.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

And in order to do that, you have to become skilled at seeing structure.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

That's fundamentally what the moves and DSRP is about, is just increasing your skill at seeing the underlying structural patterns of things so that you don't miss it. Because otherwise, it's like living in a world without understanding a metaphor, without understanding an analogy, without understanding a simile, which are simple little structures that underlie these things. But if you didn't know about those structures, you would just think, what the hell? Yeah, everything world is a stage? No, it's not. What the world is an a is it it's a stage?

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Yeah. You'd be confused all the time.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

What? That makes no sense. Like it's hard to even grasp what that would be like.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Yeah, it's hard. It's it's me it it's hard even in this moment to think about what would that feel like, what would that experience be not to have an understanding of the underlying structure and how it can repeat. Yeah. You know, so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

It's like you wouldn't understand there would be so many things you wouldn't understand if you didn't understand metaphors. Like so many things.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Yeah. So we have to force ourselves, remind ourselves, I shouldn't say force. We should remind ourselves when we have that moment and we're saying, oh, here I am again, here I am again, yeah, here I am again, whether it's in personal relationships, professional issues, problems, team divisions, whatever. When you hear yourself say, Here we go again, here I am, stop and say to yourself, hmm. Let's look at the last three times I was here and what's the thing that's across them structurally, what's the commonality and the pattern? And then let me think about how do I solve for that pattern rather than the instantiations.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

And just as a quick litmus, if you're too busy, you're not too busy.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

You're too busy. You can't be too busy because you're gonna be there forever.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah. Being too busy is the excuse we get all the time. And that is just that's just like putting that's the cherry on top of I am not seeing structural patterns. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

That's like, oh, you're and I will be in purgatory for that.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

You're in purgatory.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Yes. Yes. And it's comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

You're in groundhog day.

SPEAKER_02 24:51

Partially because it's comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Yeah. That's the that's the crux.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Yeah, you gotta push yourself out of that for sure.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Copyche. Cupish. That's a route.