Work The System

Work The System will fundamentally change the way you view the world, by showing you the systems all around you and giving you the guiding principles to influence the right ones to make your business successful.

Do you sometimes feel like the captain of a tiny sailboat, constantly being thrown around by winds, waves, storms, and other forces outside of your control?

There’s no reason to.

Look at the world. Why doesn’t the entire planet blow up every other day?

Why don’t we have a nuclear war yet, even though there’s been plenty of opportunities for one?

It’s because of systems.

A system is any composition of several components, which work together to accomplish a single goal.

The beauty of systems is that they’re naturally inclined to be both stable and efficient.

There are millions and millions of systems working in the world right this second, and they’re the reason we don’t need a CEO of the world and can still go to bed at night, resting assured that the world won’t end tomorrow.

Now you might think we did a good job in making it so, but actually, we’re not responsible for everything working so well.

In fact, we’re rather responsible when things go wrong, because whenever chaos wrecks a system, there are usually humans at fault.

For example a BMW pricing manager might decide that the US prices for their cars are too cheap, because the cars cost more in Germany, and slap on an extra 30%. That will likely lead to an outrage with US customers, dealers, and sales managers, and they might end the cooperation altogether.

The reasons we humans constantly put errors into perfectly fine systems, is that our view of whether a system runs well is very subjective.

That means to mess up less and make the most of the systems in your life, you first have to see them, and then understand how they work.

Now you might look around and say: “Yeah, yeah, that’s all fine, but there are so many systems I can’t control!” True. But then why complain about them? You can spend all day moaning about the oil price, the stock market, or the political party who’s in charge. But that won’t make oil cheaper, your stocks go up, or change who’s president. What you can do is get a car with less fuel consumption, or give it up altogether, buy an investment book and go vote in the election. The truth is that no one has control over all the systems in their life, which means you’re not especially disadvantaged. Most of the time, the only reason things don’t go your way is because you don’t even try.…