Reductionism vs. Holism: The Process System Components
How men and women think 🧩 What music is made of 🧩 Which approach is better 🧩 Enabling reductionism and holism in business: Process System overview
Imagine you’re listening to two dermatologists arguing over a patient’s condition:
One of the doctors insists that the skin in the problem area must be thoroughly analyzed and treated for any issues found.
The other one is adamant that the patient has to overgo a full body check for what might be affecting the skin in the problem area or elsewhere.
Which doctor do you think is correct?
Read on 👇
🧠🧠 A Tale of Two Brains
Back in the early 2000s, Mark Gungor, an American speaker, author, and relationship expert, designed a seminar called “Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage.” Instead of the usual dry and formal approach to marriage counseling, Gungor uses humor to discuss real issues. His teachings are so relatable and lighthearted, and his advice so practical, that he quickly became a sought-after speaker across the United States and internationally.
Gungor’s seminar starts with a session called “A Tale of Two Brains.” It’s a funny and insightful deep-dive into the differences between how men and women think - men tend to focus on individual things, while women look at the bigger picture. He makes the audience laugh while breaking down complex ideas that help couples connect and understand each other better.
Watch an excerpt from the session here:
🪕 What Music Is Made Of - A Buddhist Story
Once upon a time in an ancient kingdom, there was a king who heard a sound that completely captivated him. It was like nothing he'd ever heard before - so enchanting, so mesmerizing, it was pure magic! He just had to know what was making that awesome sound.
So, he called over his servants and asked them, “Hey, what’s that incredible sound I’m hearing?” The servants told him, “Oh, that’s the sound of a lute, sire. It’s a musical instrument.” The king, eager to see this wondrous thing, demanded, “Bring me this lute right away.”
The servants brought him the lute, and he stared at it with great curiosity. But instead of playing it, he started taking it apart, piece by piece, until it was just a pile of wood and strings. Looking at the mess he’d made, he scoffed, “This is it? This so-called lute is just a bunch of bits and pieces. What a disappointment! Now, forget this lute. Bring me just the sound.”
The servants tried to explain, “Your Majesty, the lute is made up of many parts - the body, the strings, the neck, and more. It only makes that amazing sound when all these parts work together, and someone skillfully plays it.” But the king wasn’t satisfied. He destroyed the lute further, breaking it into even tinier pieces and burning it until it was just ashes. After that, he scattered the ashes to the wind, saying, “What a useless thing, this lute! People have been fooled by it.”
🍃🌳 The Nitty-Gritty vs. The Big Picture
The stories above are easy to relate to because we think this way all the time. It doesn’t matter if we call it male vs. female, reductionist vs. holistic, or vertical vs. horizontal thinking. What matters is that we need both ways of thinking. They complement each other, and if we only use one, we won't fully understand the problem we’re looking at.
Take cars, for example. We love driving them, but most of us don’t know how they’re built. We see them as a whole, something we use every day. But car engineers need to understand every little detail about the car's parts and how they work - alone and together. These details also affect how we use the whole car.
The same goes for any kind of art, like music, painting, or writing. We enjoy art as a whole, but the artist has to know all the techniques and materials/equipment to create a masterpiece. It’s similar with the human body and medicine. When treating or replacing a part of our body, we can’t forget that all the systems in our organism affect each other.
And it’s the same in business. We need to have a clear idea of how our business works down to the smallest detail (but not smaller!), and we also need to know how our business operates as a whole. Only when we understand all the connections - both vertical and horizontal - we can fully analyze any business problem and decide on the best course of action.
♻️ Process System Components
⬇️⬆️ Vertical View
The vertical view is the reductionist way of thinking. We start with the company details and then move to the business processes, but sometimes we have too many components to describe. Therefore, we break the process into several nested levels of documents:
Process
The process is a set of interrelated or interacting activities that use inputs to deliver an intended output. Processes contain the highest level of operational detail and are, therefore, used for steering the operations of the whole organization.
Examples: Project Management, Requirements Management, Configuration Management, Software Development, Incident Management, Problem Management, etc.
Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)
The Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) provides the specifics for carrying out an activity or a process step.
Example: The Project Management process consists of the following steps: Initiate, Plan, Execute, Control, and Close. An SOP for the Control step can detail how controlling is made (e.g. reporting), how often, in which form (e.g. e-mail, meeting, presentation), who the owner and the audience are, what happens when gaps are found, etc.
Local Work Instruction (LWI)
If needed, an SOP can be further detailed in a Local Work Instruction (LWI).
Continuing with the previous example: An LWI for the SOP of creating the Project Management report will specify exactly where a person has to go (e.g. which tool), where to click, what to copy-paste, and so on, until the report is done.
Script
Lastly, the LWIs can contain scripts, which are the lowest level of detail in the process definition. The script will say line by line what each party in an LWI is supposed to do.
Examples: A script in a Call Center may look like this or this.
⬅️➡️ Horizontal View
The horizontal view is the holistic way of thinking. It shows the interrelationships between processes. Without such interrelationships, we can’t have a system - we only have a few processes in a group.
Process Framework
The Process Framework is also referred to as the Quality Management System (QMS), Process Landscape, etc. It represents all processes and process interactions as one system. It also explains the rules applicable to the whole system: how it should be created, understood, used, maintained, and continually improved.
The Process Framework can be designed for any scope: the whole company, a company department/unit, a cross-functional program or project, etc. When created for a smaller scope, we need a higher-level, company-wide Process Framework that incorporates all others in one view.
The purpose of the Process Framework is to establish a controlled environment which enables us to:
identify dependencies and risks,
analyze issues,
make informed decisions,
optimize our activities and use of resources,
meet internal and external requirements, and
maintain consistency.
Examples: TSMC Quality Policy, HZB Quality Management
And that’s how we apply both reductionist and holistic thinking to our processes. And in doing so, we ensure we have the internal information and mechanisms needed to steer our organization in the best possible direction.
Thank you for reading 💝
Till next time,
Irina
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