Interconnectedness is at the heart of the idea of looking at the organization as a whole. It is very similar to the study of environmental science where the slightest disruption along a food chain can have enormous consequences along the entire chain. It starts with the basic idea that everything in an organization is connected to everything else.
Viewing a Business as a System
A large business today presents a complex system where all the subsystems within it overlap and affect each other. The common mistake for management is to deal with one subsystem as if it didn’t connect with anything else. Address a sales situation without considering the rest of the business for example. This almost always backfires as other subsystems respond in unanticipated ways.
What this really means is that managers can never do just one thing. This is because In addition to the immediate effect of an action there are other consequences that creep through the system. In short, every action taken has its unintended consequences.
