The Health of Things
A BOOK IN DEVELOPMENT
What if we evaluated systems the way we evaluate living organisms?
What a system needs to keep working
A team may keep meeting its deadlines because the same few people absorb every interruption. Looking at the health of the team means asking how much strain those people can sustain and what helps them recover.
Think about what a school leaves to the people who come after us. There’s the building, the books, and everything teachers have learned about helping children learn. There’s also the way the school gets through a week.
If getting through that week depends on teachers giving up their evenings, the next group of teachers inherits that expectation along with the keys. The school may look like it’s working. How much room does it leave the people inside it to rest, recover, and do the work well?
When I think about what we leave behind, I want to ask what the people who inherit it will be able to do with it. Can they live well inside what we’ve built? Can they change it when their needs change?
What good is everything we’ve built if the people who inherit it have a harder time living well?
What helps a system I rely on recover after strain?
Whose extra effort keeps it functioning day to day?
What would show me that the system was getting healthier?
Keep Exploring
A family passes down ways of relating, just as a school passes down ways of working. Parentstasis brings that question home. Which expectations still fit as children grow, and which ones are ready to change?