Have you noticed that the only reason advanced and complex "things" work is because they work as systems? Take the human body as an example: we have the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, the immune system, and so on.... Different ecosystems coexist on Earth, from forests to deserts, from mountains to cities.... And even the Milky Way, the galaxy we live in, includes our solar system and many others. When these systems function in a balanced and efficient way, everything usually goes well. When they don't, problems arise.

If we draw a comparison with the reality of a company, we can find many parallels. There are numerous "systems" within an organization. In this article, however, we will talk about the so-called "management system."

In summary, this refers to how the work of management is organized and how it happens daily within the organization. A management system includes the structuring of all management activities in what we might call the "business ecosystem": communication of the strategy and objectives of the different areas, goal setting, management routines, problem solving, feedback, performance evaluations, and so on. In short, all management-related processes related to the different levels of the organization fall under the management system.

If we again make the analogy to a living organism - something many thinkers have done - the management system would be the skeleton that provides support and structure to the organs and vital tissues.

A first, very important realization is that it is impossible not to have some kind of management system in operation. It is always there (not always as efficiently as we would like): indeed, if a company is functioning, a management system inevitably already exists, even though it may be hidden in plain sight. Perhaps this is the first big challenge: seeing it.

If we cannot "see" our management system, we will never be able to identify the gaps and improve it. Why? Because if the management system is not carefully and consciously thought out, designed and organized, it will be nothing more than a random collection of disconnected individual practices that will do a lot of damage.

We see this happen every day in companies. One example is when important decisions are made late and reactively, due to poor communication and lack of transparency about actual performance. The combination of misinformation, insufficient information, and decision-making that takes place "in the heat of the moment," motivated mainly by the personal views of those in power, is incredibly dangerous.

Another example is when problems are "solved" by the wrong hierarchical levels, with inappropriate resources and inadequate people. Or when the "vacuum" created by the lack of scalable and well-designed communication processes is immediately filled by the "vineyard," the conversations over coffee that turn gossip into absolute truths.

Indeed, there are several disruptions caused by the absence of a proper management system. Not being aware of this is perhaps the most fundamental cause of many of the problems and instabilities that companies and their leadership teams experience - such as information and communication not flowing, problems being identified too late, customers being affected and then drifting away, and poor results that cannot be reversed.

In a company with a poorly designed and inefficient management system, people often feel lost. They struggle to understand the real purpose of their roles and how they will be evaluated. At best, they work according to bureaucracy. And leaders spend most of their time putting out fires or scheduling meetings with other managers, who are equally overburdened.

Even worse is the common problem of "personalization": when a leader takes over a department or even the entire company and then redesigns the system to their own liking, introducing new routines, indicators and forms of evaluation, without following scientific or technical criteria. By doing this, they can even override years of experience and knowledge of managers who previously held that position.

When this happens, management begins to generate noise, create useless work and disseminate unnecessary or contradictory information, creating confusion on the front lines when they should instead be supporting value-creating processes. This usually causes the company to become stiffened, sometimes even paralyzed. This, in turn, will encourage people to collect questionable data and hold unproductive meetings, while value-creating work flows randomly and problems are solved impulsively and inefficiently.

With each new change, more and more psychological uncertainty, attrition, setbacks and losses are generated: meeting formats are changed, reports are exchanged, indicators are "recycled," and evaluations are redone, but problems persist and grow.

This is a complex subject that requires much more thought. The purpose of this letter is not to exhaust the subject, but to generate some considerations. Below we list what we consider to be the fundamental elements of an efficient management system, from the lean perspective.

A lean management system must connect the entire company, both in macro and micro dimensions, at different hierarchical levels, in different functional areas and processes, all the way down to the individual. It must focus on relentlessly denouncing problems, preferably when they have just been raised, interrupting bad processes so that they are reconsidered and improved, if necessary with the support of higher hierarchical levels. For this, a management system must promote and facilitate scientific thinking.

It should be based on management standards that help keep processes and work on the front line stable, while exposing problems so that they can be continuously improved. It should be based on simple, didactic and easy-to-understand visual management that guides critical indicators and shows expected versus actual state, to promote transparency about process and performance. And that actively encourages respect for people, promotes psychological safety so that everyone can identify problems and improve their daily work to the best of their ability and based on their authority.

Well-designed management systems optimize everyone's time within the organization. They create daily opportunities for horizontal and vertical alignment. They open space for constructive interactions with the team on the gemba, which promotes the development of people and the evolution of processes. They ensure communication and the flow of the right information, at the right time, to the right people, so that problems are found and solved as quickly as possible.

In summary, from a lean perspective, a management system must be designed so that the company can continually evolve and performance can reach new levels. For this to happen, one cannot depend on the "manager on duty": the organization of management work must be carefully thought out and structured so that the living organism that is the company can live a healthy, long and prosperous life.

^Authors