The monarch, and the position of the monarch, is unique. But an orchestra has a conductor, and a sports team has both a captain and a coach. The players do not, to any large degree, do things because they are the things the conductor, captain or coach has told them to do. The violinist follows the score; the footballer uses his talent and experience to move into position, to pass or to shoot. The music and the game would continue even if the conductor dropped his baton and the coach fell asleep. The great conductor, captain or coach will be a source of inspiration and imagination to his colleagues. But if these leaders understand their responsibilities they never assume the role of Big Boss or The Man Who Knows.

System 3 is where you start to find *management jobs — those that are entirely devoted to communication and administration within the organisation. It’s also where system-level accountability is established; the key activity of the integration and optimization function is to agree the resource bargains with the System I units, and to ensure that they are being kept. And consequently, it’s the first place you might start to look if you think that unaccountability is creeping into the system. We’ll be looking at this a lot, later.

It’s easy to get confused between systems 2 and 3. Both of them look like they’re doing the same thing, in making the operations accountable to one another and to the wider organisation. The difference is that System 2 is all about preventing clashes and managing conflicts, while System 3 is concerned with achieving a purpose. On the ground, a useful way of drawing the distinction is to look at the management functions which everyone agrees to be necessary as opposed to those that they complain about.

*Stafford Beer refers to the part of the system responsible for internal organisation as the ‘metasystem’, one of very, very many newly coined jargon words which I am going to attempt to shield you from.

Plenty of organisations have no formally identified central planning department, but the integration and optimisation function is performed by an informal network of System I managers. That’s perfectly possible, as long as they have made the mental leap understanding that from time to time they need to adjust their thinking to perform a coordination role for the benefit of the organisation. Stafford Beer occasionally seemed to suggest that this kind of informal internal networking could be the best way to create System 3, which was why a big lounge at head office with whisky and cigars was important.

So now we move on to the higher functions. I picked the example of an orchestra for this part of the explanation because there’s a clear boundary between decisions made during its performances (the operations) and other kinds of decision. Conducting an orchestra in a piece of music is a particular job, but a lot of other decisions need to be made to provide the context for the performance. As well as the ‘here-and-now’ functions which ensure that the music is played, the orchestra needs to be able to make higher-level choices — picking the repertoire and deciding where and when the performances will happen. The conductor might be involved in this, or there might be an artistic director or a tour manager — the point is that the function needs to exist.

This is System 4 of the model, often described as the intelligence function. Its defining characteristic is that while System 3 manages things happening ‘here-and-now’, System 4 is responsible for ‘there-and-then’. It is meant to be dealing with information from those parts of the environment that aren’t in direct contact with System I, and so which are capable of generating shocks that can’t be handled by the ‘management by exception’ system. The usual reason why this part of the environment isn’t detected by the operations is that it doesn’t exist yet; the key job of System 4 is to make sure that the resource bargains System 3 strikes with operations will remain feasible following anticipated future structural changes. *

It’s also important to note again that systems of this sort don’t necessarily match up to organisation charts, and that individuals can appear in different roles in different functions and contexts. For example, when on stage the piano player is part of System I operations, and will follow the conductor’s instructions. If, however, the orchestra is accompanying Elton John, the piano player will also be involved in higher levels of management and decision-making — because the piano player is Elton John!

*What about coping with unanticipated structural changes? We’ll get there in a minute, but the honest answer might be ‘sometimes they don’t’. A viable system is one capable of surviving indefinitely and of adapting to unanticipated shocks — which doesn’t mean that it can adapt to everything.

The musicians also need to understand the conductor’s hand gestures and body language, so that they know when to play louder or softer. They also need to build up a memory of how the piece sounds, so that they are aware of what to expect. This building up of communication, transmission and translation capability happens in the rehearsal room; the key purpose of most forms of management training is to establish the channels and translation systems, so that people are able to handle variety in the real-life performance of their tasks.