It is the organization as a unit that is either successful or not successful. All parts of an organization are stakeholders in the delivery to the customer. Hence, we need to focus on the big picture, but to improve we need to understand the details of each part of the organization. See the whole, see the details.

It is easy to focus on the work at hand, the delivery, the manufacturing of a part, the marketing campaign, or such. When we are improving or introducing change we tend to focus on one single team or one activity at the time. As managers we normally set targets or requirements based on a team’s performance. We measure a team on what a team produces, i.e. units produced, takt time, quality, reports, etc. Often new targets and goals require an unspecified “more”. Hence, we treat the team as an independent unit, free of relations. Of course, we understand that the team has relations to other teams, but nonetheless that is not considered.