Podcast Summary: "The System Is the Problem: Rethinking Business at the Systems Level"

Work For Humans with Dart Lindsley | Guest: Sandra Waddock
July 29, 2025

Overview

This episode tackles the foundational myths, constraints, and mental models driving today’s business systems—models that perpetuate a high-stress, profit-above-all environment, often failing both people and planet. Host Dart Lindsley is joined by Sandra Waddock—Galligan Chair of Strategy, Boston College, and preeminent scholar on system change and sustainable enterprise—to discuss why “the system is the problem” and what it takes to catalyze transformation at the whole-systems level, not just within individual organizations.

Key topics include the failure of shareholder primacy, the critical myths underpinning management, principles of system change, netweaver leadership, paradox navigation, emergence, and the enduring impact of intellectual “shamans.”

Main Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Limitations of Corporate Responsibility and Shareholder Value

• Sandra Waddock’s journey: From corporate responsibility research to system change advocacy. She discovered showing that “doing good is good for profit” wasn't enough to spark wide-scale change ([04:42], [06:52]).
  • Quote: “My theory of change at the time was...if you show the financial community and companies that doing good means doing well financially, then everybody will change. Bingo, right? ...And nothing has changed.” – Waddock [05:53]
• The systemic pressure for shareholder value maximization overrides other aims, anchoring companies to short-term interests even when evidence shows benefits for broader responsibility ([06:45], [10:44]).

2. Mental Model “Lock-ins” and the Purpose of Business

• Intellectual lock-ins: Powerful, often unexamined narratives shape behavior and block change. For example, profit maximization as the ultimate business purpose, derived from neoliberal economic dogma ([10:44], [11:46]).
  • Quote: “Is that an example of that kind of lock-in? That there’s something locked in intellectually in the mental model?” – Lindsley [11:46]
• Waddock suggests reframing business purpose toward creating well-being for all stakeholders, including ecological health ([11:46]-[13:00]).

3. The Need for Whole-Systems Transformation

• “Large” systems change means change at the ecosystem level—beyond any single organization ([08:15]-[08:45]).
• Waddock’s recent work finds 10 principles emerging from alternative economics, emphasizing holistic, socially-embedded, participative models ([08:45]).

4. Changing Narratives and Historical Precedents

• Successful system change often comes from shifting public narratives (e.g., Mothers Against Drunk Driving, same-sex marriage, tobacco regulation) ([17:11]-[19:51]).
  • Quote: “They made drunk driving to be a bad thing... a deliberate way of reframing an issue that had been accepted as a norm and making it an unacceptable norm.” – Waddock [17:19]
• The rise of neoliberalism itself was a deliberate, decades-long and well-funded narrative strategy ([20:07]).

5. Techniques and Tools for System Change

A. Managing Paradox in Change

• Netweavers/Transformation Catalysts: People who convene diverse system actors, cultivate dialogue, and bridge differences ([23:19]-[25:18])
  • Quote: “Netweavers are these change agents who bring together people from multiple different organizations or entities or sectors or whatever...the transformation catalysts who understand enough...to get people together to talk in dialogical processes.” – Waddock [23:32]
• System work requires holding paradoxes:
  • Harmony and Disruption: Welcoming conflict as a generative force ([25:51]-[28:06])
    • Notable Moment: Waddock cites a facilitator absorbing conflict to enable deep change ([25:51]).
  • Cohesion and Autonomy: Shared vision plus the recognition of independent actors ([28:54]-[30:27])
  • Reflection and Action: Iterative cycles, not a one-off process ([31:27]-[33:13])
    • Quote: “All of these processes...are iterative, not once-and-done kind of things. Because if you’re talking about system change, you’re talking about a process...” – Waddock [31:27]

B. Making the Invisible Visible

• Surfacing hidden mental models—like the assumption that endless growth is possible—so new assumptions can be consciously adopted ([34:03]).

C. The Power of “Kairos”

• Introducing the Greek idea of kairos (“the moment of opportunity”) as a crucial period for seizing change ([36:26]-[37:43]).
  • Quote: “When the moment of opportunity happens, that’s when you need to move...that the system may reach a tipping point, and if you recognize it, you can step in.” – Lindsley [36:26]
• Analogies to martial arts: Using the tension and imbalance in systems as energy for transformation ([37:43]-[40:00])

D. The Role of Intellectual Shamans

• Intellectual “shamans” are those who serve the world through healing, connecting, and sense-making ([40:52]).
  • Quote: “These are scholars...who become fully who they must be and find and live their purpose to serve the world through three healing, connecting and sense making.” – Waddock [40:52]
• Examples include Peter Senge and Ed Freeman, who “cross boundaries, connect disciplines, and help heal organizations and social systems” ([42:33], [43:20])
• These individuals take risks, often have a sense of calling, and tend to be boundary-spanners ([44:44]-[47:39]).
  • Quote: “There’s almost an element of calling...Shamans are often called to the work...they are drawn into it in some way.” – Waddock [44:44]

E. Practices for Change Agents

• Transformation catalysts rely on:
  • Personal reflective practices (e.g., meditation, being in nature)
  • Relational practices—connecting with others who carry the “light” ([49:20]-[51:13]).
  • Artistic or creative pursuits, as sources of resilience and openness

6. The Transformation Process

• Waddock’s framework: “Connecting, Cohering, Amplifying” ([51:18]):
  • Connecting: Convening diverse system actors, collectively mapping system boundaries and dynamics.
  • Cohering: Co-creating shared visions and identifying “leverage points” for change.
  • Amplifying: Experimentally propagating and iterating successful practices—attending to fractal patterns (emergence at all scales, [53:33]-[54:06]).
  • Quote: “If you’re working in the state level, do you need them at the local community level?...So that you’re making those kinds of linkages and amplifying that transformative process.” – Waddock [54:06]

7. Embracing Emergence and Unpredictability

• Real system change is emergent and iterative—not fully predictable, not scalable in a cookie-cutter way ([54:06]-[57:35]).
  • Quote: “They are by definition, if they’re complex systems...they’re not predictable. Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t patterns that we can work with...” – Waddock [55:42]
  • The focus is on guiding principles and adaptive capacity, not deterministic formulas.

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Narrative Change:
  “They made drunk driving to be a bad thing. So it was a deliberate way of reframing an issue that had been accepted as a norm and making it an unacceptable norm.” – Waddock [17:19]
• On Systemic Lock-In:
  “What if we defined the purpose of business as creating well-being for everyone, including the natural environment?” – Waddock [12:19]
• On Paradox:
  “If you want to really achieve change, you need to bring people in. And you’re never going to do it with a top-down paternalistic or authoritarian type of model because people resent that.” – Waddock [14:58]
• On Kairos:
  “When the moment of opportunity happens, that’s when you need to move...that the system may reach a tipping point, and if you recognize it, you can step in.” – Lindsley [36:26]
• On Intellectual Shamans:
  “These are scholars who become fully who they must be and find and live their purpose to serve the world through three healing, connecting and sense making.” – Waddock [40:52]
• On Emergence:
  “We live in emergent systems all the time...all living systems are complex systems. By definition, they’re not predictable.” – Waddock [55:42]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:42] – Sandra Waddock’s shift from corporate responsibility to systems thinking
• [10:44] – Mental model lock-ins and the problem of shareholder primacy
• [17:11] – Example: Mothers Against Drunk Driving as deliberate narrative change
• [25:51] – Netweaving, harmony & disruption paradox in system work
• [36:26] – “Kairos” and seizing system opportunities
• [40:52] – Intellectual shamans: definition and role
• [51:18] – Transformation process: connecting, cohering, amplifying
• [54:06] – Systems as fractals; amplification and emergence
• [55:42] – Embracing unpredictability in systems change

Final Reflections

What Waddock wants from her work:
“…making the world better. Doing my little bit to make the world better. And that started out with CSR… and now it’s got to do with transforming whole systems… so that everybody has a place… and we recognize our interconnectedness with the rest of the world.” ([58:25])

System-change is slow, multifaceted, and non-linear, but new narratives, collaborative structures, and resilient change agents can tip the balance—if we’re willing to examine our “lock-ins” and embrace a truly life-centric vision for work and enterprise.

Further resources:

• Sandra Waddock, Boston College (Google Scholar: open-access papers)
• “Catalyzing Transformation” (recent book & open-access article)
• Donut Economics model – Kate Raworth