A bad system will beat a good person every time. ~W Edwards Deming
TL;DR: Systems are always shaping your behavior—social media is a system engineered to capture your attention, and willpower alone can’t reliably beat it. Instead of blaming yourself (or your team) for bad outcomes, look at the system producing them: incentives, friction, tracking, and defaults. Your job isn’t to “win the war” against giant systems—it’s to build small protective systems (a fence) that decide what gets in, so your values can actually survive day to day.
I spend a lot of time every week talking about systems that work for people like me, and for small businesses like mine.
Whatever your spiel is, I know you’re doing the same thing too.
We do this because it matters! I’m so grateful for everyone out there who spends hours every week thinking and writing about marketing, or finance, or HR. It’s helpful work.
Lately, I’ve taken a break from tactics to show you the deep current underneath my own work.
I want to talk to you about what systems mean and how powerful they are. When you understand that, tips and strategies show up in a much broader context. They become less of a boring chore and more of a protective weapon.
So, let’s start with one of the most powerful systems ever built by people – social media.
What was social media designed to do?
I’m currently off of social media because I gave it up for Lent. It’s the second year I’ve done this, and I’m surprised for the second year about how much better I feel.
I also miss it. I follow friends I want to keep up with, and people I learn things from. It helps me keep up with the basic gist of current events, and I look to it for small splashes of silliness throughout my day.
On this second break, I’m learning something pretty inescapable: I’m no match for the algorithm running this thing.
It has my number. It knows how to hit the dopamine and rage buttons that keep me scrolling.
Even with my app limits, even when I don’t keep scrolling, I spend my day recovering from the rage and itching for the dopamine.
We know this isn’t an accident.
The people who built social media have been surprisingly honest about this.
Sean Parker, one of Facebook’s earliest leaders, noted that the algorithm was built to answer one question: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?…[we] understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”
Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google, captured the scale of it: “Never before in history have fifty designers made decisions that would have an impact on two billion people.” He went further: “Social media isn’t a tool that’s just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and its own means of pursuing them – by using your psychology against you.”
Social media is a powerful system because it’s shaping our consciousness as a society. The incentives undergirding that system are all trained in one direction: more money.
Our attention is being sold for more money.
Now, because of our individualistic lenses, we tend to be tempted to find and blame ‘the bad guys.’ Sure, there are selfish, short-sighted people in this system. There are also thoughtful, kind people in this system. If we replaced all the bad guys, the system would continue. We could point to good outcomes, and social media has done a lot of good in meaningful ways, but as long as the core structure is intact, we will continue to see a deep well of disastrous results.
Social media is working as designed. If we want to change that, we have to change the system.
Why can’t willpower reliably beat a powerful system?
We can’t beat a system like this with willpower. It’s not a fair fight.
I’ve tried.
My brain works in a way that the algorithm understands. It knows how to manipulate me.
Individuals like you and me can’t change big systems like this on our own, either.
We can control one thing: the ecosystem we build for ourselves and our loved ones.
We can build protective walls around our own little square of ground and cultivate something different inside.
The goal isn’t to declare war on technology. Nor is it to wait until social media becomes safer and more protective (it’s unlikely to do that). Our goal is to create systems that decide what comes in and what stays out.
Systems aren’t just tools in the hands of billionaires. They’re available to you, too.
For social media, I’m sure you know of a few small systems that can help: opting out entirely, turning off notifications, setting app limits, making it hard to log in, retraining your algorithm, locking your phone, and others. For any of these tactics, it’s helpful to step back for a minute to understand what’s going on.
What is the system you’re interacting with? What outcomes are you experiencing in your own life that you aren’t happy with? What systems can help protect you?
How do you build small systems that protect your values?
Here’s the bigger point.
If you’re experiencing an outcome in your life or business that you don’t like, don’t start with asking, “what’s wrong with me?” Definitely don’t start with asking, “why are other people so terrible?”
Instead, ask, “what’s happening with our systems here?”
You’re a designer – you don’t have to rely on grit and willpower or a flawless team to make things better.
Stating your values out loud is not the same as building them into your systems. What are you rewarding? What support are you giving? If you say that something matters but the system doesn’t reinforce it, people will eventually stop believing you.
Here’s an example I see a lot: if you say that thoughtful communication matters more than anything else, but your incentives and tracking are all about speed to delivery, your team’s communication rhythms will suffer. Your system will beat out what you say.
Good intentions don’t survive bad systems.
Do you need to “win the war” against big systems?
Your personal systems don’t need to be powerful enough to take down the big ones. They don’t need to match the scale of a Silicon Valley algorithm or fix a broken industry.
They just need to decide what makes it through the fence.
What gets your attention? Where are your incentives? Where are systems setting you up to fail?
Beautiful systems are quiet – they aren’t glamorous. The best ones tend to disappear altogether. But they decide what happens day after day, long after the initial intention has faded.
Build the fence. Tend the garden. I’m right next door, doing the same thing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Building systems that actually change outcomes
What do you mean by “a system”?
A system is the structure under your outcomes. It’s the incentives, policies, habits, resources, and boundaries that decide what keeps happening.
If my team is struggling, is it still “a systems problem”?
Often, yes. A “people problem” is frequently a systems problem wearing a disguise. If the work is unclear, the incentives reward something you don’t want, or the process is hard to follow, even great people will struggle.
What’s one small system change that makes a big difference?
Change the environment before you try to change your personality. Add friction to what you want less of, and build easier defaults for what you want more of. One good default can do more than a heroic burst of willpower.
How do I know which system to fix first?
Start with the outcome that feels the loudest: the one that’s most expensive, most exhausting, or most likely to create risk. Then trace the steps that lead to it and look for the chokepoint. You’re not trying to redesign your whole company this week. You’re looking for one brick you can move.
Do I have to opt out of social media completely?
No. Opting out is one valid choice, but it’s not the only one. The bigger skill is building a “secret garden” around your attention: limits, boundaries, and defaults that protect you from faster, louder, more. After lent, I’ll personally only interact with Instagram on my desktop and have strict time limits. It’s far less fun on desktop, and easier for me to intentionally find my friend’s art profile, like her work, and then leave.
What if I can’t change the big system I’m inside of?
That’s the point. Most of us can’t. But you can build walls around your own little square of ground. And if you’re trying to change something larger, change usually requires two kinds of people: the ones fighting from within, and the ones leaving and telling the truth about why. It takes wisdom to know which one you should be.
Action option: identify one outcome you don’t like within your company. Look at the system producing it – what are the steps? What do you track? What is too difficult? Pick one thing to improve this week.