It’s easier to point out symptoms of a problem, than it is to name the conditions that create a problem. Symptoms are easier to spot and enable us to simplify challenges into having a clear cause and effect.
The limitation with this approach is that most problems that involve people aren’t cause and effect problems.
A couple might get along really well and then get put into a stressful situation and have a blow-up fight. A team that collaborates exquisitely might get dropped into a chaotic new environment and become a competitive, backstabbing mess. Did the couple cause the fight? Did the team cause the competition?
To change the system requires also noting the conditions (stressful situation, chaotic environment) that influenced our symptomatic behavior (the fight, the competition). When we better understand the conditions, we can start to consider the ways we unknowingly recreate them through our learned behavior. For example, we get into the habit of fighting and suddenly everything is stressful or we get into the habit of competing and suddenly every work day is chaotic.
Getting clear about the way in which we interact with the conditions of a situation, gives us more nuanced data to consider what conditions we want to strengthen (the ones that serve us) and which ones we want to dismantle.