Systems Thinking and Process Improvement Applied to Deer Hunting Part 6
This is the sixth blog in the series on deer hunting and Lean, Ergonomics (Human Factors, Six Sigma and Systems Thinking (L.E.S.S.). In my last blog I discuss how I’ve applied process improvement principles to individual components of deer hunting. In this part I want to focus on systems thinking and systems approach to deer hunting—the final “S” in L.E.S.S. (Lean, Ergonomics, Six Sigma and Systems Thinking). The last “S”, even though I’ve placed it last, is in my opinion the most important as it serves as the basis for effectively applying the first three: Lean, Ergonomics and Six Sigma.
What is Systems Thinking?
In a nutshell, systems thinking is looking a company or in this case, deer hunting as whole and the individual components that make up the whole and then back as a whole again. A formal definition for systems thinking is “a discipline for seeing wholes; framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” (Senge,P.M.,1990.The Fifth Discipline, Doubleday, NY.) The reason why this is so important is to understand that making a single change in one area can and most likely will affect other areas of whole which, if not anticipated, can have negative consequences. In my experience it is very easy for people to think in terms of “silos”, i.e. thinking of just one area individually. However, it is very common for the changes that occur in one area to affect one or more others. Let me give you examples of this in deer hunting.
Example 1:
My husband and I own land that is surrounded by seven other land owners. What those land owners do to their land (i.e. food plots, logging of woods, planting fields with corn, soybeans or string beans) will have an effect on our deer hunting. In addition, what those land owners do in during the hunting season will affect our hunting. For example, there are farm fields on three sides of our land. This year two of those fields had corn and the third had string beans. Deer like both crops but those crops mature at different times and what is left after harvest also differs. Deer love corn and will feed in the field when the corn is still up and after it has been harvested. Deer like string beans and will feed in the field when the beans are in the field but not after it has been harvested. Normally we have stands that are near each of those three fields. However, after we saw that string beans were planted in the one, we moved that stand to another location knowing that when hunting season began there would be no draw for the deer. If we ignored what was planted in those fields we wouldn’t have changed anything and kept the stands in place. We would have been left with one “dud” stand—all because we didn’t utilize systems thinking.
Example 2:
As I mentioned in earlier blogs, my husband and I hunt together. We need to know what stand/location each other is going to as what he does may affect my hunt and vice versa. If I used silo thinking and thought only of myself and nothing in regards to him, my hunt could be adversely affected. I need to know what stand he is going to and how he is getting there, i.e. walking or ATV. I need to know the wind direction as well since that combined with his location will affect my hunting and vice versa. Ideally it would be great to know when and where our hunting neighbors will be hunting but that just is not possible except for the “when” during the gun season when we know everyone is out almost all day long, each day.
Besides knowing the other people involved in the system we need to know the environment of the system, i.e. the weather conditions. The temperatures, wind speed and direction and sky conditions (sunny, cloudy, rain, snow, clear) of the day are important factors in hunting as well as the long term conditions, i.e. drought, floods, “normal weather”. The long term conditions can affect the food and water supply for deer which in turn affect stand placement, which in turn affects which stand type used, which determines what gear is needed, etc.
I hope you can see and appreciate that there are many cogs and gears in the deer hunting system that have to run smoothly and congruently together for success. The same is true in business. A company has to have all of their business systems work together and then all of the individual components within each department/unit work well together for performance excellence.
You may be wondering what my deer hunting success has been for 2012. I’m glad to report that I’ve harvested two does bow hunting and three does gun hunting (we hunt in a deer management unit in which multiple antlerless deer tags are available to each hunter). Unfortunately, I haven’t filled my buck tags. I’ve passed on several small bucks bow and gun hunting. But, the 2012 season is not over—my husband and I will be doing some late season bow hunting during the remaining part of December. With our good deer hunting system as well as some luck of good late season weather to encourage deer movement I may yet be able to fill my archery buck tag. Time will tell…otherwise we start the whole deer hunting system improvement process all over again.