One of the most interesting things I’ve learned through systems thinking is that individual components of a system can be functioning, and the overall system can still have a problem.

Think about an aircraft. The propulsion system can work. The avionics can work. The flight controls can work. The electrical system can work. You could assess the individual subsystems and find that each one meets its requirements. And yet – the aircraft might be producing an error.

Sometimes the problem isn’t in the parts. It’s at the interfaces.

This happens in our personal lives more often than we realize. A professional can have a good marriage, a successful career, healthy children, a functioning home, financial stability, meaningful friendships, an exercise routine, opportunities to serve, etc. Looking at each of these areas, everything is going pretty well. Despite this, he or she still feel terrible.

In this situation, the first instinct is to assume that something must be wrong, and presume we need a different job, better boundaries, a cleaner home, more exercise, a vacation. Maybe.

But sometimes the individual pieces are not the problem. How they interact is.

A career may require energy that conflicts with what is needed to be available for the family. Financial goals may require a level of work intensity that conflicts with the lifestyle we want to create. Standards for our homes may compete with our desire to be comfortable and relaxed in it. Volunteer commitments may reflect our values while exceeding the capacity we genuinely have. Even fitness goals (something objectively good) may compete with the restoration our bodies need in a particular season.

The system isn’t necessarily made of bad parts. The parts may simply not be working together.

Businesses encounter this all the time. Sales can optimize for growth while operations optimizes for production. Finance can optimize for cost while engineering optimizes for capability. Each function can make a perfectly rational decision from its own perspective. Yet collectively, generate suboptimal business performance.

Great organizations don’t manage only the components. They manage the whole operating model, the interfaces, tradeoffs and system.

Our lives deserve the same consideration.

The answer isn’t necessarily to abandon ambition, lower standards or eliminate things we value. It is to step back far enough to see the whole system:

• What is competing for the same resources?
• Where are my priorities creating tension with one another?
• Does the way I am pursuing one good thing make another good thing difficult?
• Does the life I have designed work as a whole?

This is where I think alignment becomes more useful than the traditional idea of balance.

Balance can sound like every part of life should receive an equal share. Systems don’t work that way, and neither should we. Different seasons require different allocations of time, energy, money and attention.

Something doesn’t have to be “wrong” in order to need adjustment. Alignment may simply be recognizing when several good things need to be arranged differently so they can work together a bit better.