GROUP DISCUSSION RESPONSES
Question 1 – Did the Uncle Really Solve the Problem?
At the end of the story, the conflict between the mother-in-law (MIL) and the daughter-in-law (DIL) had disappeared. But did the uncle actually solve the problem himself, or did he simply create the conditions that allowed the relationship to heal itself?
Reflect carefully on the following questions:
- What did the uncle mean when he said the problem had been “solved”?
- Was the structure itself removed, or did it simply begin behaving differently?
- Is the relationship likely to remain healthy in the future, or could it gradually return to its previous vicious pattern?
- Under what circumstances might the reinforcing structure reverse once again?
Question 2 – What Did the Uncle Not Do?
One of the most remarkable aspects of the story is not what the uncle did, but what he deliberately chose not to do.
Consider the following.
- Did he recommend arbitration?
- Did he physically separate the two women?
- Did he issue ultimatums?
- Did he assign blame?
- Did he attempt to determine who was right and who was wrong?
- Did he personally intervene in their daily interactions?
Why do you think he deliberately avoided these more conventional approaches?
Question 3 – How Did He Change the Situation Without Being There?
The uncle never visited the household.
He never witnessed an argument.
He never spoke to the mother-in-law.
Yet the household gradually transformed.
How did he achieve this remotely?
Discuss the following:
- What did he say?
- What did he deliberately choose not to say?
- What did he ask Li-Li to do?
- What did he deliberately ask her not to do?
Then identify at least ten moments throughout the story that illustrate how the reinforcing structure gradually changed from a vicious cycle into a virtuous one.
| Observation | What happened? | Why was this important systemically? |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
| 2 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
| 3 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
| 4 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
| 5 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
| 6 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
| 7 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
| 8 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
| 9 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
| 10 | ___________________________ | ___________________________ |
After everyone has completed their observations, compare your responses before reading the facilitator’s notes.
Question 4 – Could They Have Done This Themselves?
Suppose both the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law already understood reinforcing structures and had learned how to work with them.
Discuss the following.
- How quickly might they have recognised the reinforcing structure?
- How much sooner could they have begun changing it?
- Would they still have required the uncle’s guidance?
- Who is more likely to create lasting change—the consultant or the people living within the system?
Finally, consider what this means for:
- families;
- teams;
- organisations;
- communities; and
- nations.
How might this change the way we approach change management in the future?
Personal Reflection
Before analysing the story further, reflect on your own learning.
- What did you enjoy most about the story?
- What challenged your thinking?
- What assumptions did the story cause you to question?
Then think of situations within your own life where these principles may already be operating.
Identify one relationship, team or situation where you could begin applying these ideas. Record your observations, thoughts, feelings, reactions and outcomes as they unfold over time.
Learn to become a careful observer of your own realities.
See the patterns before seeking the solutions.
The Uncle’s Ten Actions and Non-Actions
| DID ACT | DID NOT ACT |
|---|---|
| 1. Listened carefully for the structure | 4. Focused on events. Instead trusted that the structure is at play |
| 2. Focused on one strength already present in the DIL | 5. Laid down rules |
| 3. Focused on healing the structure | 6. Called a meeting |
| DID SAY | DID NOT SAY |
|---|---|
| 7. Start small actions | 9. Pass judgement |
| 8. Give it time — apply the same small action consistently | 10. The problem is something other than the structure |
This gives participants the four distinct observational categories without prematurely telling what any of the actions meant. The interpretation comes after identifying the ten points themselves.
What the Uncle Did — and Did Not Do
The uncle’s intervention is remarkable precisely because it does not look like an intervention at first. He does not arrive at the household with a solution to the argument between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. He does not attempt to control either woman, impose a new arrangement or remove the visible source of the conflict. Instead, he listens carefully, notices what is already present within the relationship and begins with a very small action.
What follows is not a dramatic intervention. It is a persistent sequence of small actions, given sufficient time to allow the structure itself to respond.
What He Did Not Say
He did not pass judgement.
The uncle did not decide who was right and who was wrong. He did not say that because the daughter-in-law was younger, she should be the one to give in to her mother-in-law, nor did he tell Li-Li what the “correct” behaviour should be.
He did not turn a systemic problem into a question of who was at fault.
He did not assume that the problem was something other than the structure.
This is an important distinction.
When we see a persistent problem, our instinct is often to search for the thing that is wrong: Who is causing this? What did she do? What did he do? Who needs to change? What is the problem that we need to fix?
The uncle did something different. He looked beyond the visible events to the structure that was repeatedly producing them.
There was no single event that needed to be eliminated. There was a reinforcing structure in which each person’s response was becoming part of the cause of the other’s next response.
The criticism produced defensiveness.
The defensiveness produced further criticism.
The further criticism produced more resentment.
The resentment produced another defensive response.
The problem was not simply what either woman was doing. The problem was what their interactions were continually producing.
What He Did Not Do
He did not break the cycle.
He did not suggest separating the two women by saying, “The mother-in-law should live in one house and the daughter-in-law in another.” Such an intervention might have stopped the immediate arguments, but it would not have healed the reinforcing structure. If the two women were brought together again, the same pattern could simply resume.
The objective was therefore not to break the loop, but to change what the loop was reinforcing.
He did not lay down rules.
He did not give Li-Li a long list of dos and don’ts. He did not threaten punishment or appeal to fear in order to force behavioural compliance.
He chose instead to give her a few simple actions and allow her to practise them.
He chose to bite the bullet and ride it out.
He did not treat the visible problem—the mother-in-law.
He chose instead to treat the persistence of the problem.
This is a critical distinction in systems thinking. If the same problem keeps returning, the question changes from “How do we fix this event?” to “What keeps producing this event?”
The uncle did not attempt to remove the person who appeared to be the problem. He looked for the structure that kept reproducing the problem.
He did not focus on the events.
He did not ask, “What exactly did she do?” or “What did the other person say?” He understood the trees, but he did not become absorbed in them.
He stepped back to look for the forest.
What He Did
He listened carefully.
He first sought to understand the situation rather than immediately prescribing a solution. His attention allowed him to move beyond the latest event and begin seeing the pattern.
He focused on one strength already present in the daughter-in-law.
He did not need to manufacture a new capability. He found something already present in Li-Li and used that as the starting point.
This is important.
The intervention did not begin by asking, “What is missing from this system?”
It began by asking, “What strength is already here that can be worked with?”
He trusted the structure.
He did not attempt to redraw it.
He did not dismantle it.
He did not try to create an entirely different relationship between the two women.
He trusted that the relationship already contained forces capable of producing a different outcome if those forces could be redirected.
The Aikido Principle
This is where I find the comparison with Aikido useful.
The basic movements of Aikido are circular in nature, whereas most attacks are linear. The Aikido practitioner does not simply meet an aggressive force with an opposing force. Instead, the practitioner harmonises with the force and redirects its movement, allowing the force already present to contribute to the resolution.
The relevance here is not that the uncle was practising Aikido. It is that his intervention followed a similar principle: he did not fight the structure; he worked with forces already present within it.
The movement was slow, consistent and determined.
The structure remained intact.
What changed was the direction in which its energy was being expressed.
Aikido is also not a competitive sport in which the objective is to defeat another person. Practitioners train to improve themselves rather than belittle others, and its techniques are designed around resolving aggression without unnecessary harm.
That matters here because the uncle did not need a winner.
He needed the relationship to become healthy.
Small. Consistent. Persistent.
The uncle recognised that Li-Li’s actions needed to be consistent as well as persistent.
One act of kindness would not reverse a reinforcing structure that had been strengthening itself for months. The new behaviour needed to be repeated until it became part of the relationship itself.
Two drops and a smile.
Then another two drops.
And another smile.
The action was small.
The repetition was not.
This is where the power lies.
Time Is Part of the Intervention
The uncle also understood that the structure needed time to run its course.
Repeated experiences gradually change what people experience. What people experience gradually changes how they interpret one another. Those changing interpretations begin to alter their mental models.
Our realities shape our perspectives.
That process cannot simply be commanded into existence. If the change is to become deep enough to persist, it needs sufficient experience behind it. The longer a reinforcing structure has been running viciously, the longer it may take to reverse its direction.
This means that time has to be budgeted as part of the intervention.
Better still, we should learn to recognise when a reinforcing structure is beginning to become vicious and intervene before it becomes deeply entrenched.
Why Start Small?
The uncle did not begin with something dramatic.
He began with something almost invisible.
That matters because a large and obvious intervention can immediately trigger resistance. People recognise that someone is trying to change them and the system responds.
A small intervention can enter the structure quietly.
It can be repeated.
It can respond naturally to what happens next.
And then it can be repeated again.
Otherwise, as the saying goes, the frog may jump out.
Learn to boil the frog—not as a lesson in manipulating people, but as a reminder that systemic change often requires small, consistent actions that allow new patterns to become established before resistance overwhelms them.
The Problem We Cannot See
When we say, “We need to find the problem,” we need to be careful about what we mean by problem. What we can see is usually an event, a condition or a recurring pattern of behaviour. The more important systems-thinking question is: what is producing that pattern?
This is where the attention shifts from the visible event to the structure beneath it. Senge’s structural explanation asks us to look for what causes the patterns of behaviour. In human systems, that structure is shaped by the relationships between beliefs, assumptions, established practices, capabilities, relationships and decision-making processes. The visible problem is therefore often an expression of something we cannot see directly.
The question is no longer simply,
“Where is the problem?”
It becomes,
“What causal structure is producing the behaviour we have labelled as the problem?”
When that structure is reinforcing negatively, the problem we are trying to solve may simply be the continuing effect of a structure that is repeatedly reproducing itself.
This is why persistent problems are so difficult to resolve. We can see the effects; we cannot easily see the structure producing them. We respond to what is visible, often strengthening the very structure that continues to generate the problem. The leverage therefore lies not necessarily in treating the most visible symptom, but in discovering what is producing it.
The Beer Game provides a powerful demonstration of this shift. Participants initially experience the events and behaviours as if they are caused by the decisions of other participants. The learning changes when attention moves from the behaviour being observed to the internal structure producing that behaviour. Once the structure becomes visible, the possibility of leverage changes with it.
This is where systems thinking begins to move us beyond problem-solving towards structural understanding. The question is not simply how to make the problem disappear. It is to understand what keeps producing it—and then determine whether that same structure can be worked with, redirected and ultimately made to produce a different reality.
Healing Rather Than Breaking
This brings us back to the uncle. He did not find a problem and eliminate it; he found a reinforcing structure producing a persistent problem and worked with that structure until it began producing something different. He did not break the relationship, dismantle the structure or work around it. He healed it.
And that may be the most important distinction in the entire story. The reinforcing structure itself was not the enemy. Its strength was still there, but the direction of that strength had changed. The same structure that had once reinforced resentment, criticism and conflict eventually began reinforcing trust, kindness, understanding and love.
The structure did not disappear. Its nature changed.
This is the essence of healing a vicious systemic structure. We do not necessarily have to locate a starting point and eliminate it, break the loop apart or continually manage its effects. We can instead ask where within the existing structure we can introduce a small, consistent change that allows the structure’s own reinforcing capacity to begin working differently.
That is what makes the uncle’s intervention so powerful. He did not overcome the reinforcing nature of the system; he harnessed it. Once the direction changed, the structure itself began carrying the change forward. What had previously made the problem more persistent became the very mechanism through which the healthier pattern became more persistent.
This is a fundamentally different way of thinking about persistent problems. The objective is not always to destroy the structure that produces the problem. Sometimes the greater leverage lies in helping that same structure produce a different reality.
Systems Thinking Research & Leadership Development Institute (STRLDi) 