Leaders are confronted with tough, complex, and interconnected problems across the global business landscape today, most of which are unprecedented in size, scope, and breadth. The challenges these issues present are immense, from climate change and over-consumption (energy, water, food, etc.) to poverty, overpopulation, and starvation — to name just a few.

It's no secret that global issues affecting organizations are increasingly interconnected and complex. Business leaders are compelled to consider decisions from a systemic standpoint — that is, they must deal with all the intersecting elements in a system, and think about how decisions and actions interact with each other. I’ll look at an example of that in a moment. Leaders who fail to see interconnections may promote solutions that yield unintended consequences, don’t resolve the targeted problem, or work in the short term but are not sustainable over time.