Why Better Tools Still Need Better Thinking

What happens when organisations move faster, adopt smarter tools, and still keep running into the same problems?

In this short reflection episode, Gerry Murray revisits two earlier Leading People conversations — with Chris Soderquist and Angela Montgomery — to explore why better tools do not remove the need for better thinking.

From repeated problems and firefighting, to silos, outdated management habits, and the danger of automating what isn’t working, this episode is a timely reminder that leadership in a complex world still depends on judgment, perspective, and systemic awareness.

If you care about leadership, decision-making, learning, change, or the hidden cost of solving the wrong problem, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

Welcome And What The Show Is

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Leading People with me, Jerry Murray. This is the podcast for HR leaders, LD professionals, and senior leaders who want to bring out the best in themselves and the people around them. Every other week I sit down with leading authors, researchers, and practitioners for deep, honest conversations about what great leadership actually looks like in practice. And how your own mindset, behavior, and presence shape everything around you. If you want thinking that challenges you, tools you can use, and conversations worth returning to, you're in the right place. One of the great privileges of hosting this podcast is that I get to sit down and have thought-provoking and insightful conversations with some of the best thinkers on the topic of leading people.

Summer Reflections On Thinking Well

SPEAKER_02 1:00

So, over this summer, I'm doing something a little different. From time to time, I'll be revisiting some of the themes that have come up again and again across the podcast. Not by replaying whole conversations, but by pulling together a few short excerpts and reflecting on what still feels important today. And this first episode is about thinking. Because for all the excitement around AI and all the new tools now at our fingertips, one thing hasn't changed. We still need to be able to think well. We still need to be able to understand the bigger picture, spot patterns, question assumptions, and avoid jumping too quickly to narrow or technical fixes. So in this short reflection, I want to bring together two guests from very different moments in time. The first is Chris Soderquist, who joined me way back in October 2021 to talk about what he calls systemic intelligence. The second is Angela Montgomery, who joined me much more recently in June 2026, to explore systemic thinking, management, and what really limits progress in organizations. Different moments, different language, but a surprisingly similar message. So let's start with Chris.

Groundhog Day Signs Of Poor Thinking

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Well, I mean, there's multiple things. So first of all, you'll know that you're in an organization that's probably low on systemic intelligence if it feels like that movie Groundhog Day, where it's the same thing over and over and over again. That's actually a great systemic movie, by the way, where he actually evolves his thinking throughout the course. But if every day you're kind of going in and you thought you solved the problem and then it comes back again and again, that's probably low systemic intelligence. You're probably seeing band-aids or let's say firefighting, tyranny of the urgent. If you see those kinds of things again, you're probably facing systemic challenges.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Now, if you've ever watched the movie Groundhog Day, you'll know too well what Chris is referring to there. And if you haven't seen it, I'd highly recommend it. Not least because it stars my family namesake, Bill Murray. And for those of you wondering, he's no relation, and neither is Andy Murray for that matter. But beneath the humour there's a very serious point. If it feels like we're solving the same problem again and again and again, if every week seems to be driven by firefighting, if everything is urgent and yet somehow nothing fundamentally improves, then maybe just maybe we don't just have a workload problem. But maybe we have a thinking problem. And that matters even more now, because AI can help us act faster. But faster action on flawed thinking just gets us to the wrong place more efficiently. And as one of my other recent guests, Virgil Connolly, stated, having faster tools is only getting you to the same dead end in a faster car. So I went on to ask Chris what systemic intelligence actually looks like in

The Right Wall Map Action

SPEAKER_02 4:28

practice. And here's what he had to say.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Well, you know, to boil down and define systemic intelligence, it's really um developing the most useful high-leverage of mental models for generating the results that you want to achieve. That's really what the capacity allows you to do. And a mental model is our theory of causal relationships that we use to think about well, what's causing this issue? Where are their solutions for it? And how might I implement them? And I want to kind of boil that down to in a very simplistic fashion. It's really making sure that you've got the right wall. In other words, you've framed the problem appropriately, that you have the right map of that wall. In other words, you know what the terrain is, how high it is, how thick it is, and all kinds of other things. So you have the map of it, you understand how that wall is formed and works, and then developing the right action to get over it or to climb that wall. So it's really the right, um, it's sort of right the right wall, the right map, and then the right action. And really having the skills and capacities to do each of those things is what systemic intelligence allows you to do. And often in framing the what's the right wall, we typically fall prey to events. What's the current event in the here and now? What's happening in front of my face? What's happening in my part of the organization, rather than thinking about what's been happening in the organization over time, and how has that been relations in relations between marketing and sales, production, supply chain management, um, the financial and the accounting departments, how are those all working together over time? So, really, that's the to getting the frame and making sure that you're expanding the boundaries right.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

I really like Chris's phrase there: the right wall, the right map, and the right action. Because one of the big risks in any period of rapid change is that we become a bit too obsessed with action. We want movement, we want solutions, we want visible progress. But if we haven't really understood the system we're operating in, we can end up doing a very good job of solving the wrong problem. And that brings me to Angela Montgomery.

Complexity Interdependence And Silos

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Because Angela approaches this from a slightly different angle, but one that connects beautifully with what Chris was saying.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

The fact is, uh Jerry, that today we live in a world of complexity. What does that mean? Not just that things are complicated. Um, scientifically, it means that we live within a level of interdependencies that has never existed before. And we experience that in our everyday life. So we are all interconnected and we live it through the internet, we live it through international trade, we live it through, sadly, international conflict. Um, all these things uh demonstrate to us on a daily basis how interconnected we now are. Um, that was not the case a hundred years ago, and yet so many organizations are still organized and they're still managing themselves as if they were a hundred years ago. So we still have so often the top-down hierarchy, the company divided up into business functions, which inevitably leads to silos. But the intrinsic nature of work in any organization is a flow. So if you introduce business functions, if you have silos, that flow just keeps getting interrupted. And the performance of the whole organization is sub-optimized.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

What I find so striking in Angela's reflection is this idea that the world has changed faster than many of our management habits have. We live in a world of complexity and interdependence, and yet many organizations are still being managed through silos, fragmentation, and old assumptions about control. So, in that kind of environment, the questions become what happens if we simply layer technology on top of outdated thinking? Or what happens if we speed up execution without improving the quality of thought behind it? Angela had a very direct answer

Why Automating Broken Work Fails

SPEAKER_02 8:56

to that.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

And if I may add, if you don't do that, um then adding any kind of technology, if you haven't figured out what your flow is, what the processes are, what the interdependencies are, what the competencies are that you need, then any kind of um technology that you add is not going to help you. Uh you don't want to automate things which are not working, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:20

And for me, that's the heart of it. In a world of AI, the real issue is not just whether the tools are getting more capable, it's whether we are continuing to develop the quality of our own thinking. Chris Soderquist reminded us that repeated problems often point to repeated patterns of thought. And Angela Montgomery reminded us that complexity, flow, interdependence, and assumptions matter more than ever. So perhaps one of the most important leadership questions right now is not just what can AI do for us, it may also be are we still doing the underlying thinking that only we as humans can do well. Chris Soderquist and Angela Montgomery are just two of the many thoughtful guests I've had on leading people since January 2021.

Closing Thoughts And How To Go Further

SPEAKER_02 10:21

And one of the things I'm reminded of when I revisit these conversations is just how relevant they still are. So if this theme resonated with you, you can think of the Leading People podcast as a growing learning library, one you can dip back into whenever you need a fresh perspective. And if you'd like to go further, you'll find this and many other leading people resources inside the leading people community. There's a link in the show notes. And that's it for this episode of Leading People. If you're new here and enjoyed today's conversation, I'd love it if you subscribed. It's the best way to make sure you never miss an episode. And if you are a regular listener, the best recommendation is always a personal one. So, if this episode made an impact on you, please share it with a friend or colleague. It might just be the best thing they listen to this week. Until next time.