Below is a fantastic quote I came across when reading The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. A fantastic read that is full of wisdom.
> But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid > repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather > than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is > possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of > systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down > but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality > will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic > government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that > government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the > succeeding government. There's so much talk about the system. And so little > understanding. Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
Whether it is Taiichi Ohno and Toyota Production System - urging workers to address problems at their root cause, Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline - asserting that to resolve a problem the problem needs to be addressed in terms of a whole system and not just the immediately observable parts of the sub system, or whether it is me - blogging about the root problem. The same message occurs again and again.
Of all the quotes I have come across on this topic though, this quote by Robert Pirsig is one of the best