Imagine watching a football match. Both teams are lined up, ready for kickoff. You see 22 players in formation - let's say the classic 4-4-2. Is this just a group of people, or is it already a system? What's missing for it to become a system? The obvious answer: a pitch, a coach on the sideline, instructions, a game strategy, and final tactical guidance.

Donella H. Meadows, an American environmental scientist and the first honorary doctorate recipient at ETH Zurich, wrote in her book Thinking in Systems that a system requires three things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose.

What sounds abstract at first is directly relevant to how organisations negotiate. I often see negotiations in organisations that resemble a collection of individuals rather than a coordinated system. It's almost shocking how little structure exists around negotiation in many organisations. Money is spent or saved through negotiations constantly. Yet people often negotiate the way they once learnt it somewhere - picked up from colleagues, read in a book, or developed on their own.

Back to the football match: Both teams have a world-famous superstar. Is the superstar the leader of the team, or just part of the system? It depends. Big egos - whether players or coaches - have led to legendary conflicts. Superstars who see themselves above the coach. Coaches who overplay their stars. Superstars who single-handedly decide a match. But what about everyone else? When the focus centres too heavily on the best players, the rest of the team suffers. Ironically, teams with superstars often have a system - how balls are played, how attacks are launched.

Perhaps you have a few top negotiators in your organisation. But there's probably no system around them. This results in inconsistent outcomes that depend on individuals rather than processes. When the superstar underperforms, success rates drop sharply. Translated to business: wasted money, inconsistent results, and real knowledge loss when people move on.

Here's an example: A company has two Key Account Managers. One consistently achieves 5% better terms than the other. Why? Better preparation? Individual talent? Luck? Or just more accommodating customers? Nobody knows - because there's no system that identifies what works and makes it accessible to others. The better results stay tied to the person instead of becoming an organisational capability.

Systematic negotiation doesn't mean introducing rigid rules. Quite the opposite: Agility and flexibility are often used as excuses for why standardisation isn't possible. But flexibility without system is chaos masquerading as agility. System means flexibility within established structures.

What's missing is fundamentally simple: a system. Exactly those elements Meadows describes: elements (who negotiates?), interconnections (how is preparation and alignment done?), and a purpose (what's the goal?). Organisations that understand negotiation as a system achieve better results - regardless of who sits at the table. Because a system is more than the sum of its parts.