The Ackoff Center Weblog provides an opportunity to keep up with the latest research in Systems Thinking. It is also a forum where you can interact with others in the field and share your own experiences.
June 18, 2020
Russell L. Ackoff | Quotes | Systems Thinking Books
Russell L Ackoff (1919-2009) was a founding member of the system thinking movement. He was an organizational theorist and pioneer in operations research and management science. He was the first doctoral student of C. West Churchman. They later spent time together at the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio. Later they founded the systems thinking movement. Russell L. Ackoff translated data to wisdom. He once worked for D. Edwards Deming at the U.S. Census Bureau. Peter Drucker acknowledged that Russell L. Ackoff had made critical contributions to his work. Russell L. Ackoff authored or co-authored 35 books and over 150 journal articles, including the popular From Data to Wisdom.
Russell L. Ackoff developed empirical inquiry techniques and theory concerning interdisciplinary and interdependent system dynamics. He was a master reductionist about decision making in organizations. Russell L. Ackoff sought to amplify organizational learning across disciplines, especially for nonlinear, transdisciplinary modeling sciences. In the end, he sought to create a better understanding so that people were focused on the correct root cause issues so that they could be successful. Please scroll through his wonderful quotations to get to the videos.
Is there a more apt example of trying to ‘do the wrong thing right” than in our schools?
So why bring it up yet again? Well, for me at least, two words: Russell Ackoff.
A couple of weeks ago, thanks to some serendipitous surfing online, I came across this 10-minute snip of an interview with Ackoff, a pioneer in the field of systems thinking who was a professor at the Wharton School prior to his death in 2009. I was staggered a bit after watching it because he was able to articulate something I have been feeling for a while now but had been unable to find the words for:
“Peter Drucker said, ‘There’s a difference between doing things right and doing the right thing.’ Doing the right thing is wisdom, and effectiveness. Doing things right is efficiency. The curious thing is the righter you do the wrong thing the wronger you become. If you’re doing the wrong thing and you make a mistake and correct it you become wronger. So it’s better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. Almost every major social problem that confronts us today is a consequence of trying to do the wrong things righter.”
I’ve been thinking about Ackoff pretty much consistently since I watched it, and the application of that lens to our current practice in schools is profound. Can there be a more apt example of trying to “do the wrong thing right” than in schools? Look again at that list above. Are we in search of efficiency, or effectiveness?
I think the answer is obvious. If you watch the clip, you’ll hear Ackoff dive into the education issue head on. He says, and I agree, that the system is not about learning (effectiveness). It’s about teaching (efficiency). And believe me, I understand why we have that focus. Given our devotion to an overstuffed curriculum, standardized tests, “college and career readiness” and more, about the only way we can see our students navigating the school experience is to “teach” it, to organize it, pace it, and assess it in some way that allows us to confer the adjective “educated” to each student. This despite the obvious truth that the vast majority of what we “learn” in school is quickly forgotten, and the truest “education” for our life’s work comes on the job, not in school
How successful leaders avoid predictable surprises
In relation to management theory, in particular, Russell L. Ackoff, a Wharton emeritus professor of management, said, “managers don’t solve simple, isolated problems; they manage messes.” And he defined a mess as “a system of constantly changing, highly interconnected problems, none of which is independent of the other problems that constitute the entire mess. As a result, no problem that is part of a mess can be defined and solved independently of the other problems”. Whilst Ackoff described the problems as messy, Horst Rittel and Melvin M. Webber called them “wicked” in their 1973 treatise and contrasted them with relatively “tame”, soluble problems. Wicked problems are said to be difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. And problems that cannot be fixed, or for which there is no single solution.
Disruptive effects of virus - errors of commission and omission?
By John Pourdehnad, Larry M. Starr, Venard Scott Koerwer, and Harry McCloskey
It is increasingly evident that the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, is more than a health problem; it is and will continue to adversely affect work and workplaces, education, families and social engagements, political and environmental dimensions, and financial indicators.
Apart from its health ramifications, the crisis is creating serious challenges in the global supply chain. Those difficulties are, at least in part, consequences of unwise, short-sighted business decisions made over the course of decades to outsource and downsize.
The late professor Russell Ackoff of the Wharton School used to say, "An economy is about generating and distributing wealth. Capitalism is great for generating wealth and socialism is good for distributing wealth. The problem with socialism is that very little is available to distribute and the problem with capitalism is the inequitable distribution of wealth."
Cleanroom monitoring: How to make the most of your data
The DIKUW is a framework that we've found invaluable for thinking about data and generating useful insights. It isn't a prescriptive guide, but an outline of a typical data journey. It will help you see where you are in your data journey, and what to expect. It will also help you understand the limitation of data.
Systems theorist Russell Ackoff outlined the DIKUW hierarchy in his paper "From Data to Wisdom" in 1989, and described it as a 5-step process, which we all go through as individuals and institutions, of transforming data into wisdom.
How do you design a house? Ackoff explains The architect designs to satisfy the needs of the residents, and first draws the house ( the Whole). Then divides the house into rooms ( the parts ). A room is only improved if it also improves the house, and it can be the case that the architect chooses to make a room worse to improve the house as a whole. So, you start with determining the function of the larger Whole, and then improve the Whole by refining it with parts.
We apply the same approach with the Scrum Patterns. You start with the most extensive pattern( the Whole) and then refine it with subsequent patterns. You are always keeping in mind the goals of the Whole.
You might be thinking, so what? Well, it is crucial to understand the boundaries of your system and the goal you are striving to improve, because you are unlikely to improve the performance of the Whole by improving the parts taken separately— R. L. Ackoff, Re-Creating the Corporation, page 21. Let me try to explain using a simple example.
Russell L. Ackoff (1919-2009) was an important early proponent of the field of operations research, and remained a tireless advocate for an expansive vision of what the field could be. Ackoff was a founding member of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA), and served the organization as its fifth president. Ackoff was also an author of Introduction to Operations Research (1957), the field’s first textbook written as such. Throughout his time in OR, Ackoff insisted on working on practical problems of management, and maintained ongoing relationships with a number of clients, including Anheuser-Busch, which he collaborated with for decades. Ackoff resisted the confinement of his work to any particular methodology, and remained deeply concerned with problems of ethics and social responsibility. Because OR had become increasingly defined by its mathematical methdology, Ackoff became disillusioned with the subject, and turned instead to what he called Social Systems Science. In the 1970s he would sever his relationship with OR altogether, declaring the field dead.
Through the cooperation of Bill Bellows, John Pourdehnad and the Ackoff family, we are pleased to offer these videos for your viewing.
2003 Ackoff Seminar At Huntington Beach - 4 Videos
2004 A Day with Russell Ackoff - 5 Videos
2005 A Day with Russell Ackoff - 3 Videos
2006 Fourth Annual Lecture by Russell Ackoff - 2 Videos
Schools must steer away from 'one size fits all' approach
The late business guru, Russell Ackoff, famously said, “It’s better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
At a time when many districts seem to be focused on doing the wrong thing right by working to raise test scores to the exclusion of anything else, we’re taking a different approach at Anaheim Union High School District — building a bridge to the future so that students can achieve their unique potential based on their passions and talents. We called it the “Unlimited You.”
Michael Matsuda
We live in a time when economists predict some 65 percent of the jobs that current K-12 students will hold haven’t yet been invented. Locally, economist Wallace Walrod of the Orange County Business Council has warned that Orange County will need to better prepare a pipeline of talent to backfill over 100,000 white collar jobs lost to retirement with what he calls “new collar” jobs.
Russell L. Ackoff, author of “Redesigning the Future,” once said “The only thing that’s harder than starting something new, is stopping something old.” This is true of education practices that no longer work or never really worked effectively. Teachers sometimes become very skilled at ineffective practices and find them hard to let go. As Ackoff also noted, “The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter. If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better.”
