Ackoff Center Weblog

Elevate Organizational Survival: Introducing an Adaptability Assessment/Test in Organizational Premortem Strategies Toward Deve

John Pourdehnad, PhD
Larry Starr, PhD
Vincent Barabba, LLD

"Firms often lose their adaptability as they mature, hindering their ability to thrive. Assessing adaptability early on is crucial for success, especially in dynamic environments. Adaptability is a complex system property requiring organizations to balance controlled and uncontrolled variables. Organizations should adopt a systems-thinking approach to evaluate adaptability effectively and embrace concepts like feedback and nonlinearity. Conventional methods like linear predictive models may not suffice. Instead, real-time information gathering within a dynamic learning framework is advocated. Inspired by discussions with Vince Barabba from General Motors, an adaptability assessment simulator aims to provide organizations with a transformative tool to navigate complex challenges and drive meaningful progress. Barabba's insights from GM's turnaround in the 1990s highlight the importance of understanding adaptability in volatile business landscapes."

Elevate Organizational Survival: Introducing an Adaptability Assessment/Test in Organizational Premortem Strategies Toward Deve

Message from Gerald Midgley RE: The Operational Research Society Online Annual Conference 15 - 17 September 2020

Systems Community:

This year, because the Operational Research Society cannot do a face-to-face conference, its event is free for everybody: https://www.theorsociety.com/events/annual-conference

Instead of regular streams, each topic area has a representative 60-minute session.

Our Systems Thinking session will be delivered by Luis Sambo (Visiting Professor, Centre for Systems Studies, University of Hull; Ex-Director of WHO Africa) and Mike Jackson (Emeritus Professor and Founder, Centre for Systems Studies). Luis Sambo will talk about how Critical Systems Thinking informed his leadership of the WHO response to Ebola in Africa, and then Mike Jackson will follow up with lessons for handling covid-19 today. Subject to confirmation, this session will be at 1pm on 15 September 2020.

There will also be a Systems Thinking plenary speaker (one of only three streams honoured in this way). Ellen Lewis, Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Systems Studies will be talking about the systemic evaluation of development projects, with a focus on gender, environments and marginalized voices. Also subject to confirmation, this will be at 1pm on 16 September 2020.

Please sign up for this free conference below, and put both our Centre for Systems Studies contributions in your diary (and any others you would like to go to when you receive the final schedule).

**** STUDENT OFFER ***** PhD students, please note that you can get free membership of the Operational Research Society as long as you are a student. Sign up here: https://www.theorsociety.com/membership/student-member/

Get ready to take your place at the profession’s flagship event – the Operational Research Society’s annual conference.

theorsociety.com

 

Annual Conference - The OR Society

Get ready to take your place at the profession’s flagship event – the Operational Research Society’s annual conference.

ACKOFF 100 Panel Discussion

Panel at Ackoff 💯 event at Jefferson

From left: Moderator Vince Barabba, William Bellows, Nick Pudar, Gerald Midgley, Laura Cabrera, Scott Koerwer and Derek Cabrera

ACKOFF 100 Panel Discussion

Russell Ackoff Doctoral Student Fellowships

CALL FOR PROPOSALS – deadline: March 4, 2018

The Russell Ackoff Doctoral Student Fellowship program of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center provides grants to University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. students who are pursuing research in decision making under risk and uncertainty.  The research fellowships are named in honor of an endowment provided to the Wharton School by the Anheuser-Busch Charitable Trust.  Professor Emeritus of Management Science, Russell Ackoff’s work was dedicated to furthering our understanding of human behavior in organizations.

The fellowship awards range from $1,000-$4,000.  Funds may be used for data collection, travel, and other direct research expenses (not stipend support, research assistants or computer purchases). Potential initiatives to receive funding include Insurability and Risk Management; Managing Environmental, Health and Safety Risks; Behavioral Economics; and Decision Processes.  Doctoral students throughout Penn engaged in on-going research that relates to problems in decision making under risk and uncertainty are encouraged to apply.  To apply:  Applications must include a proposal and Ackoff_application-form-2018.

Russell Ackoff Doctoral Student Fellowships

 

Organizational Leadership for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Emerging Research and Opportunities

Peter A.C. Smith (The Leadership Alliance Inc., Canada) and John Pourdehnad (University of Pennsylvania, USA)

Release Date: February, 2018|Copyright: © 2018 |Pages: 125

 

Description

Digital technology has transformed business and management methodology in the modern era. As technologies continue to evolve and change, designing a platform for business architecture requires flexibility and practicality.

Organizational Leadership for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Emerging Research and Opportunities provides the latest research on the approaches to dealing successfully with newly emerging digital technologies and the dynamic complexity leaders are facing now and in the future. While highlighting topics such as business architecture, interactive planning, and strategic capital, this book explores the implications of technologies on business and leadership as well as the development of leadership methods and applications. This book is an important resource for professionals, practitioners, upper-level students, and managers seeking current research on leadership and business advancement in the digital era.

Topics Covered

The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to:

• Business Architecture
• Complex Environments
• Digital Technologies
• Human-Centered Environment
• Interactive Planning
• Leadership Development
• Retrospective and Prospective Reflections
• Strategic Capital

Organizational Leadership for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Emerging Research and Opportunities

 

 

Cornell Policy Review: Special Edition: Systems Thinking

 Posted February 18, 2016 by Cornell Policy Review  

Systems are ubiquitous. From our devices and networks to our social constructs, we are surrounded by complexity and its accompanying difficulties. For students of policy, these intricacies are familiar, and often accompany what Cornell professors Derek and Laura Cabrera have termed “wicked problems.”

The articles in this edition are written by thirteen Fellows of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA). For seven weeks, they probed the wicked problems most important to them. From tiger management in India to social services in Texas, the following deconstructions of complexity are as diverse as they are profound.  With guidance from Dr. and Dr. Cabrera, CIPA Fellows have been exposed to an intellectual process all policy students and practitioners should envy.

The edition is prefaced with an introduction to systems thinking by Dr. and Dr. Cabrera, and is followed by four of their student’s articles and TED-style talks. Over the next month, we will publish nine more CIPA Fellow articles in film and text.

The Cornell Policy Review is proud to present this special edition on systems thinking.The Cornell Policy Review is proud to present this special edition on systems thinking. We hope you will consider applying the process to your own wicked problems in public policy and beyond.

-E.R. Schultz, Editor in Chief

  

Michael Maccoby

Print publication date: 2015

Print ISBN-13: 9780199682386

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2015

Building on the contributions of Ackoff, Deming, and Fromm, we can describe great organizations. Great organizations are works of performing art. Learning organizations survive and maintain profitability by adapting to change. They are learning organizations with the purpose of improving their customers’ quality of life and/or improving their capability. They develop people at work, their competence, and character. They work to continually improve their social and environmental impact. If successful, great organizations will attract the most talented young people and become the model for education to shape the social character.

Building on the Work of Ackoff, Deming, and Fromm

The 59th Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences

ISSS2015 Call for Papers: EXTENDED!

Abstracts to be included in the #ISSS2015 Conference Program need to be submitted by 2 July at the latest. 

Full papers can be uploaded onto the online Journal after the Conference once feedback has been received. 

Governing the Anthropocene: the greatest challenge for systems thinking in practice?

The 59th Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences will be held in Berlin, Germany, August 2 - 7, 2015.

Announcement - PhD Course

Systems Thinking and Practice in PhD Research: Cybersystemic Possibilities for Governing the Anthropocene

30 July – 7 August 2015, Germany

Save the dates! ISSS2015 Berlin, Germany : August 2 - 7, 2015

 

Systems Wisdom, Pioneers in Translational Consulting

In 2013, a group of practitioners, including some of the Ackoff’s former students and colleagues came together to create Systems Wisdom, an organization with the objective of going beyond traditional boundaries of various disciplines and consulting practices.   They shared the following concerns and opportunities:

Frustrations with traditional consulting approaches: i.e., if what is offered by traditional organizations is so good why has the average life expectancy of organizations decreased from 75 years in 1937 to 11.5 years today?

Limitations by those who believe one methodology or consulting approach fits all customer/client requirements; and who adhere to one methodology even within the systems and design thinking community.

Inadequate integration of systems and design thinking particularly when confronted with complexity – a topic “everyone” talks about.

Constraint of 2^nd generation design in which experts study users but remain the designers.

From this emerged the pioneering work on “translational consulting” in which similar to translational medicine there is focus on the unique organizational DNA of a client, on capturing lessons learned, and where an intervention must be individually designed, implemented and controlled/tracked. Another objective was to bring a greater degree of realism to computational thinking to make it more effective for teaching decision making processes.

To read more go here: Systems Wisdom