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.
December 05, 2018
Russell Lincoln Ackoff: 10-week countdown to his 100th birthday (12 February 1919). Remembrance. Reverence. Reflection.
Harald Kreher
Harald Kreher
PhD, lic.oec.HSG. General Management Professional. "If you want to se... See more
Professor Russell Ackoff was a great scholar, educator, consultant ... and much more. Intellectual and pragmatic. Logician, mathematician, philosopher, ... , systemist.
He was and excelled at so many things. One could fill an encyclopedia with #s trying to do him justice. The following I want to choose - feeling awkward about it as I am fairly old-fashioned and myself not too at-, dis-, ex-tracted ;-) by what some filters and algos suggest to be of relevance, based on keywords. Nevertheless, today I give in a little because I think Russ had deserved that he catches attention by more than those who watch out for reference to his vast body of contributions anyway.
Three general types of problems entail different strategies. Continuing to seek solutions to tame problems when we face messes, let alone wicked problems, is potentially catastrophic hence fundamentally irresponsible. In our turbulent times, it is therefore becoming a strategic necessity to learn how to solve the right problems. Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem. Russell Ackoff (1974). But then, you may agree that it becomes morally objectionable for the planner to treat a wicked problem as though it were a tame one, or to tame a wicked problem prematurely, or to refuse to recognize the inherent wickedness of social problems. Rittel and Webber (1973).
"A friend of a friend is facing some push-back on the status of systems thinking as compared e.g. to managemen, psychology, other organisational thinking. This could potentially have impacts on her immediate career prospects.
So we are looking to create a collection of high profile organizations who have stated that we need more systems/holistic/joined-up/integrated/etc. thinkers to solve world problems."
Ellen Lewis contributed three stonking examples:
1. 2017, UN Chief Executives’ Board for Coordination described systems thinking as a “key way of working” and an essential “leadership characteristic” needed to respond to the “interconnectedness and indivisibility” of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
United Nations Chief Executives Board for Coordination, 2017 First regular session of 2017, summary of deliberations Added to Library: 30 Jun 2018Last Updated: 02 Jul 2018
2. In 2018, the Governance Directorship of the OECD declared that “the time for piecemeal solutions in the public sector is over” and they recommended the use of systems thinking to instigate innovative solutions to cross-cutting and complex issues. Governance Directorate of the OECD Embracing Innovation in Government Global Trends 2018 http://www.oecd.org/gov/innovative-government/embracing-innovation-in-government-2018.pdf
3. The International Council for Science (ICSU), which reports to the UN, has released a report saying that a massive shift towards systems thinking for coordinating the SDGs is needed. This report is more systems-focused than any I have seen before, and ICSU are putting their money where their mouths are: they are integrating themselves with the Social Science equivalent body, to have a more systemic approach themselves. https://www.icsu.org/cms/2018/04/Science-and-Technology-Major-Group-Position-paper-HLPF-2018.pdf
Presentation by Banny Banerjee who is Director of Stanford ChangeLabs, and teaches Design Innovation and Strategy at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (Stanford University's d.school). His area of expertise is the use of Design Thinking for strategic initiatives and large-scale transformations directed towards sustainable futures. He founded Stanford ChangeLabs, which has ongoing research in Innovation Methodologies and transdisciplinary initiatives aimed at developing a new field: Innovation of Scaled Transformations. His research initiatives are centered on processes, paradigms, and integrated strategies to address complex challenges such as the future of water, energy, governance systems, and organizational transformations. In this presentation, Banny looks at...
1. We are entering an era marked by rapid changes and profound questions. 2. Our dominant models of leadership are ill suited for these new class of challenges. 3. System Leadership is a new approach that is a leadership style better suited to scaled and complex challenges - it has implications at personal, organizational, and policy levels.
This is the first of eight segments recorded over two days at a Naval Training Facility in the 80's. In the first segment Russell Ackoff walks us though the progression of system science from mechanical, to organic, to social systems.
Dr. W. Edwards Deming understood, probably better than anybody on this planet, the power of connections in business. More importantly, he understood the impact connections had on business productivity, success and prosperity. Deming was the architect of Total Quality Management and recognized for his instrumental role in Japan’s industrial recovery and growth after the devastation of World War II. His grasp of the principles of efficiency, quality, innovation, employee involvement and the critical role of management to guide, inspire and nurture productivity is legendary.
We’re Trying To Do “The Wrong Thing Right” in Schools
By Will Richardson
Co-publisher of ModernLearners.com.
"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.”
Academy of Management Learning and Education Volume 1, Issue 1 September 2002
Russell L. Ackoff is one of the pioneers in management education. With an undergraduate degree in architecture and a PhD in philosophy, Ackoff is one of the founders of operations research and systems thinking, linking science and business. Influential in management thinking for the entire second half of the 20th century, Ackoff has published 22 books and over 200 articles in journals and books, on a myriad of topics. His illustrious academic career has played out primarily at Case Institute of Technology and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Such is the breadth and reach of his intellectual contribution that the Ackoff Center for Advanced Systems Approaches at the University of Pennsylvania was established as part of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Ackoff has consulted with more than 350 corporations and 75 governmental agencies in the United States and abroad. All have benefited greatly from his “out of the box” thinking and point of view.
Ackoff provides a particularly useful perspective for this the first issue of the Academy of Management Learning and Education. As you will see from what follows, Ackoff challenges much of current thinking about teaching and learning in terms of what is effective and what isn’t when the ultimate objective is to improve the learning process.
"Anyone familiar with my systems side knows that I treasure Russ Ackoff, whose three rules of system interdependency are never far from hand when approaching any system, human, natural, or mechanical. Any analysis of our own or of an opponent's system calls for them as they immediate flag disconnects and suboptimization. I summarize Ackoff’s rules of interdependency as:
Rule One: If you optimize a system, you will sub-optimize one or more components
Rule Two: If you optimize the components of a system, you will sub-optimize the system
Rule Three: The components of a system form subgroups that obey Rules One and Two
They show why a system can be so maddeningly complex, especially when its parts are examined in isolation to others and to their environment. It is Rule Three that so often brings an expression similar to that of the Sheriff Brody in the film, Jaws, when he turns from the shark to say, "We need a bigger boat." Indeed we do.
Ackoff corrects our commonly held view that a system is the sum of its parts. Instead a system is the product of the interactions of those parts: "…the essential properties that define any system are properties of the whole which none of the parts have." Ackoff likes to cite the automobile's essential property is to transport us from place to place, a property that no single part of the car can perform, i.e., once a system is dismantled, it loses its essential characteristic even if we retain its parts.
Ackoff zeroed in on the need for understanding (of a system or anything else) in "Mechanisms, organisms and social systems":
"One can survive without understanding, but not thrive. Without understanding one cannot control causes; only treat effect, suppress symptoms. With understanding one can design and create the future ... people in an age of accelerating change, increasing uncertainty, and growing complexity often respond by acquiring more information and knowledge, but not understanding."