In this, our second installment on a series of articles on Systems Thinking, we discuss two excerpts (stated by Dr. Russell ACKOFF) on SYSTEMIC MANAGEMENT THINKING.

Interview Excerpts 3 and 4

— ACKOFF: “The basic managerial idea introduced by Systems Thinking is that to manage a system effectively, you must focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately.”

— ACKOFF: “The Western way of Management is to take a complex system, divide it into parts and then try to manage the each part as well as possible. And if that is done, the system “as a whole will behave well” — and that is absolutely false. Because it is possible to improve the performance of each part taken separately and destroy the system at the same time.”

EXCERPT 3: The basic managerial idea introduced by Systems Thinking is that to manage a system effectively, you must focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately.

To illustrate this concept, let's say you have been called by one of the senior managers in your organization — to help fix a problem encountered in one of the firm's key facilities.

Problem Scenario

The Operations Manager says that some workers in one of his Final Inspection teams are not performing well, and by his analysis, the cause is “traceable to a poor training program” — specifically an inappropriate training syllabus / curriculum.

Considerations : Although the Operations Manager attributes the root cause (of poor performance by some of the members on his team) to an “inappropriate training syllabus / curriculum”, it is your job to independently determine the problem(s), and then recommend a proposed solution.

For this specific problem, you decide to use a Systemic Approach to evaluate the issue — just to see if there are other factors that could be affecting the reported worker performance — other than the "assumed" root cause mentioned by the Operations Manager.

Your first step is to look deeper into relevant Training-related factors that could affect employee performance. After looking at your organization's Training System, you determine that the critical parts of the system include:

• Curriculum / Syllabus
• Venue
• Instructor
• Student
• Training Methodology
• Training Evaluation Method
• Training Requirement + Goals
• Customer Requirement

After some research and investigation, you note that there is a discrepancy between the Training Requirement + Goals (the Desired Outcome of the Training) vs the Customer Requirement (the Need of the Team under the Operations Manager — which is a part OUTSIDE the Training System).

Although the Training Goals defined for the program were being met — i.e. all trainees passed the course(s) — the ultimate 'consumer' of the Trainee was not satisfied with the result of the Training process.

Disconnects between parts of a System sometimes arise from failing to review how the parts interact (e.g. Training Requirements + Goals vs. Competency Requirements) — this should be done during the planning state, as well as on a periodic basis (as these interactions may change over time).

One way to prevent these issues would be to conduct initial AND regular reviews of system interactions (i.e. in this case, it would involve consulting the ultimate consumers of the Training Process — and see if the goals of the Training Programs still match their current competency or knowledge requirements).

Plus when looking at the interactions between the various parts of the system, the word “suitable” comes into mind. Are the following parts suitable for one another?

• Curriculum / Syllabus vs. Training Methodology
• Venue vs. Curriculum / Syllabus vs. Training Methodology
• Instructor vs. Curriculum / Syllabus vs. Training Methodology
• Student vs. Instructor vs. Training Methodology
• Training Evaluation Method vs Training Methodology
• Training Requirement + Goals vs. Training Evaluation Method
• Customer Requirement vs. Training Requirement + Goals

In some cases, one specific Instructor can be very effective in teaching a certain Curriculum using one specific Training Methodology, while being totally ineffective teaching the same Curriculum using a different Training Methodology. Again, it is the interaction between the different parts of a system that determine the overall effectivity of the system.

Note that these critical parts include the Planning, Doing, Checking and Acting (PDCA) functions of the system as well.

Your initial recommendation: To review the Training Requirement + Goals vis-a-vis the Customer Requirement (i.e. The requirements of the Operations Manager's Final Inspection Team[s]), and address / correct any discrepancies between the two.

However, this initial correction of discrepancies would only be the first step of many, as a change in one part will affect the other parts of the system. Some possible changes to the System could include:

• A facility wide review of Training Requirements + Goals vs. Customer Requirements — to ensure that both requirements are defined and harmonized
• A revamping of Training Evaluations Methods — due to the change in Training Goals
• A change in the Feedback mechanism TO AND FROM the Training Customer and the Training Process — to ensure swift and clear communication between these two components of the System

These changes in the System will be needed in order to ensure that the parts remain suitable for one another — thus ensuring smooth interactions between the different components of the System.

Key Points

Ensuring that the different parts of the system are performing well AND properly interacting with the other parts of the system will make the system easier to manage effectively.

Ensuring that the different parts of the system are suitable for one another will help prevent wastage, inefficiencies and interaction (e.g. coordination) issues in the long run.

Photo credit: Oliver Stollmann — Magnetic Resonance Imaging - Human brain side view

EXCERPT 4: The Western way of Management is to take a complex system, divide it into parts and then try to manage the each part as well as possible. And if that is done, the system “as a whole will behave well” — and that is absolutely false. Because it is possible to improve the performance of each part taken separately and destroy the system at the same time.

So taking the Training System scenario above as an example — even if you, let us say, are able to make all the attendees of training program get perfect scores (based on the requirements + goals of the program), this will not address the issue encountered by the Operations Manager.

In the same way, you can take steps to drastically improve the performance of the Instructor AND the effectivity of a Training Methodology — but if the Instructor is not suitable to the defined Training Methodology (or vice-versa), the Training System will be nowhere near the effectivity of a Training System using an Instructor that is suitable to the selected Training Method.

Key Points

Making the different parts of the system suitable for one another will make the system better — much better than if the various parts were taken and improved independently (with no regard with how the interact with the other parts of the system).

When managing a system, you must look at how the different parts WITHIN system interact with each other — as well as how they interact with parts (or systems) OUTSIDE the system. One important fact to keep in mind is that a system should always be evaluated in the context of how it interacts with other systems; as this interaction will affect its effectivity and / or performance.

This DIVIDE into PARTS and MANAGE Approach is very evident in some commonly used problem solving approaches — in particular the approaches that require the definition of a ROOT CAUSE.

By defining the ROOT CAUSE, you have effectively defined which part of the system you want to improve — which could effectively blind you (at least temporarily) to other possible factors to consider — as you are already working on the most important factor, the ROOT CAUSE.

We will discuss ROOT CAUSE and SYSTEMS THINKING in more detail in an upcoming article.

Conclusion

Dr. ACKOFF’s Systems Thinking theories were groundbreaking when he started discussing them in the 1970s. He wrote a book titled REDESIGNING THE FUTURE back in 1974 — wherein he defined the basic Systems Thinking assumptions we attribute to him today — and the theories described therein are still groundbreaking to this day.

It might be worth revisiting these concepts — just to see if they give us a way to help us manage our systems and processes better.

Related links on SYSTEMS THINKING

Systems Thinking: Ackoff excerpts — We recently came across a transcript an interview of Dr. Russell ACKOFF and Dr. W. Edwards DEMING — two giants in American Management Science. Here are two gems from that interview.