Systems Thinking with Dr. Russell Ackoff

In the following three videos Russell Ackoff provides a very understandable introduction to Systems Thinking. 

Part 1

Part 2  

• Automobile
  • Could you find out why the motor is in front by taking the car apart?
  • Could you find out why it's a six passenger vehicle by taking the car apart?
  • Could you find out why the English drive on the other side of the road by taking a British car apart?
• Why questions about objects called systems can not be answered by the use of analysis
  • Answers to why questions are called explanations
  • The product of explanations is understanding
  • Science produces no understanding, it produces knowledge
  • The product of analysis is how things work, never why they work the way they do.
• We needed a new way of thinking to provide explanation and therefore understanding
• Explanations always lie outside the system, never inside it
• Analysis takes you inside the system and how it works and provides knowledge, but not understanding
• Synthesis - another way of thinking which provides explanations of the behavior of the system
• Synthesis consists of three steps exactly the opposite of analysis
  • What is this a part of? Identify the containing whole of which this is a part.
  • Try to explain the behavior of the containing whole
  • Disaggregate the understanding of the containing whole by identifying the role or function of what I'm trying to explain in that whole.
• System - a system is a whole which is defined by its function in a larger system of which it's a part
  • Every system is contained in a larger system
  • Its role or function in that system is what defines it
  • For a system to perform its function it has essential parts
    • Essential parts are necessary for the system to perform its function but not sufficient
    • Implies that an essential property of a system is that it can not be divided into independent parts.
    • Its properties derive out of the interaction of its parts and not the actions of its parts taken separately.
• If you apply analysis to a system you take it apart and it loses all its essential properties, and so do its parts.
• A system is never the sum of its parts. It is the product of the interactions of its parts.

Part 3

• There are many places where making the performance of the part worse will improve the performance of the whole.
  • Architect knows this intimately
    • Architect draws the house first, the whole, then he adds the rooms, the parts
    • Systems principle - Only improve a room in a way that improves the house
    • If he can make the room worse and make the house better he will do it
    • Objective is to build the best house, not the best rooms
• Systemic thinking - consider the effect of changing the parts on the whole
  • Performance of a system depends on how the parts interact, never on how the parts act separately.
  • The fundamental thing that management in the new age must learn is how the parts of the system they manage interact, not how they act separately.
• There is no such thing as a production problem, marketing problem, financial problem, etc.
  • Over 90% of the problems that arise in a corporation are better solved somewhere other than where they appear.
• It's easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission.
• The only thing more difficult than starting something new is stopping something old.
• There is no way of running a risk-less transformation or revolution.
• If you want to create a transformation in an organization you must be willing to run the risk of initiating radical ideas and taking the consequences good or bad that will come with that.  

References

• Systems Thinking
• Systemic Perspective
• Beyond Continuous Improvement with Russell Ackoff
• Systems Based Improvement with Dr. Russell Ackoff
• ICSTM 2004 Keynote with Russell Ackoff
• Idealized Design
• Russell Ackoff Memories 

From SystemsWiki