Knowledge is transmitted through instructions, which are the answers to how-to questions. 

Understanding is transmitted through explanations, which answer the why questions. Herein lies a very fundamental difference. 

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Corporations and corporate managers do not understand the importance of this difference. They tend to have a lot of knowledge but little understanding of the complex systems they manage and the environments in which they operate. 

To echo Peter Drucker, they tend to manage things right rather than manage the right things. The righter (more effiŽciently) they managed the wrong thing, the wronger (less effective), they become. 

Russell L. Ackoff

‎”Analysis” breaks a system down into its parts, tries to explain the behavior of these parts, and then attempts to aggregate this understanding into an understanding of the whole. It cannot succeed because when a system is taken apart it loses all its essential characteristics and so do its parts. A disassembled automobile cannot transport people and a motor taken out of it cannot move anything, even itself.

“Analysis”, applied to systems, and therefore corporations, can only yield knowledge of how the system works, but never an understanding of why it works the way it does.

“Synthetic” thinking is a way of thinking about and designing a system that derives the properties and behavior of its parts from the functions required of the whole. The whole as properties that none of its parts have.
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“Analysis” of a system reveals how it works but “synthetic” thinking is required to explain why it works the way it does. “Systems thinking” integrates the two.
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Russell L. Ackoff

Jazz musicians knows about alignment. There is a phrase in jazz, “being in the groove,” that suggests the state when as ensemble “plays as one.” These experiences are very difficult  to put into words – jazz musicians talk about them in almost mystical terms: “the music flows  through you rather from you.”   But they are no less tangible for being hard to describe. I have spoken to many managers who have been members of teams that performed  at similarly extraordinary levels. They will describe meetings that lasted for hours  yet “flew by,” not remembering “who said what, but knowing when we had really come to a shared understanding, “ of “never having to vote – we just got to a point of knowing what we needed to do.”

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From the 5^th discipline book..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOfZL_J5fo&feature=share This is a good example for applying systems thinking: لما حبوا يحسنوا نظام التعليم في فنلندا غيروا كله على بعضه : (هو راسل أكوف (Russell Ackoff) راحلهم فنلندا ولا ايه !؟ :-)) - ما بقاش فيه KGs .. الطفل بيدخل المدرسة في سنو السابعة (لأن عندهم الطفل طفل ..) - مابقاش فيه تعليم خاص .. مدرسة عامة فقط! - رفعوا من شأن المدرسين - ادبيا وماديا والاهم علميا! - الأولاد بيقلعوا الجزم خارج المدرسة .. الشعور بالراحة شئ مهم - … - More importantly, it’s about collaboration in opposed to competition - Success is not measured in winners and losers - Learning is more like a “team” game - it seems that the best learning outcome in any subject is when people taught together. - It’s about having fun, it’s about teamwork and working collaboratively - Education is about learning not teaching .. Just remember Russell Ackoff’s words: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzS5V5-0VsA&feature=related) ———————————— “The only way that we can think creatively about the system is to assume it was destroyed last night – it no longer exist.” – a vice president of the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1950’s. The argument goes line that, “the way to get to the best outcome is to imagine what the ideal solution would be and then work backward to where you are today.” And remember that, “the righter you do the wrong thing, the wronger you become.” - Russell Ackoff ———————————- Other videos related to the edu system in Finland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlYHWpRR4yc&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntdYxqRce_s&feature=related

Single Loop learning - as the most common style of learning is just problem solving – improving the system as it exists. This type of learning solves problems but ignores the question of why the problem arose in the first place.

Double-Loop learning - involves questioning the underlying assumptions behind techniques, goals and values. Double loop learning uses feedback from past actions to question assumptions underlying current views.


The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. [- from a words of Einstein] You have to rise above it to the next level

- By Rainer Falle, https://www.facebook.com/RainerFalle

A very interesting story and very interesting concept and approach for “real” improvement – you can listen to any of the following talks:

-          http://www.organizationaldynamics.upenn.edu/node/2008 (29 min video, Bell Telephone System Lecture, by Russel Ackoff)

-          http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1540 (A quick review, audio (15 min) and text, of the “Idealized Design” book for the same author)

The idea is based on the following points:

-          “The only way that we can think creatively about the system is to assume it was destroyed last night – it no longer exist.” – a vice president of the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1950’s. 

-          The argument goes line that, “the way to get to the best outcome is to imagine what the ideal solution would be and then work backward to where you are today.” 

-          If you could whatever you wanted to right now to replace it, what would you do if you were completely unconstrained? So, “If you don’t know what you would do when you can do whatever you want, right now, then how can you possibly know what to do when you can’t do whatever you want?

-          That forces you to study the whole instead of the parts taken separately.

-          Working on removal of deficiencies of the system (at hand) is not really a true “improvement”. By systemic concept you point out the getting rid of what you don’t want is not equivalent to getting what you do want; that improvement has to be directed towards what you want, not away from what you don’t want.

-          There is a fundamental difference between “doing the thing right” and “doing the right thing.” Actually, the righter you do the wrong thing, the wronger you become. Doing things right is about efficiency, while doing the right thing is about effectiveness and real improvement.  

-          ‎”The essential or defining properties of any system are properties of the whole which none of its part have.” The system, by definition, is a whole that consists of parts each of which can affect its behavior or its properties. All parts of the system are inter-dependent. No part, or collection of parts, of the system has an independent effect on it. Therefore, the system as a whole cannot be divided into independent parts.  ”The system is not the sum of behaviors of its part, but it’s a product of their interactions.”

What does that mean? It means that, “if we have of a system improvement that’s directed to improving the parts taken separately, you can absolutely sure that the performance of the whole won’t be improved.”

-          So, in idealized design, you design the system as a whole and then derive the property of the parts from the properties of the whole as opposed to analytical design where you start by taking the parts and extracting the properties of the whole from the characteristics of the parts.  

-          At the end of the mail, there is a brief of how’s the systemic thinking (synthesis) works in oppose to the traditional analytic thinking.  

More important points are found in the additional sections below.

More interesting short videos about the same subject, by the same author, Russel Ackoff:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo&feature=related (17 min), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzS5V5-0VsA&feature=related (10 min), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdBiXbuD1h4&feature=relmfu, (3 parts, about 7 min each)

Thanks,

سـﺑפآڼ الله ۆﺑפﻣڍھ … ﺳﺑפآڼ الله آﻟﻋظيم

—————- Another true story that give a marvelous example about how this is work ——————————

A story that’s showing how to apply the synthesis (systems thinking) described below to the “largest” system under your control and then how to enlarge the circle of improvement:

A sixth-level manager at Kodak, Henry Fayette, who was in charge of the corporate computing center, one of three computing centers at Kodak – there are two others which are much larger than his – took his center and assume it was destroyed last night and redesigned it from scratch within a system that was unchanged. When he completed that and implemented it, he got remarkable improvement and effectiveness, and it got a lot of attention.

So that he sat down, and the next exercise he went through was if he could change Kodak so as to enable him to do even better, what would he do? And his answer was he would combine the three computing centers. The heads of the other two computing centers were impressed by his argument.  They formed a joint team and assumed that all computing at Kodak were destroyed last night and redesigned it from scratch and came out with a single computing center. They proposed this to management, and it was accepted.

Now, the telecommunications unit at corporate headquarters watched all this, thought it was very interesting. And so they went through the same exercise and ultimately combining three telecommunication units into one. Then the telecommunication units and the computing units formed a joint team to talk about the idealized redesign of their joint effort. They made a proposal to the corporation that it be unified into a corporate technology department which was done. That department now did a study of … if they could start over from scratch, how much of their activity would be dome within the corporation and how much outside. And much to their surprise, they found out the skills required to improve their activity lay more outside the corporation than outside, and that led them to form the joint venture with IBM to do all the computing for Eastman Kodak and Digital Computing to do all the telecommunications for the company.

Now there’s a successive enlargement of the system its design incorporating larger systems over which they had no control, but which they could influence by the power of the ideas.

————————— A need for a new way of thinking; the “systems thinking” ——————————

Analytical thinking allows you to analyze the system at hand in a way that let you describe its behavior, its structure; it allows you to answer the “how?” question. Yet, it never helps you answering the “why?” question.

So, we [Ackoff and his colleagues] had to develop a new way of thinking;  the “systemic thinking” [,or sometimes it’s called “synthesis”]

Synthesis, or systems thinking, allows you to truly understand the system and answer the “why?” question. Actually, it also has 3 steps (the same numbers of step for the traditional  analysis), and each single step is interestingly quite the “opposite” to the corresponding step in analysis! 

You can deliver a product with a high performance, high usability, latest technology, plenty of good features, tremendous design of extendibility, durability, .. and so on with every dimension of the quality, and still.. still delivering the “wrong” product and the real business problem remains the same or even gets worse..

From here it comes: “the righter you do the wrong thing, the wronger you become.”

in fact, “doing the right thing is very crucial.. 

Here is another link which is quite related to the same subject: “Idealized Design” book review (text and audio).

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1540

It includes the original story about “assume your system destroyed last night” – it’s very interesting J

Here is another talk quite related to the same subject of “doing the right thing” .. it’s about education.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2032

To me, it’s so important – it’s paradigm shift!

“The only way that we can think creatively about the system is to assume it was destroyed last night – it no longer exist.” – a vice president of the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1950’s. 

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This 29 min video illustrates to you how to apply such approach. Please reserve a time to watch it and here I just extract a couple of points trying to complete the picture of that theory and the above example: (http://www.organizationaldynamics.upenn.edu/node/2008)

(*) Everything else (other than the system) remain as is (i.e., no change.. the only your system is the one that’s destroyed) 

(*) Think out of the box in improvement the system under 2 basic assumptions (or constraints) :

      1.The new redesign should be technological feasible. You should spend good time    with the team to explore what the technological feasibility 

      2. The design we re-produced must be operationally viable; it can be survived within the world surrounds it, i.e., the larger system.  

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The concept or argument behind this is as follow:

“Now, if you could whatever you wanted to right now to replace it, what would you do if you were completely unconstrained? His argument was, “If you don’t know what you would do when you can do whatever you want, right now, then how can you possibly know what to do when you can’t do whatever you want?” That forces you to study the whole instead of the parts taken separately.”