Russ Ackoff, one of the most important #SystemsThinkers in the history of the discipline, issued this warning more than three decades ago. On the whole, #directors and #managers ignored the warning. Today most still have a massive “Systems Thinking Capabilities Gap.” It leaves them and their organisations dangerously exposed.
In this video he speaks only of management, but what he has to say applies equally to directors.
Given the #SystemsThinkingCapabilitiesGap is a very common problem, his warning is
as relevant today as it was then.
In this article I will include many video clips, so the story is told by Ackoff with additional comments from me.
The second clip provides the evidence in support of his statement. Keep in mind that this also applies to failings of #StrategicManagement, #RiskManagement, and #ProjectManagement.
Before proceeding, choose a system, such as health, to keep in mind as you consider the insights offered. I will use the #HealthSystem to illustrate some of my remarks.
In this third clip he explains what he believes to be the reason for the failures – most programmes have not been embedded into #SystemsThinking.
He then defines what a system is. The key point he makes is that a system is more than the sum of the behaviour of the parts. It is the product of their interactions, and all the parts are interdependent and interconnected.
Pause for a few minutes and reflect on what the implications are for the system you have in mind, or in relation to the health system.
As one example, we all know departmental and hierarchical #OrganisationalStructures create #siloes that impede the way the parts of the system interact. Gillian Tett called this The Silo Effect in her book with that title.
Hospitals feature a wide range of siloes that struggle to interact efficiently or effectively. They are not well embedded in a functional system. And in many ways they, and the thinking that goes on in them, are what Ackoff calls “anti-systemic,” I would argue.
In the next clip Ackoff explains the implications of this when we come to try to fix any problems in any system.
Pause again, to consider this last insight in relation to the system you had in mind, or in relation to the health system. How many efforts to improve that system are efforts to improve parts of it, with little consideration of the system as a whole?
In relation to health, a very large and complex system, almost all improvement efforts focus on improving parts of the system, not the system as a whole. As a result, in the UK we have hospital beds blocked because of a lack of home care provision for people to be discharged into. This is one obvious example.
Within health the examples run into their thousands. Failure to tackle the the causes and effects of diabetes holistically, by all the agencies involved in the systems, from prevention through to treatment and recovery where that is possible, is another example.
In this clip, he emphasises the key point.
He goes on to explain why our usual approach to improving a system is ineffective.
Ackoff then explains a basic principle behind the right approach to programme improvement, a principle that is usually ignored.
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