Systems thinking

[foofighter]

Recently I've been looking into work management and human interaction theory, and while the majority of current thinking is rather depressing in terms of the outlook, I have found one exception that seems to be using principles that are more of the STO kind. In particular, it focuses on knowledge as the foundation for management, of thinking about organizations as systems rather than adversarial functions, and on workers being in charge of how to do the work, and how to achieve the fundamental reason for the organization to exist: making customers happy. As a side-effect, it also causes huge cost-savings, but this is not considered as part of the method, it just happens naturally.

The method is called "Systems thinking", and is championed by a guy named John Seddon, who has studied the Toyota Production System, which focus on "economies of flow" instead of "economies of scale" as the western/Tayloristic/Fordian schools do. He has basically taken the philosophy of TPS and have adapted it to service organizations, which is fundamentall different from manufacturing. The result is a much more natural model for how work works, and what the role of the manager is (=working on improving the system rather than managing people).

He has done this working with mostly government in the UK (an ultimately very frustrating task), and looking at the cases he talk about and how they have been transformed, are amazing. Not only have the services become more qualitative, and faster, and cheaper, but since workers now are in control of the work, the morale is up, sickness is down, and there's an overall more healthier environment. All of this is, of course, completely against what the regime wants them to do, since none of the silly "targets" are met, and that is all that the regime cares about. That citizens are happy with the services, that costs are down, and that it just works so much better, is simply not something the inspectors are told to look for... completely insane, isn't it?

If you're interested in this topic, and want to know about this model, I would recommend reading Seddons books "Freedom from Command and Control" and "Systems Thinking in the Public Sector". If you just want a quick intro to what its all about, here's a one-hour presentation about it:
_http://vimeo.com/4670102

If anyone else is also working with human interaction management and work management, and you have some insight into the things Seddon talks about, I am really interested in finding out more about it. Thanks!

 

[Buddy]

If anyone else is also working with human interaction management and work management, and you have some insight into the things Seddon talks about, I am really interested in finding out more about it. Thanks!

Hi foofighter, here's some more info on the subject:

In the 1950's (After WWII) Dr. J. Edwards Deming headed up a small group that went to Japan to help sort out their war shattered manufacturing industry. Deming introduced ideas of 'Process Management' that placed the main focus on the customers of a product or service. Methods introduced included collecting statistics from the mass production activities, asking the workers that performed those processes to think of ways of improving them and making sure that each worker understood what he or she was doing. A little later down the road, this 'Process Management' evolved into 'Total Quality Management' (TQM).

The results were said to be extraordinary. Within a generation, Japanese industry soared and moved from building bicycles in sheds to worldwide dominance of high-value industries like building ships, cars and electronics. 'Japanese Methods' were reimported to the West, and institutionalized in ISO 9001, an international 'Quality' standard that focused on defining procedures for everything. While the expected benefits were not seen in general, some organizations that applied the work of Deming and his successors have seen staggering benefits. This is probably because for some organizations it seems to be to easy to fall into a mechanical process of a 'ticking and checking' routine, avoiding blame, and getting back to whatever they were doing before being 'interrupted' by quality consciousness.

During the early reintroduction of 'Japanese Methods', people from Japan returned to America, and showed the American workers how to ask interesting questions about their work, collect data, interpret the data wisely and improve processes. They showed them how to write down a description of their jobs, look at those descriptions and see if there might be any problems lurking. It was said that when people take control of their jobs with deep chain-link understanding of what the company is trying to do, how to contribute to the bottom line with full focus on the customer, their spirits naturally rise and workers feel empowered and get productive!

After many business failures, even with the Total Quality Management approach, TQM further evolved into the 'Systems Thinking' approach.
In Systems Thinking as advocated by Peter Senge[1] in The Fifth Discipline (Doubleday Business, 1994) you can see a collection of useful concepts and techniques, optimized for management problems. Useful, because Senge's approach isolates and identifies human archetypes at work that scale from the level of the individual to the company level (as below, so above and vice versa). Once you can discern the 'program' at work, you can then plug-in the solution.


-----------------------------------------------------
[1]

Peter Senge, founder of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT's Sloan School of Management, experienced an epiphany while meditating one morning back in the fall of 1987. That was the day he first saw the possibilities of a "learning organization" that used "systems thinking" as the primary tenet of a revolutionary management philosophy. He advanced the concept into this primer, originally released in 1990, written for those interested in integrating his philosophy into their corporate culture.

The Fifth Discipline has turned many readers into true believers; it remains the ideal introduction to Senge's carefully integrated corporate framework, which is structured around "personal mastery," "mental models," "shared vision," and "team learning." Using ideas that originate in fields from science to spirituality, Senge explains why the learning organization matters, provides an unvarnished summary of his management principals, offers some basic tools for practicing it, and shows what it's like to operate under this system. The book's concepts remain stimulating and relevant as ever. --Howard Rothman

Sources:
_http://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning-Organization/dp/0385260954
_http://www.employeedevelopmentsolutions.com/executives/performancemanagement.htm
_http://books.google.com/books?id=-1alI3xhwpcC&pg=RA1-PA130&lpg=RA1-PA130&dq=%22Dr.+J.+Edwards+Deming%22&source=bl&ots=70oZhhskG7&sig=Gl5Ayh3pWsHYWj_LPaXn3yNREcw&hl=en&ei=uKV7SrOPMpuMtgeS77n7AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=%22Dr.%20J.%20Edwards%20Deming%22&f=false

 

[foofighter]

The results were said to be extraordinary. Within a generation, Japanese industry soared and moved from building bicycles in sheds to worldwide dominance of high-value industries like building ships, cars and electronics. 'Japanese Methods' were reimported to the West, and institutionalized in ISO 9001, an international 'Quality' standard that focused on defining procedures for everything. While the expected benefits were not seen in general, some organizations that applied the work of Deming and his successors have seen staggering benefits. This is probably because for some organizations it seems to be to easy to fall into a mechanical process of a 'ticking and checking' routine, avoiding blame, and getting back to whatever they were doing before being 'interrupted' by quality consciousness.

I think the main reason they didn't see the benefits is because ISO 900(0/1/2) is the anti-thesis to the "Japanese methods". Seddon writes (_http://www.systemsthinking.co.uk/6-22.asp):
[quote author=John Seddon]
Without market-place coercion ISO 9000 would have withered long ago, for it has little inherent value. The problems are deeper than the madness portrayed in early reports (Oxford City Council insisting Morris Dancers get registered to ISO 9000), the Standard contains bad management theory. It is about as far from the ‘Japanese miracle’ as it is possible to get.

Toyota, the home of the ‘Japanese miracle’ tried ISO 9000 in one of its factories and promptly ceased its use for they found it to be of no value. Toyota stands as a beacon of sanity in its own country where automotive component manufacturers, because they supply world markets, are registering in such numbers that by 2006 four out of five cars in the world will be built by ISO 9000 registered players. The other one will be a Toyota. The Toyota system out-performs all other manufacturers on measures of market value, quality and efficiency.
[/quote]
In other words, the westerners didn't "get it", and all they really were able to see was "we gotta focus on quality" and then interpreted that in the Tayloristic terms that was in their vocabulary, which took it back to the Command&Control mentality that the Japanese were trying to avoid in the first place. From what I've read John Seddon really really detests ISO 9000, and for good reasons, and have even written a book on that topic specifically called "The Case Against ISO9000: How to Create Real Quality in Your Organisation" (_http://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Against-ISO9000-Quality-Organisation/dp/1860761739).

Here are some more clips where he describes systems thinking:
_http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=89A779EC502D006D&search_query=%22john+seddon%22

 

[Buddy]

In other words, the westerners didn't "get it",

Indeed, though there were some who apparantly did "get it" - at least at first. The way I understand what happened is that the ISO standards became disconnected from its essence - generalized to become a "standalone thing" and therefore lost its potency. Much like an individual disconnecting from his higher center and being left only with a mechanical 'process' to work with.

It may help to explore the context of Japan shortly after World War 2. They had been nuked. Twice. Can you imagine yourself in a survivor situation such as that? There were no more routines. Everything was new. Every day - maybe every moment - was a challenge to survive. Your mentality changes to one more like a hunter/gatherer with a concentrated awareness than a farmer with a preset daily/monthly/annual grind performing ritual-like actions.

You had no choice but to try and understand everything from a brand new perspective and to do what needs to be done to rebuild a personal economy if you and your family are to survive. So you work hard to 'see', you work hard to understand, you work hard period - and you don't stop working until you're forced to because you're a member of a group that wants to live. And there's a big mess to be cleaned up.

With that as your background, you try and understand everything about your business so that you have total control over what you produce and you get good at risk assessment - identifying and dealing with issues that could threaten your company/family/personal livlihood. Once you identify the methods for achieving this you document the general procedures of investigation that lead to this knowledge and control so that you can maintain the process and introduce it to new workers.

At this point, the concept of ISO 'standards' are integrated with the mind-set (thinking and discovery methods) necessary to implement the general procedures and so you bring the system to America. As always, some people are brighter, quicker and more able to think critically and understand the deeper meanings involved, and so they "get it" and begin using the investigative and documentation procedures to increase their effectiveness. Others are in different mind-sets. They are too mechanical; too comfortable to be bothered by anything new. Novelty upsets them and promotes an endorphin withdrawal or something. Their stress levels rise and they become confrontational or covert back-biters.

In such contexts, neither ISO nor anything else different will be helpful. The business/group is in a slow decline and the best thing to do is get out before you get sucked to the bottom with the STS entrophy.

Today, systems thinking can be a powerful antidote to mechanical entrophy because it reintegrates essence with the necessary physical motions toward the goal of deep understanding so that reality can be dealt with effectively. In an esoteric sense, it might even be said that it is the business version of the Fourth Way Work - effectiveness, as always, being linked to individual awareness and the necessary will to succeed.

 

[foofighter]

Thanks Buddy for great insights on this topic!

Indeed, though there were some who apparantly did "get it" - at least at first. The way I understand what happened is that the ISO standards became disconnected from its essence - generalized to become a "standalone thing" and therefore lost its potency. Much like an individual disconnecting from his higher center and being left only with a mechanical 'process' to work with.

Exactly, and I think this was one of the main reasons Ohno did not (like Gurdjieff) want to put a name on his "process": it would codify it, mechanize it, and stop people from thinking, which was the problem to begin with. Not only did the westerners put a name on it, but it was heavily codified, and at the same time twisted into its opposite. Like the constant deviations referred to in ISOTM, which eventually and inevitably leads the follower in the opposite direction.

It may help to explore the context of Japan shortly after World War 2. They had been nuked. Twice. Can you imagine yourself in a survivor situation such as that? There were no more routines. Everything was new. Every day - maybe every moment - was a challenge to survive. Your mentality changes to one more like a hunter/gatherer with a concentrated awareness than a farmer with a preset daily/monthly/annual grind performing ritual-like actions.

I had not thought about it like that, and it does put many other things into a new perspective for me. Suddenly I have a greater appreciation for my sensei's dedication, practicing martial arts in the Japanese military during those times, and some of the extreme tests he put to himself (like going underwater for twelve hours with only a straw to breathe through). I can see how it could simply be one persons way to cope with extreme circumstances.

In such contexts, neither ISO nor anything else different will be helpful. The business/group is in a slow decline and the best thing to do is get out before you get sucked to the bottom with the STS entrophy.

Yes, this seems to be the norm: it is chaotic, but still somewhat functioning, and so is not at a point where the participants of the hierarchy are drained enough to want to find a way out. Everyone is just surviving without rocking the boat.

Today, systems thinking can be a powerful antidote to mechanical entrophy because it reintegrates essence with the necessary physical motions toward the goal of deep understanding so that reality can be dealt with effectively. In an esoteric sense, it might even be said that it is the business version of the Fourth Way Work - effectiveness, as always, being linked to individual awareness and the necessary will to succeed.

That is what I was seeing too, hence the initial post. Thanks for the clarifications on this.

It's going to be very interesting going forward with this, and see how people will react to it, on different levels. So far the response has been positive, but I have a feeling that care and slow steps will be required to make it work.