The map is not the territory.
—Alfred Korzybski
This column is a tribute primarily to Jamshid Gharajedaghi, a long-time teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend. My wife Carole and I recently visited him while in Philadelphia doing a presentation for the International Society for Performance Improvement on our new book, The Transformative Workplace: Growing People, Purpose, Prosperity and Peace (Transformations Press Unltd., 2015).
ADVERTISEMENT |
Our journey in search of knowledge and skill around continual improvement, of course, began with W. Edwards Deming. He taught us about the Chain Reaction, the 14 Points, the Deadly Diseases, and Profound Knowledge. He also taught us how to quantitatively improve a system. We continue to think he knew more about how to improve a system than anyone. As we began our practice of trying to help others learn how to improve their own systems, from time to time we ran up against a system that was in such bad shape that it really deserved to be blown up and reinvented (think American healthcare and K-12 education during the ‘90s). While Dr. Deming acknowledged the importance of innovation as part of the tool kit necessary for transformation, he provided little help in being grandly innovative.
Carole and I went in search of someone who might help us understand how best to design or redesign a system rather than just improve it. We went to Peter Senge, who added much to our knowledge of systems but hardly anything about design itself. We spent time with Gerald Nadler, a true systems thinker who also knew how to design or redesign a system, but we were uncomfortable thinking about how to personally apply and teach his methodology to others.
Finally, we shared our frustration with Vic Leo, an old colleague from my days at Ford. Vic suggested we contact Russ Ackoff. We did. Russ said he was too tied up in the immediate future to help, but that his partner, Jamshid Gharajedaghi, might be willing to help. We said, “Who?” We went ahead and contacted Jamshid and began a most wondrous, nearly 20-year friendship. Jamshid and Russ had jointly created a technology called Interactive Design and Management. Jamshid taught it to us and helped us teach it to and apply it with several clients. Carole and I believe it continues to be the best technology out there for designing and redesigning a system. See Jamshid’s book, Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999) for the best published summary of the details.
Before I continue, however, I must talk about systems because the word holds so many meanings. When I first went to school, systems to me represented mechanical/electrical feedback systems. In graduate school, systems became shorthand for matrix management. These days, it seems systems mean digital, data processing systems. Jamshid and Russ take a much broader view. For them and for Carole and me, a system is a set of interdependent components forming a complex/intricate whole. Furthermore, the systems Jamshid discusses are alive and social, and have purpose, boundaries, inputs, and outputs. There is much more.
The most common examples of these systems are organizations, enterprises, teams, communities, departments, sectors, governmental bodies, and on it goes. Hopefully, you get the idea.
The first thing Jamshid points out is it is not possible to fully understand a complex social system. The best way to attempt to get a partial, yet useful, understanding of such a system is to look at it from as many perspectives as possible. He and Russ offer a few.
Context
To begin to understand the context within which the system lies, we might, for example, ask:
• Who are the stakeholders?
• What are their needs and expectations?
• Who are the competition, and what are they up to?
• What does the world that is holding the system look like, and how is it changing?
Mission
To begin to understand the mission of the system, we might, for example, ask:
• What purpose does the system serve for the customer?
• What purpose does the system serve for all the other external stakeholders?
• What purpose does the system serve for the internal stakeholders?
Functions
Beginning fulfilling the mission to the external customers and moving to fulfilling the mission to the internal customers:
• What does the system do to serve customers?
• What specific products does the system provide?
• What specific services does the system provide?
Processes
Using a deployment or, in some instances, a more appropriate flowcharting technique, describe in detail, with special emphasis on actual rework, inspection, bottlenecks, and decisions (these four characteristics provide particularly pregnant opportunities for improvement), these primary processes:
• Throughput
• Decision-making
• Control, learning, and improvement, including what metrics are important to track and improve
Structure
Describe the system structure in these three ways:
• What does the organization chart look like?
• What are the system’s physical structures such as land, buildings, equipment, and tools?
• What software is used, and how is it used?
Dimensions
Five dimensions are generated and disseminated in any system. How robustly and widely are each of these dimensions generated and disseminated?
• Wealth
• Truth
• Values
• Power
• Beauty, including natural, built, celebratory, and connection beauty
These characteristics of a system are just a start, but they do provide a relatively broad and robust set of perspectives for describing, examining, and improving a system. Since they are all obviously interconnected, I suggest you start your Six Sigma work by taking a brief look at these perspectives and any other you think relevant for the system you are attempting to improve. Use this little exercise as a way to further operationally define the boundaries of the system on which you are working. Unclear system boundaries are yet another common cause for failed improvement efforts. Once you understand what they are and how they interact, at least at a superficial level, then you can start the PDSA or DMAIC cycle.
As always, I treasure your comments and questions.
Comments
Indeed, thinking about Systems Thinking
David,
Jamshid Gharajedaghi’s Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity: A Platform for Designing Business Architecture (1999) has been a long-time favorite. In some parts of my copy there are more yellow highlights than not. Even so, I would find it quite a challenge to contend “Dr. Deming … provided little help in being grandly innovative” and to imply he was not “a true systems thinker who also [did not] knew how to design or redesign a system.”
In his book, The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, Dr. Deming offers: “What ignited Japan? The flow diagram in Figure 6 was the spark that in 1950 and onward turned Japan around. It displayed … a system of production.”
An aspect of Dr. Deming’s system of production is “Design and redesign,” as the follow-on from “Generation of ideas” and “Consumer research.”
Now, consider that a “system of production” may be a leadership system, a management system, an operations system, or a sustainment system, predominately. Then, orthogonal to the system of production is the nature of the system, ranging, say, from technical to social, from cognitive to physical, from tangible to intangible, from soft to hard, etc. Also, systems of production need not correspond to an organization chart, as systems of production are ubiquitous.
Therefore, a system of production might give rise to a “grandly innovative” design or redesign, just it might give rise to a design or redesign for “improvement.” Dr. Deming’s flow diagram display inhibits neither. And so might your usage of the term “grandly innovative” be but another term for Deming’s use of the word “spark?” And might Dr. Deming’s work with Japan be an example of “grandly innovative?”
Finally, for me, the nature of Systems Thinking varies… Deming, Ackoff, Senge, Sterman, Meadows, Gharajedaghi, Jesus, Gandhi, MLK, Kohn, Mother Teresa, and many others. Thus I take Systems Thinking as a synthesis rather than as an analysis of who did or did not do what. Moreover, it seems to me Systems Thinking is, by nature, also ubiquitous. After all, what is not a system of production?
Add new comment