12 articles on systems thinking
By H. William Dettmer
Part 1: An Introduction to the Systems Approach
Winners make things happen. Losers let things happen, or watch things happen and wonder what happened. —Unknown
There is a paradigm shift underway, from analytical thinking to systems thinking. In time, it will transform the way business is done, in commercial enterprise, government, and the not-for-profit sector. You can ride the leading edge of this wave, or you can swim like the devil to try to catch up with it arter it's passed.
We'll see how theory and sound methods will contribute to the challenge of learning more about our systems, how they function, and how to get improvement efforts right the first time.
Subtopics:
Analysis versus Synthesis
A Paradigm Shift
The Importance of Theory
The Scientific Method
Part 2: Business and the Blitzkrieg
Success depends on responsiveness and agility, which in turn depend on the independence of team members to act without constantly requiring approval. Such independence depends on their willingness to take initiative, which in turn rests on a climate of mutual trust (einheit), intuitive skill and capability (fingerspitzengefühl), the confidence and assurance of an implied mission contract (auftragstaktik), and an unswerving focus on the most important effort (schwerpunkt).
Subtopics:
Learning from Experience
Maneuver Warfare
The Conceptual Foundation of Blitzkrieg Tactics
Leading by Intent
Part 3: Destruction and Creation: Analysis and Synthesis
The core of Boyd's argument was that creativity was essentially the outcome of a process of analysis and synthesis, which he referred to as destruction and creation. Boyd suggested that new ideas and breakthrough solutions to particularly challenging problems resulted from mentally deconstructing multiple known existing concepts or processes, then selectively reassembling key elements to form a completely new concept—thus, the characterization as “destruction and creation.”
Subtopics:
Analysis Equals Reductionism
Deficiencies in Analysis
Synthesis: The Second Half of the Equation
Creativity and Synthesis: Building Snowmobiles
Paradigms
Our OWN Synthesis
Part 4: Operationalizing Sun Tzu: The O-O-D-A Loop
“O-O-D-A” is an acronym that stands for observe, orient, decide, and act. These are sequential activities that guide leaders to effective decisions. The act step that culminates this process ultimately produces changes in the environment that merit a new, subsequent round of observations, followed by a second cycle of orientation, decision, and action. Boyd suggested that individuals or groups that could cycle through these four steps faster than their adversaries had a tactical advantage. To the extent that they could execute the cycle two or more times faster than their opponents could complete one, they would actually increase the opposition's confusion about the competitive situation to such a degree that the opponent's efforts might totally collapse.
Subtopics:
The O-O-D-A Loop
Speed
Part 5: The Learning Organization: Adapt or Die!
The chief problem: people's world view becomes entrenched—static—while at the same time reality is anything but static. To the extent that there is a mismatch between an organization's orientation and reality, policies or practices based on that orientation become increasingly invalid or even irrelevant. Performance deteriorates and failures occur.
Subtopics:
The Learning Organization
Team Learning: What is it?
Team Learning Versus Teamwork
Systems Thinking: The Key to Effective, Efficient Teamwork
Observation and Orientation
The Solution
Part 6: Systems and Constraints: The Concept of Leverage
All systems, whether open or closed, are limited (or constrained) in some way. Organizational systems are no exception. What, exactly, is a system constraint? It's some factor that limits what the system can achieve. Were it not for this limiting factor, the rest of the system might be able to achieve much more in realizing its goal. The limiting factor may be internal or external to the system. It may be a physical component, a condition, or an imposed policy of some kind. Whatever it is, however, it does frustrate efforts from within the system to achieve better performance.
Subtopics:
The Pareto Principle
The Concept of a System Constraint
The System Constraint: An "Archimedes Point"
The Myth of Efficiency
Breaking Constraints: How Much Improvement?
Five Focusing Steps: A Prescription for Maximizing System Performance
Part: 7: Logical Thinking: The Categories of Legitimate Reservation
Decisions under uncertainty will always be...well, uncertain. But there are ways to reduce uncertainty to a reasonable level. One approach is to combine verifiable facts or evidence, to the extent that it is available, with logically verifiable causality. Most people are comfortable with the idea of basing decisions on facts or evidence, but they're less certain about how logic and facts combine to provide the best available basis for decision making.
Subtopics:
Epistemology
The Three Decision-Making Conditions
Intuition
Mathematical Models or Simulations
Making Better Decisions Under Uncertainty
Rules of Logical Causality: The Categories of Legitimate Reservation
Part 8: Policy Analysis: What to Change,What to Change To, and How to Make the Change
The thinking process is a tool of unique capability. Governed by the Categories of Legitimate Reservation, it provides a rigorously logical cause-and-effect picture of the reality as it exists now, and as it might exist in the future. As no other tool does, it excels at revealing the complex interdependencies among system components, and between the system and its environment.
Subtopics:
Formal or Informal
Policies Obsolesce
Identifying and Changing Obsolete Policies
The Logical Thinking Process
An Example: The Solomon Trees
Part 9: Strategic Navigation: Strategy Development and Deployment
By losing your goal, you have lost your way. —Friedrich Nietzsche
Even a breakthrough idea is only an idea. It doesn't become a robust solution until and unless its effects are thoroughly mapped out, the "law of unintended consequences" accounted for, and the effectiveness of the strategy in reaching the goal is validated. The process of doing all this is, in effect, the creation and logical verification of a strategy. This is the heart of the strategy development process. Besides creating a new "map," it also ensures that the map truly leads logically to the desired outcomes. A key part of this map is the major initiatives or projects that must be implemented to produce the desired directional change.
Subtopics:
Strategic Planning
The Systems Approach
The Constraint Management Model
Part 10: Leadership in Complex Systems
"Leadership" is one of the most-used and most-abused words in the English language. Yet few people can agree on a common definition for it. Leadership is different from management, through the two words are often (erroneously) used interchangeably. Leadership is closely related to power—and power comes from sources other than just formal authority.
Subtopics:
What Is It?
Manager or Leader?
Our Definition
Leadership: Essential to Effective Systems
Leadership and the Blitzkrieg
The New Leadership Conflict
Part 11: The Wingman Concept: Security and Reinforcement
The wingman concept is based on three characteristics one might even call them virtues: loyalty, integrity, and commitment. The similarity between the blitzkrieg concepts of einheit (mutual trust) and auftragstaktik (moral contract) between the leader and the led, or between contemporary team members, is not coincidental. In formation flying perhaps the ultimate expression of coordinated behavior and especially in combat situations, trust among air crews must be complete and unequivocal. Loyalty, integrity and commitment of each air crew (both leader and wingmen) to one another and to the successful execution of the mission essential and unquestioned. Lives depend on it.
Subtopics:
The Wingman Concept
The Foundation of the Wingman Concept
The Wingman in Business
A Mutual Reinforcement Culture
Part 12: Logic and Emotion in Changing Minds
“When you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” —Framed needlepoint reputedly on the wall of the office of Charles Colson, President Nixon’s legal counsel in 1973
A paradigm-changing decision, such as the embrace of new management methods or products, is more likely when a company and its executive find themselves in a “survival” situation, where they must do something different or die. If things are going “okay”—not great, but not that bad, either—the odds are very low that an executive will embrace a revolutionary change…
Subtopics:
Change and Risk
The Technology Adoption Life-Cycle
Mental Models
Evolutionary Psychology
Paradigms
Synthesizing Everything
Mental Models: The Role of Security and Satisfaction
Executive Acceptance
Implications
How New Ideas “Get In.”
Executive-Led Change
A Change Implementation Model
Behavioral Reinforcement
About author:
H. WILLIAM "Bill" DETTMER. Senior Partner. Author of The Logical Thinking Process (ASQ Quality Press, 2007) and Breaking the Constraints to World-Class Performance (ASQ Quality Press, 1998), two books around which Goal Systems International's Thinking Process Course is based; Strategic Navigation (ASQ Quality Press, 2003); and Brainpower Networking Using the Crawford Slip Method (Trafford Publishing, 2003). Co-author (with Eli Schragenheim) of Manufacturing at Warp Speed (CRC St. Lucie Press, 2000).
Twenty-three years' experience in military operations, logistics, strategic planning, operational planning, training, large-scale systems deployment, project management, and contracting. Eight years graduate level teaching of systems management, systems analysis, human factors, management control systems, organizational behavior and development, Theory of Constraints, Total Quality Management, and management of research, development, testing, and evaluation. Studied constraint theory and tools at the Avraham Y. Goldratt Institute of New Haven, Connecticut. Teaches the TOC Thinking Process, Strategy Development, and Simplified Drum-Buffer-Rope courses. B.A., Rutgers University, 1966. M.S., University of Southern California, 1982. Adjunct faculty, University of Southern California, 1988-1997.
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