ISSS Integrated Systemic Inquiry Primer Project (ISIPP)


Submitted by: Michael Ayers

'System problems' require 'system solutions', which in the language of this book means that we must aim at solving the larger system problems with solutions that not only satisfy the subsystems' objectives but also provide for the global system's survival.

Many of the problems arising in systems stem from the inability of managers, planners, analysts, administrators, and the like to differentiate between system improvement and system design. . . . The methods of science leading to system improvement have their origin in the scientific method and are known as the science paradigm. Those leading to system design stem from system theory and are known as the system paradigm.
John P. van Gigch

The system approach requires that all decision units be integrated to deal with a common problem regardless of their formal organizational boundaries. This is optimizing at the total-system level. To feel threatened that imposing a common language infringes on a certain kind of undefined freedom is to forget that the real threat is the threat of complexity, the threat that, unless we work to resolve the mutual problems existing among systems, the systems themselves will grind to a halt.
John P. van Gigch

...four basic features of self-organization that truly stood the traditional concepts of systems change on their head:
1) Self-organization is a self-generated and self-guided process. This means change is neither a hierarchically controlled not an externally driven process.
2) Self-organization moves beyond the idea of a system as an inert mass characterized by innate resistance to change. Instead, change is the activation of a system's inherent potential for transformation, i.e., its non-linearity.
3) Self-organization results from the utilization, even enhancement of random, accidental and unexpected events. Change, then, is not the suppression of chaos; it is order emerging out of chaos.
4) Self-organization represents a system undergoing a revolution prompted by far-from-equilibrium conditions. This is vastly different than the traditional model where change is nothing more than a mere shift in system functioning and a subsequent return to equilibrium.
Jeffrey Goldstein

1. If a system uses all of the knowledge that is has, it must be perfectly intelligent. These is nothing that anything called intelligence can do to produce more effective performance. If all the knowledge that a system has is brought to bear in the service of its goals, the behavior must correspond to what perfect intelligence produces.
2. If a system does not have some knowledge, failure to use it cannot be a failure of intelligence. Intelligence can work only with the knowledge the system has.
3. If a system has some knowledge and fails to use it, then there is certainly a failure of some internal ability. Something within the system did not permit it to make use of the knowledge in the service of one of its own goals, that is, in its own interests. This failure can be identified with a lack of intelligence. . . .
Intelligence as defined is not a measure, but a description of adequacy over the joint range of two complex domains, the system's goals and the system's knowledge.
Allen Newell

The components of a social system -- the humans -- have too much knowledge relative to how rapidly that can communicate it to each other. There is no way for a social group to assemble all the information relevant to a given goal, much less integrate it. There is no way for a social group to act as a single body of knowledge.
Allen Newell

The deterioration of the American economy and its enterprises is not a problem but a complex system of interrelated problems. I call such systems messes. A mess cannot be handled effectively by breaking it down into its constituent parts and solving each part separately. As we will see, the way problems and their solutions interact is much more important than how they act independently of each other.
Russell L. Ackoff

A system is a whole that contains two or more parts that satisfy the following five conditions.
1) The whole has one or more defining functions.
2) Each part in the set can affect the behavior or properties of the whole.
3) There is a subset of parts that is sufficient in one or more environments for carrying out the defining function of the whole; each of these parts is separately necessary but insufficient for carrying out their defining function.
4) The way that the behavior or properties of each part a system affects its behavior or properties depends on the behavior or properties of at least one other part of the system.
5) The effect of any subset of parts on the system as a whole depends on the behavior of at least one other subset. . . . If the parts of a corporation do not interact, they form an aggregation, not a system.
Russell L. Ackoff

How part of a system performs when considered independently of the system of which it is a part is irrelevant to its performance in the system of which it is a part. . . .
Supervision and command are the management of actions; coordination and integration are the management of interactions, and this requires leadership. The exercise of leadership does not necessarily require authority. . . . The defining function of a system cannot be carried out by any part of the system taken separately. . . .
Furthermore, when an essential part of a system is separated from the system of which it is a part, that part loses its ability to carry out its defining function.
Russell L. Ackoff

The educational system in general and business schools in particular treat analysis and thought as synonyms, but analysis is only one way of thinking.. Its product is not understanding but knowledge of systems, how their parts act and interact, how they work, their structure. Synthetic thinking is required to gain understanding of systems. Understanding comes from determining how they function in the larger systems of which they are part.
Russell L. Ackoff

A system, after all, is any unit containing feedback structure and therefore competent to process information. There are ecological systems, social systems, and the individual organism plus the environment with which it interacts is itself a system in this technical sense. The circumstance that the family as a unit came to be thought of as a system must lead back inevitably, I believe, to considering the individual as a system.
It follows that the ways of thinking evolved by psychiatrists in order to understand the family as a system. . . .The polarization of opinion then will not be simply between practitioners of individual therapy and practitioners of family therapy but between those who think in terms of systems and those who think in terms of lineal sequences of cause and effect. . . .
The basic rule of system theory is that, if you want to understand some phenomenon or appearance, you must consider that phenomenon within he context of all completed circuits which are relevant to it.
Gregory Bateson

The final state of the closed system is completely determined by initial circumstances that can therefore be said to be the best 'explanation' of that system; in the case of the open system, however, organization characteristics of the system can operate to achieve even the extreme case of total independence of initial conditions: the system is then its own best explanation, and the study of its present organization the appropriate methodology.
Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jackson

Prigogine's work on the evolution of dynamic systems demonstrated that disequilibrium is the necessary condition for a system's growth. He called these system dissipative structures because they dissipate their energy in order to recreate themselves into new forms of organization. Faced with amplifying level of disturbance, these systems possess innate properties to reconfigure themselves so that they can deal with the new information. For this reason, they are frequently called self-organizing or self-renewing systems. One of the distinguishing features is system resiliency rather than stability.
M. J. Wheatley

These ideas speak with a simple clarity to issues of effective leadership. They bring us back to the importance of simple governing principles: guiding visions, strong values, organizational beliefs -- the few rules individuals can use to shape their own behavior. The leader's task is to communicate them, to keep them ever-present and clear, and then allow individuals in the system their random, sometimes chaotic-looking meanderings. . . .
If we succeed in maintaining focus, rather than hands-on control, we also create the flexibility and responsiveness that every organization craves. What leaders are called upon to do in chaotic world is to shape their organizations through concepts, not through elaborate rules or structures.
M. J. Wheatley


Michael Ayers
IT Education Svcs\3M Center 224-2NE-02
PO Box 33224
St Paul MN 55133-3224
mbayers@mmm.com
Voice (612) 733-5690
FAX (612) 737-7718
- Ideas in this note represent the author's opinions and do not - intentionally represent the positions of anyone else in this galaxy.

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