[HN Gopher] A Lifetime of Systems Thinking
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A Lifetime of Systems Thinking
Author : gorm
Score : 195 points
Date : 2021-06-06 12:39 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thesystemsthinker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thesystemsthinker.com)
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > The interactive manager plans backward from where he wants to
| be ideally, right now, not forward to where he wants to be in the
| future.
|
| I'm having trouble understanding this point. Is he saying the
| interactive manager looks backwards at what he might have done
| differently in the past, to be in a better place today? Would a
| better term for this be a "retrospective manager"?
|
| Or does this mean something else?
| dminor wrote:
| I think he's saying the interactive manager doesn't guess what
| the future will be and plot a course for success in that
| future, but rather asks what would be ideal right now and plots
| a course to achieve that ideal.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| There was a recent Chess topic[0] that should help explain
| better.
|
| Basically all the engines in Chess start with the present
| position, and try to look into the future move by move. To be
| able to find the winning position like that is almost
| impossible for the position they were looking at. And yet, if
| you give the idea to an average Chess player, they will work
| out how to get a Checkmate. They will do so by finding Mate,
| then working back on how to get the board to that state. They
| will find the winning position when they reach the current
| state.
|
| He's simply taken this idea and generalized it further to more
| than Chess.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27188854
| solatic wrote:
| > The educational system is not dedicated to produce learning by
| students, but teaching by teachers--and teaching is a major
| obstruction to learning.
|
| Yes and no. Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt has a different
| take (one I agree with), which argues that the educational system
| is dedicated to producing political discipline. Yes, this serves
| the interest of the teachers, and no, the system is not designed
| to produce learning. But it's highly arguable whether you could
| truly design, build, and sustainably run an institution which
| reliably produces autodidacts and independent thinkers,
| particularly at higher levels, particularly since it's difficult
| to impossible to measure how reliably such an institution is
| succeeding at its mission.
| charles_f wrote:
| I think the point here is on instructionism vs. constructionism
| - learning by experience (constructing things) seem to work
| better and in particular for long term assimilation than
| learning from instructors telling you. I think Epstein was
| putting it in Range as something along the lines of "you need
| to struggle to really learn". Constructionism can take many
| forms, from hands on projects and workshops, to frequent
| internships and apprenticeships.
| solatic wrote:
| Right. My point is that I'm not convinced that hands-on
| projects and workshops, when force-fed to students within the
| context of a course taken at an educational institution, is
| inherently more effective than any other teaching method. As
| someone whose career is in software engineering, and who
| never had much interest in any of the sciences outside
| software engineering, I certainly remember having to do
| hands-on projects in required chemistry, biology, and physics
| courses... not that I remember much, if any, of it at all.
| The vast majority of true academic learning is self-directed,
| and the value of experience is in making mistakes that you
| are forced to bear the consequences of. "Consequences" do not
| really exist in a classroom (almost by definition), and
| grades (particularly in an era of grade inflation that
| renders them largely meaningless) do not count.
| timepaas1977 wrote:
| Shiva Aayadurai also had some great content on this topic.. we
| need more of such people to carry the message forward in next
| generations
| gumby wrote:
| > Effective research is not disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or
| multidisciplinary; it is transdisciplinary... Disciplines are
| taken by science to represent different parts of the reality we
| experience. In effect, science assumes that reality is structured
| and organized in the same way universities are.
|
| Not just the sciences. Rigid, path-dependent taxonomies are a
| plague in all disciplines and in daily life.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| it's especially a plague in medicine, though I'm reliably
| informed that a new movement within the medical establishment
| called integrative medicine may help to start treating human
| health as a system, not a collection of disparate parts.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I don't know if it's a plague. I see value in both approaches
| and going to one extreme or the other seems unhealthy. You want
| generalists to be working with specialists. Just generalists or
| just specialists won't perform as well as a healthy mix and
| going to one extreme let's the other outcompete you in certain
| areas.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| the plague is that right now we _are_ going to one extreme -
| the extreme of separation and specialisation. Systems
| thinkers want the two integrated, they don't want to throw
| out analysis and replace it with synthesis, they want the
| combination (synthesis!) of the two.
| gumby wrote:
| The reason I say "plague" is that effort and discussion
| (not just public discussion) focus on the map, not the
| territory itself.
|
| Just look at us politics today: the discussions around
| "infrastructure" and "defense" are hobbled by the
| descriptions of those words rather than addressing the
| structural issues themselves.
| karmakaze wrote:
| It's the guy, Russell Ackoff! I still remember reading all about
| Systems Thinking from year 1. Do they still use the same material
| in Systems Design Engineering?
| kqr2 wrote:
| The _Six Revelations_ from the article:
| Improving the performance of the parts of a system taken
| separately will not necessarily improve the performance of the
| whole; in fact, it may harm the whole. Problems are
| not disciplinary in nature but are holistic. The
| best thing that can be done to a problem is not to solve it but
| to dissolve it. The healthcare system of the United
| States is not a healthcare system; it is a sickness and
| disability-care system. The educational system is
| not dedicated to produce learning by students, but teaching by
| teachers--and teaching is a major obstruction to learning.
| The principal function of most corporations is not to maximize
| shareholder value, but to maximize the standard of living and
| quality of work life of those who manage the corporation.
| charles_f wrote:
| I liked the article ; one additional lesson I got from it is that
| you should not change your writing paradigm mid post. The first
| few bullets are things that he's disproving. Then they're things
| he concluded. I had to read again to understand he changed his
| writing
| ryanschneider wrote:
| > The principal function of most corporations is not to maximize
| shareholder value, but to maximize the standard of living and
| quality of work life of those who manage the corporation.
| Providing the shareholders with a return on their investments is
| a requirement, not an objective.
|
| I love this quote. At first it sounds very critical, but thinking
| about it more it reveals something deeper: companies are a
| collection of people, if those people aren't satisfied with the
| work they will move on and delivering value to investors will be
| that much harder. So maximize for worker happiness while
| delivering enough ROI to your investors, not the other way
| around.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The thing to remember is people are nearly _always_ motivated
| by selfish impulses, not altruism. (Even the most dedicated
| communists in the USSR still participated in the black market.)
|
| Any system that relies on people being selfless is doomed to
| failure.
|
| (Even charity work is selfishly motivated - people like the
| status they get from donating to charity, praise from their
| social circle, and feeling good from doing it.)
| neolog wrote:
| So a system that relies on people being altruistic can work
| fine as long as people feel good about being altruistic?
| znpy wrote:
| > So maximize for worker
|
| Uh, the article explicitly mentions "those who manage the
| corporation" not "those who work for the corporation".
|
| You're thinking of regular workers, but i would bet 10$ that
| the author is thinking about upper management (not even team-
| leaders or middle-managers).
| [deleted]
| ethanbond wrote:
| All the way down to the person managing a single grill on the
| kitchen line, everyone is managing something. Their ability
| to steer the org toward their own quality of life
| improvements is dependent upon the scope of their management,
| but indeed everyone holds the exact same objective.
| Nowado wrote:
| Surely that was the intended meaning. When one says
| 'managerial class' it's clearly referring to those managing
| grills.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Where does the author say managerial class in relation to
| this statement?
|
| When one says "social system," as this author actually
| does, do you think he arbitrarily excludes people below a
| certain pay grade?
| Nowado wrote:
| Huh.
|
| I did reread that part and I was clearly wrong. You are
| absolutely correct, it refers to a wider category.
|
| Now I kinda want to take person up the comment chain on
| their bet.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I haven't read any Ackoff but I've read a decent bit that
| is clearly in the intellectual orbit (e.g. Weick) and you
| would win that bet.
|
| The entire basis of their analysis is that these
| arbitrary distinctions people propagate in common
| parlance are not real.
| trixie_ wrote:
| I'm not a huge fan of this quote because it's an opinion
| presented as a fact.
| jhayward wrote:
| The entire article is basically "conclusions from a lifetime
| of systems thinking". Of course it is opinion (a conclusion),
| explicitly so.
| slumdev wrote:
| It reads like a descriptive statement, not a normative one,
| because it calls out specifically that the corporation
| enriches its _management_ , not its employees.
| abecedarius wrote:
| > to maximize the standard of living and quality of work life
| of those who manage the corporation.
|
| Considering that managers compete to climb the hierarchy, I'm
| surprised to hear this claim from a systems thinker. It'd
| predict that managers work 40 hours or less per week, for
| example.
|
| "Corporate behavior is shaped by managers shaped by this
| competition" seems a more realistic starting point.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Yes. And also acknowledge that "happiness" can mean vastly
| different things to different groups of people. Thus the
| culture of one company may be very off-putting to some and
| highly attractive to others.
|
| Don't tell we need to adapt your standard culture (e.g. new
| work) because that's what makes everyone happy.
| Layke1123 wrote:
| Unless you find a way to fuck your workers over by using
| government welfare to supplement their living costs, this
| enabling you to save money for yourself and provide ROI. Win
| win lose!
| Tarq0n wrote:
| Only maximizing happiness for the controlling workers. Fungible
| labor is going to be left out because moving on is no real
| threat from them.
| busterarm wrote:
| Yes, because everyone at the level of employee is someone
| being exploited...
|
| Those of us who actually grew up with nothing and suffered
| through minimum wage labor and were able to change our class
| and turn our lives around through labor look at you people
| like you're from another planet.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Both following statements can be true at the same time:
|
| 1) It is possible for many to work their way through the
| labour ladder and find good life.
|
| 2) "The System" can incentivise corporations to maximise
| transfer of wealth towards the top brass without
| incentivising it to raise wages any more than only to keep
| people from leaving.
| busterarm wrote:
| > 2) "The System" can incentivise corporations to
| maximise transfer of wealth towards the top brass without
| incentivising it to raise wages any more than only to
| keep people from leaving.
|
| And they can do that without being exploitative. People
| go to their bosses and ask for more money. Some
| percentage of the time they get it.
|
| If you were in business for yourself you would have to
| negotiate your own prices. Being employed isn't really
| different, just the risk is much less. You're trading
| something away for the security of a regular paycheck.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Of course. Some people can do that and nobody I know of
| has ever said anything different. But what is also true
| is that some people can't do it, sometimes people are
| trading their lives away for only basic sustenance and no
| job security.
| busterarm wrote:
| > sometimes people are trading their lives away for only
| basic sustenance and no job security.
|
| And they're still not being exploited. You're describing
| people that cannot fend for themselves. Also not everyone
| you're describing is only receiving basic sustenance. A
| lot of people in this situation live reasonably middle
| class lives.
| geofft wrote:
| No one is saying that every single employee at the bottom
| is being exploited - just that exploitation is rational for
| those in power, because there's no particular incentive for
| them to completely avoid it.
|
| They shouldn't do it too much, or then society responds in
| various ways (unions, legislation, etc.), so in that sense
| it's much like shareholder value. The company owners cannot
| write themselves a bonus equal to the entire profits of the
| company, or the shareholders will get mad. But they can
| certainly write themselves generous bonuses nonetheless.
| They don't have to completely maximize shareholder value,
| or completely minimize exploitation; they just have to do
| enough.
| heymijo wrote:
| > _companies are a collection of people_
|
| Peter Drucker was on top of this. It's so obvious yet so often
| forgotten (ignored?). An organization is a group of people.
|
| Jumping back to systems thinking. People can respond a number
| of ways in organizations. Enter 'policy refusal' (see Donella
| Meadows' systems literature for more). Executive wants A to
| happen. A is not in employees' best interest. Employees ignore,
| delay, obfuscate, outright refuse, or actively undermine A.
|
| People are very good at policy refusal. Executives are good at
| not knowing its happening.
| shoto_io wrote:
| What's your favorite resource on Drucker? I love re-reading
| his book "The Effective Executive".
| heymijo wrote:
| His 1973 tome Management: Tasks, Responsibilities,
| Practices, The Essential Drucker, and Managing for Results
| are three I find myself opening regularly.
|
| The Effective Executive is great as well. It's hard to
| narrow down because he was such a prolific writer.
| Recommendations are also hard because you've got to meet
| the reader where they are. I picked up and put down Drucker
| early in my career. Years later, the same pages burst with
| insight when I read them.
| tomasdore wrote:
| "You've got to meet the reader where they are....Years
| later, the same pages burst with insight when I read
| them. " - Thanks for this, I find it is a great way of
| phrasing it, and gets to the heart of much about both
| education and communication.
| mathattack wrote:
| It's a subtle distinction between labor and capital. And gets
| blurred by debt vs equity.
|
| Who owns the company? The people who work there? The person who
| founded it? The people who the founders sold shares to? Or the
| people who lent it money?
|
| Legally it's the people who own shares. And if they miss their
| debt payments, it's the lenders.
|
| Companies can inform their shareholders "if you want to invest,
| here is how we operate differently." Bezos and Buffet both do
| that in terms of defining focus and time horizons.
|
| One may want to optimize for worker happiness first, but that's
| not legal ownership. (Employee engagement is a predictor of
| shareholder return, but it's hard to measure, and different
| from happiness)
| adamcstephens wrote:
| Except the quote isn't about legal ownership it all. It's
| about who has skin in the game, and who actually makes the
| company function.
|
| The vast majority of shareholders have very little skin in
| the game, while the employees of the company absolutely have
| a lot of skin in the game. The employees depend on the
| company for their livelihood, whereas a shareholder is
| generally just trying to make money on their money.
| mathattack wrote:
| I view him as defining value as to accrue to stakeholders,
| with employees as primary.
|
| One way to frame the question is "If the company gets a
| million dollar windfall, who should get it?" Employees?
| Owners? Even the most customer centric company won't say a
| cash payment to customers, though they may say improving
| service or R and D.
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| Articles like this really drive home to me how much I appreciate
| this site and all it's contributors and commenters. Thank you
| all!
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Site's down
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210606160159/https://thesystem...
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