In my post on internet radio I mentioned the adaptation vs. control choice that the media industry is facing. I’m going to eventually post Kauffman’s rules of systems thinking, but since there are 28 of them, I thought I’d soften everyone up with 11 Laws of the Fifth Discipline (from Peter Senge’s book):
- today’s problems come from yesterday’s “solutions”
- the harder you push, the harder the system pushes back
- behavior grows better before it grows worse
- the easy way out usually leads back in
- the cure can be worse than the disease
- faster is slower
- cause and effect are not closely related in time and space
- small changes can produce big results –but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious
- you can have your cake and eat it too –but not at once
- dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants
- there is no blame
I remain suspicious of folks that lay out characteristics of effective organizations – the descriptive often segues into the prescriptive and as far as ‘just do these things and your organization will flourish’ – if it was that easy I’d think we’d see a lot fewer Dilbert meets Kafka workplaces. I spent many years working for a very large corporation; we had a CEO who was regularly fêted as a managerial genius. Down in the trenches one of my favorite inside jokes was filling in the blanks on a couple bits of management speak: the inside-out view (how do we see ourselves) and the outside-in view (how do our customers and suppliers see us).
- inside-out = “I wish I worked for the company he’s talking about”
- outside-in = “I wish I did business with that company”
In fairness to Jack, I think he realized that the company he liked to describe was some kind of idealized construct – that didn’t make the cube farms any more hospitable though… Whining aside, thinking about systems rather than a naive linear cause and effect is a habit all of us need to cultivate (IMHO).
Rule 10 makes me think of another rule from one of the best project management books out there – The Mythical Man Month. To paraphrase a point from Brook’s book in call and response form:
Q: How do you make a late project later?
A: Add more people!