{"id":123,"date":"2007-03-24T11:39:46","date_gmt":"2007-03-24T15:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/?p=123"},"modified":"2007-03-24T11:39:46","modified_gmt":"2007-03-24T15:39:46","slug":"systems-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/archives\/123","title":{"rendered":"Systems thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> book):<\/p>\n

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  1. today’s problems come from yesterday’s “solutions”<\/li>\n
  2. the harder you push, the harder the system pushes back<\/li>\n
  3. behavior grows better before it grows worse<\/li>\n
  4. the easy way out usually leads back in<\/li>\n
  5. the cure can be worse than the disease<\/li>\n
  6. faster is slower<\/li>\n
  7. cause and effect are not closely related in time and space<\/li>\n
  8. small changes can produce big results –but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious<\/li>\n
  9. you can have your cake and eat it too –but not at once<\/li>\n
  10. dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants<\/li>\n
  11. there is no blame<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    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<\/a> who was regularly f\u00c3\u00aated 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).<\/p>\n