The evolution of GST

1. The evolution of GST Some cuts from the net

2. The background • During world war II there was a need for different sciences to co-operate • Also new sciences evolved i. e. computer science • There was a need for controlling complex constructions GST History ht 01

3. Some pioneers • Ludwig von Bertalanffy: GST based upon biology • Claude Elwood Shannon: Information theory • Norbert Wiener: Cybernetics (regulation theory)¨ • W. Ross Ashby: Cybernetics GST History ht 01

4. More pioneers • Stafford Beer: GST based upon organisational theory • Russell Ackoff: Society as GST • Herbert Simon:Feed-back in organisations • March: Garbage can model • C West Churchman: Inquiring systems GST History ht 01

5. Getting to know about pioneers • Use internet and search their names. • Tons of material are available • There are some papers on the home-page of the course. GST History ht 01

6. Ludwig von Bertalanffy • An attempt to revive a view of Unified Science through the study of the attributes and properties common to all real systems. • Real systems are open to, and exist in complex hierarchical relations with their environments • By continual evolution, qualitatively new properties can appear. GST History ht 01

7. Successors • Bertalanffy’s view is related to the evolutionary philosophy of Spencer, Bergson, and de Chardin, and later systems philosophical work of Laszlo, Turchin, and Jantsch. • He was also involved in the evolving socio-technical approach at Tavistock during the 50’s. GST History ht 01

8. Mathematical systems theory • Derives from the modeling view of Systems Theory, which sees a system as a (usually mathematical) model of a bounded area of the universe. • This work arose from isomorphies developed between models of electrical circuit systems and other physical systems, • Exemplified by the mathematical theories of Zadeh, Ashby, Mesarovic, Rosen, and Klir GST History ht 01

9. Closely related fields • Cybernetics, which places emphasis on Control models involving reflexivity, circularity, recursion, and feedback. • Systems Analysis, which provides a methodology for identifying parts and wholes in a complex system and their relationships to each other (for example, an analysis of the species in an ecosystem, or the flow of money in a corporation). GST History ht 01

10. Use of systems theory • Systems theoretic perspectives are deeply ingrained in the new interdisciplinary "sciences of complexity" involving far- from-equilibirium, self-organizing systems, and complex, heterogeneous networks of interacting actors; and in the methods of Neural Networks, Chaotic Dynamics, Computer Modeling, Artificial Intelligence, and classical, algorithmic, and fuzzy Information Theory GST History ht 01

11. Holism • Rather than reducing an entity (e.g. the human body) to the properties of its parts or elements (e.g. organs or cells), systems theory focuses on the arrangement of and RELATIONS between the parts which connect them into a whole (cf. HOLISM). GST History ht 01

12. Holism and systems • This particular ORGANIZATION determines a SYSTEM, which is independent of the concrete substance of the elements (e.g. particles, cells, transistors, people, etc). Thus, the same concepts and principles of organization underlie the different disciplines (physics, biology, technology, sociology, etc.), providing a basis for their unification. GST History ht 01

13. System-environment Boundary Input Output Process State Hierarchy Goal-directedness Information Systems concepts include: GST History ht 01

14. Systems dynamics • Models changes in a NETWORK of coupled variables (e.g. the "world dynamics" models of Jay Forrester and the Club of Rome). • Different kinds of feed-back loops plays a crucial role GST History ht 01

15. Information theory

16. Shannon GST History ht 01

17. Information theory • Shannon published ”A Mathematical Theory of Communication” in the Bell System Technical Journal (1948). This paper founded the subject of information theory and he proposed a linear schematic model of a communications system. This was a new idea. GST History ht 01

18. 1’s and 0’s • Communication was then thought of as requiring electromagnetic waves to be sent down a wire. The idea that one could transmit pictures, words, sounds etc. by sending a stream of 1's and 0's down a wire, was fundamentally new. GST History ht 01

19. Opinions Probably no single work in this century has more profoundly altered man's understanding of communication than this article. The ideas in Shannon's paper were soon picked up by communication engineers and mathematicians around the world. They were elaborated upon, extended, and complemented with new related ideas. GST History ht 01

20. More opinions • R G Gallager, a colleague who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: • Shannon was the person who saw that the binary digit was the fundamental element in all of communication. That was really his discovery, and from it the whole communications revolution has sprung. GST History ht 01

21. Information and uncertanity • Suppose we have a device that can produce 3 symbols, A, B, or C. As we wait for the next symbol, we are uncertain as to which symbol it will produce. Once a symbol appears and we see it, our uncertainty decreases, and we remark that we have received some information. That is, information is a decrease in uncertainty. GST History ht 01

22. Entropy • Reduction of uncertainty is the same as reduction of entropy. • Thus we have an interesting relation between therodynamics second law and information. • Certain mathematicians claims, based upon quantum theory, that everything is information, also the materia. GST History ht 01

23. Some systems myths Mainly from Russell Ackoff

24. Improving parts=>improving the whole False. In fact it can destroy an organization, as is apparent in an example I have used ad nauseum: installing a Rolls Royce engine in a Hundai can make it inoperable.This explains why benchmarking has almost always failed. GST History ht 01

25. Problems are disciplinary in nature. • Effective research is not disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary; it is transdisciplinary. • Systems thinking attempts to derive under-standing of parts from the behavior and properties of wholes rather than derive the behavior and properties of wholes from those of their parts. GST History ht 01

26. Problems are disciplinary in nature (cont’d) • Disciplines are taken by science to represent different parts of the reality. • Science assumes reality is structured and organized the way universities are. This is a double error. • Disciplines are different aspects of reality. • Any part of reality can be viewed from any of these aspects. GST History ht 01

27. The best thing that can be done to a problem is to solve it. • The best thing that can be done to a problem is to dissolve it, to redesign the entity to eliminate the problem. • Such a design incorporates common sense and scientific research, and increases our learning more than trial-and-error or scientific research alone can. • Design is therefore important! GST History ht 01

28. Doing things right • Most large social systems are pursuing objectives other than the ones they proclaim, and the ones they pursue are wrong. They try to do the wrong thing righter and this makes what they do wronger. • It is much better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right because when errors are corrected it makes doing the wrong thing wronger, but the right thing righter. GST History ht 01

29. The health care system is asickness care system. These are not two aspects of the same thing, but two different things. Since the revenue generated by the current system derives from care of the sick and disabled the worst thing that can happen to it would be universal health coverage. Conversion of the current system to a health care system would require a fundamental redesign. GST History ht 01

30. The educational system is not designed for learning but for teaching • Teaching is a major obstruction to learning. • Witness the difference between the ease with which we learned our first language without having it taught to us, and the difficulty with which we did not learn a second language in school. GST History ht 01

31. Educational system (cont’d) • Most of what we use as adults we learned once out of school, not in it, and what we learned in school we forget rapidly — fortunately. • Most of it is either wrong or obsolete within a short time. GST History ht 01

32. Educational system (cont’d) • Although we learn little of use by having it taught to us, we can learn a great deal by teaching others. • It is always the teacher who learns most in a classroom. • Students should be teaching, and teachers at all levels should learn no matter how much they resist doing so. GST History ht 01

33. The principal function of 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. GST History ht 01

34. Why? • Providing the shareholders with a return on their investments is a requirement, not an objective. Profit is to a corporation as oxygen is to a human being: necessary for existence, not the reason for it. • A corporation that fails to provide an adequate return for their investment to its employees and customers is just as likely to fail as one that does not reward its shareholders adequately. GST History ht 01

35. Most valuable resource The most valuable and least replaceable resource is time. Without the time of employees money can produce nothing. Employees have a much larger investment in most corporations than their shareholders. Corporations should be maximizing stakeholder, not shareholder, value - value to employees, customers, and shareholders. GST History ht 01

36. Identifying and defining the hierarchy of mental content • In order of increasing value, are: data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. • The educational system and most managers allocate time to their acquisition that is inversely proportional to their importance. GST History ht 01

37. All learning ultimately derives from mistakes. • When we do something right we already know how to do it; the most we get out of it is confirmation of it. • Mistakes are of two types: commission (doing what should not have been done) and omission (not doing what should have been done). GST History ht 01

38. Handling mistakes • Errors of omission are more serious than errors of commission, but errors of commission are the only ones picked up by most accounting systems. • The best strategy for managers is thus to do as little as possible. GST History ht 01

39. Behavior of management • They are rooted in the belief that there are simple solutions to even the most complex of problems. • They do not learn from bad experiences. • The perceived need to learn something new is inversely proportional to the rank of a manager. GST History ht 01

40. Beer: The viable system model: VSM Some systems survive and evolve and propagate despite turbulent and partly hostile environments - systems such as: "linguigions", families, companies, persons, flora, fauna, and artificial life forms. GST History ht 01

41. VSM in a nutshell • Recursivity • Closed system. • The bounded system could be re-opened by including recursive models of itself inside itself. (as with Russian dolls). • Every viable system contains and is contained in a viable system. GST History ht 01

42. What VSM isn’t • It is not a conventional organisation chart but can easily be interpreted as a such. • People tend to look for similarities between the new and what they are familiar with, and then they take the sexy new words and stick them on their old familiar entities and practices! GST History ht 01

43. Planning • Stafford Beer has always taught that planning is a continuous, adaptive process of decision - and something that must therefore be undertaken by managers themselves. It is not a matter for a staff of faceless 'experts'. GST History ht 01

44. Planning & decisions • Planning has to be a process more potent than one of compromise aimed at 'consensus'. • This results in worthless agreements. When finally no-one can disagree with any clause, the plans naturally lack all inspiration. • So reorganizations based on this approach, and also lacking in basic cybernetic principle, lead to disaster. GST History ht 01

45. A way to overcome the disaster • Take the most potent organizational players, whether by rank or ability, away from their posts for three to five days. • Put them through an elaborate series of meetings, run under detailed protocols. • No person is accorded special status. • The experience is invariably exciting and productive. GST History ht 01

46. Generating Statements of Importance • A Statement of Importance is a sentence of not more than about 10 words that is meaningful in relation to the Opening Question. • Statements of Importance must be able to be negated. This helps to avoid "mother-hood" statements -- statements unlikely to be debated by a reasonable person. • At the completion of Generating Statements of Importance, there will be many statements posted on the wall which form the basis for the Problem Jostle. GST History ht 01

47. Problem Jostle • The Problem Jostle is an activity that involves negotiating and discussing initial Statements of Importance in order to generate 12 topics and 12 teams. • During the Problem Jostle, you will be requested to meet with others in randomly-generated groups to arrive at topics that will form the basis for discussion over the following three days. • At the completion of the Problem Jostle, 12 teams will have been created, each of which has accountabilityfor exploring and developing ideas relating to a specific topic. GST History ht 01

48. Outcome Resolve • The Outcome Resolve involves three iterations of team meetings, involving members, critics and observers, in which a topic is discussed for a specified time period. • At the end of each iteration, a statement is written reflecting the best thinking of the team on the topic. GST History ht 01

49. Orthogonal Meeting • The Orthogonal Meeting is a cross-topic team meeting, where team members meet with other team members that they do not meet with directly during the Outcome Resolve meetings. • Orthogonal teams are made up of three pairs of team members who cannot meet formally during Outcome Resolve meetings. GST History ht 01