47th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), Hersonissos, Crete, July 7, 2002.

July 7, 2003, 5:30 p.m.

This digest was created quickly, based on an audio recording of the meeting. This should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to individuals who were present at the meeting, or by referring to the audio record. These notes have been contributed by David Ing (daviding@systemicbusiness.org) at the IBM Advanced Business Institute ( http://www.ibm.com/abi ).

[David Ing, as moderator]

Format:

• Complaint at conferences that people speak, and don't have a chance for conversation.
• Special INTEGRATION Group
• Write papers individually, come together as a group, to create something different from what we create individually.
• Recording on minidisc.
• Won't be presenting papers.
• Discussing topics different from the main direction of papers.

First theme of two for this evening:  Directions for Organizations, Communities and Individuals

• Three papers
• Gary Metcalf, Right Choices in a Complex World
  • Idea of direction is important
• David Ing and David Hawk, with IBM colleagues Ian Simmonds and Marianne Kosits, Governance and the Practice of Management in Long-Term Inter-organizational Relations
  • Governance means discussion of direction and boundaries
• Koichi Ono and Kyoko Kato, Succession of Mentor Roles and the Experience of Protoges among Japanese Workers
  • Directions, much more as individuals
  • Mentoring, as an idea of individuals, as effective in setting direction.
• Theme: It's been said that "everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it". These three papers will lead to commentary on the ability business people to influence "right" social directions. Do the "old" social structures still work (or did they ever work)?
  • We decide what is "right" amongst ourselves
  • Structures

Second session of two, attendees not here (yet).

Vote on time to end the session

Speakers each 2 to 5 papers, framed in the context of directions

[05:25]

[Gary Metcalf]

Paper on CD, therefore, different slant.

Have worked for corporations

• How do you know how to act?
• What creates promotability?
• Assumptions about leaders, that they set the right directions.
• Thus, each employee should be contributing towards the good of the organization.
• Pick up cues of what is the right way to be -- in corporate culture.

Became interesting:  there's a mechanical function

• In 1980s and 1990s, everyone should contribute towards profit.
• At an executive level, not just functionality to corporation (employee outputs), crossover to politics
• Politically-right decisions for country, global markets.
  • Often complex
• A young person coming into the company, and then promoted, knows the "right way".
• What was right in the 1970s and right in the 1990s wasn't much different.

In thinking systemically, how do you know what is the right thing to do?

• Need to understand quickly.
• What is correct now can't be contained locally, must look globally.
• Premise of paper to look to highest decision-making globally.
• Right, correct, sustainable.
• Few things that executives would argue against, e.g. environment.
• It took a while to pick these up, and change rapidly.
• People need to take cues more rapidly.
• Not just senior people, but people downstream -- picking up on global cues.

[10:20]

[David Ing]

Same ballpark, "right direction", possible even downstream from Gary.

• At IBM, challenge in network-form organization, in outsourcing.
• IBM has long-term relationships with large corporations.
• We need them, and they need us:  you can't throw each other out, because of size.

Governance:  lots of use of the word in the vertical context, boards and accountability.

• Also a horizontal dimension, with counterbalancing functions.
• Accounting function, computer functions.
• e.g. IT architects when the CEO sets directions; CEO may not overrule the IT architect, but next architect may say the same.
• Movement away from vertical forms to peer-to-peer forms.

What's the difference between management and governance?

• If you substitute the word "governance" with "management" in most newspaper articles, the meaning doesn't change.
• In the paper are definitions.
  • Tried to be general, to use in vertical and horizontal contexts.
  • Then, what is "good" governance, or appropriate concepts.
• Paper then leads to system concepts, e.g. tight coupling and loose coupling; complicatedness versus complexity.
• These are choices that are made.

[14:00]

[David Hawk]

1986 or 1987 ISSS meeting in St. Louis.

• With Gunnar Hedlund, concerned about governance versus management.
• Argument between hierarchical approaches and anarchical approaches.
  • The basis for Hedlund coming up with heterarchy.
• Gunnar agreed that anarchy was quite attractive, but business people wouldn't buy it.
  • Heterarchy was softer.
• Used conference as a preamble to discuss this.
• This was a meeting where Herbert Simon attended, so decided that it would be fun to attack hierarchy, and why's its a sham, and an invention of certain human beings, and it really doesn't exist in nature.
• Simon refused to speak, but had 60 groupies that spoke in a fury.
  • The next session was cancelled, because the fury went on and on.
• Finally, asked the elders -- Churchman and Ackoff -- how they felt about it.
  • Both came down against Simon, which made the meaning even worse.

Thus, governance became crucial in the things we do.

• Hierarchy is related to human limitations in thinking.
• Is it possible to have a governance system that is not hierarchical?
• Is it possible to do management that is not hierarchical?
• Tough, difficult.
• Work after that to answer that question.
• Drifted with the question away from the systems community.

Returned in 1998 at the Atlanta conference

• Systems group had changed since the 1980s.
• This group appears to have changed.

[17:18]

[David Ing]

Governance doesn't set direction, but it certainly influences direction, through policies and goals.

• We have opportunities to work less hierarchically.
• Need to work less hierarchically, if you believe that we're working towards network forms of organization and the network economy.
• Hierarchy is not the norm.
• In outsourcing relations, when there is conflict, the organizations start to work hierarchically.
  • Escalation up two management chains.
  • Executives say:  why are you bothering me?  Why don't you work this out yourselves?
• This is the challenge with governance.

[18:30]

[Kyoko Kato]

Professor Ono has conducted research in the field in different industries, and now focus

• Media industry
• Specialized professions:  system engineers and programmers.
• Got the same tendencies as previous industries

Three findings:

• 1. The experience of receiving mentoring enhances the possibility that an individual will find protégés and provide mentoring associated with the stages of his/her career development (i.e., a succession of the mentor role).
• 2: When an individual becomes a mentor, the mentoring he/she provides is not necessarily consistent with the mentoring he/she received from his/her mentors.
• 3. Whereas emotional functions and acceptance and confirmation functions involved in psychosocial functions are instructed and accepted easily at comparatively every level, the instruction and acceptance of career functions and managerial behavior functions depend on certain organizational levels and authority / power.

[Question:  Mentoring not always be consistent with long-term direction.  How to maintain alignment with changes in company direction?  Difficult or natural?]

• The research is about informal mentoring, which is different.

[Comment:  Focus on communities of practice has typically meant formal mentoring.  This may or may not better]

[22:15]

[Open Discussion]

Issues with alignment, issues with direction, issues with vocabulary.

Question:  Do you make a distinction between for-profit, non-for-profit, and government agencies?

Art of wordsmithing:  trying to create definitions across this.

• "Mechanism" has been avoided in preference of "protocol" as a clue to social systems.

1970s, research in Scandinavia with 100 key decision-makers in Sweden, came across public / private:  labour unions, governance agencies, major corporations

• Finding:  it didn't matter.
• What mattered was level in the organizations.
  • Ministers in government, heads of companies, heads of unions all knew each other and worked well together.
  • Within the organizations, worked together well.
  • Within the level, it was the distinctions.
• Recent work, can't use the word "corporation" or "company", and use the word "organization" because it's a sea of organizations, some private and public.
  • Some organizations would be upset at using the word "company".
  • Now catching up to thinking in the 1970s.
• Public / private may not be the most important distinction.
• Trying to grapple with what does make a difference.

Another potential word is "community" based on research into communities of practice.

• There's a point at which executives squirm, and when they check out of the room.
• "Community" makes them check out.

Distinctions between profit and not-for-profits today less.

• Now an efficiency model expected in education, healthcare, government institutions.
• Partly because less money.
• Some time lag, maybe 10 years.
• In health care, it's hard to make a distinction between a for-profit and not-for-profit hospital, they both make money but are just taxed differently.
• Similarly in education.
• Maybe in China and Russia, the distinctions are more different than in the U.S.

Mentoring research in public and private?

• In hospitals and in service industries.
• Same results in mentoring for both.

Two different levels of discussion: 

• 1. At the mechanisms of governance processes (cybernetic linkages and flows), can see isomorphic patterns, pay attention to efficiency.
• 2. At the directional level, public-owned company may be dictated by the market and stock, more priority for cost control.
• When there are other sources of funding other than fighting in the market for a profit, may have different priorities.
• Different styles.

From political science, external control and self-control.

• External control is more hierarchical, someone driving.
• Self-control, in outsourcing and strategic alliances, is interesting because there's no single final arbiters.
• Companies espouse that customers drive -- as external control -- and banks drive -- as external control.
• Inside the organization, in communities practice, need to work out balance between customers -- finance, marketing and operations people all making sense and adjusting to each other.
• Two ways to approach governance:
  • Setting directions, more external control.
  • Setting bounds is more self-control.
• Questions about negative feedback and positive feedback.
  • Should be doing less positive feedback and more negative feedback, control and penalties

Congressional commission on how government should be more like business, and why wasn't it already done?

• Seven people plus one referee.
• People from the private sector learned a lot from the public sector, rather than the other way around.
  • e.g. how to motivate people if you don't have money.
  • e.g. if you don't have the clarity of the bottom line, how do you direct an organization?
  • e.g. if an organization has multiple and mixed objectives, as private organizations look more like public organizations (who have citizens who want everything for nothing).
• Report in October will make a different case from what congress had expected.

Word that makes me squirm:  how to motivate people. 

• People don't motivate, they change direction.
• Right question is how do I get them working in the right direction.
• Changing values.

Gunnar Hedlund, heterarchy.

• David Hawk Ph.D. in anarchy makes them check out of the room.
• Heterarchy recognizes multiple lines of authority.
• Problem:  most companies want to create a single direction.
• Understandable for effectiveness and efficiency.
• Trade-off between long-term and short-term.
  • e.g. Java programming language, no one knew the language, and within one year, every was working in the Java.
  • Must have had 100 or 1000 people working in Java who had found it interesting.
• Don't want people wandering all over the place, but don't want to restrict them.
• Another example:  Post-it Notes, on 3M reserved time.
• Want to hem people in, but like linear programming, adding more constraints, which becomes more complicated, and it's more difficult to understand where the organization is going.

Motivation is how get people to do something that they wouldn't normally do.

• Dostoyevsky, the model of man.
• Are people lazy, greedy, power hungry, filled with vengeance, or not? 
  • If not, then you don't need motivation.
  • They're more like Jesus characters.
• If you look at Dostoyevsky's Idiot, then may need motivation.
• How do you get people to wake up, or stop sleeping all day, to help with the food that they might eat that night.
• If have an alternative, or assume people are Jesus characters, then have a difference of philosophy.

What organizations change are rewards and punishments.

• People choose to go along for fundamentally personal reasons.

Direction as one of the three elements of motivation.

Mentoring  or being mentored as cultural, or motivated?

• Natural enjoyment of teaching.

Changes in Japanese society?

• The older people continue to teach.

Mentoring continues to play an important role in Japan.

Mentoring as self-control, rather than external control?

• Longevity with company:  17 year tenure, versus company turnover in consulting of less than 2 years.

Young Japanese people prefer lifetime employment

• The economy is bad, so they want to work with a single company.

The original character for mentoring in Japanese?

• Actually use the English word!
• Meaning:  learning, teaching, guiding, protecting?
  • Chinese character to force yourself?
  • e.g. facilitation is a difficult word to understand in Chinese.
• Based on teaching, guardian, supervisor.

Mentoring as hierarchical:  dependent, independent, inter-dependent.

• Master - slave or master - disciple?
• More like consultant.

In China, state organizations and private organizations are different.

• Private organizations own profit.
• State organizations also care about the orders from the government.
• If leaders couldn't own the management, but could listen to the government, it's important for the state.
• e.g. conference, wanted to book a hotel.
  • If private hotel, reservations are safe.
  • If the hotel belongs to a public hotel, a leader may preempt by asking to book the hotel, and they need to heed the leader.

Different forms of governance

• Market governance, sometimes believed in the west as "better".
• In inter-organizational relations, much closer to public organizations, need to listen to everyone.
  • May be slower, but effective.

Long-term and short-term.

• Bifurcation in the U.S.
• Investment of savings and retirement plans in the stock market.
  • Populace at large want to see short-term profits.
• In the 1940s and before, when the company did well, it provided well for the employees and the community.
  • "What is good for GM is good for the country".
  • Some truth in that.
• Companies focusing more on profit side, has been getting leaders into trouble, some with jail time.
• Coming together of for-profit and not-for-profit, on higher missions beyond just profit.
  • Need to become part of a global community.

Can companies do this well?

• Shell, BMW pushing hydrogen technology -- risk, but not doing it for nothing.
  • Not a short-term profit.

Convergence away from shareholder as primary accountability, towards stakeholder:

• Over the past decade, change, more in Canada than the U.S.
• Addressing business issues and profitability.
  • Funders more important stakeholders than internal clients and external clients.
• For-profit organization have pressures, a lot because of absence of leadership about the right social direction from public agencies.
• People are turning to large companies for leadership, because we're not getting the right direction from government.
  • This is a dangerous direction, as some maturation is needed to move from shareholder view to stakeholder view to get to purpose for the organization.
• Not-for-profits are better at understanding deeper structures:  triple loop learning.
  • If look beyond quarterlies, why are we here?
• e.g. Drucker Foundation, encouraging partnerships between for-profit and not-for-profits.
  • Not philanthropic
  • It's about vision and direction, and how we govern through vision and direction.
  • For-profit can give understanding of practices for efficiency, so don't blow self away.
• People in boardrooms need to hear the word "community".

Spirituality?

Short-term and long-term is often thought of as dichotomy or continuum.

• May be a nesting.
• Long-term goals, with short-term goals within.
• Both goals need to coexist.
• This is a hierarchy.
• Long-term goals tend to be over short-term goals, whether individual or group.

In corporations, feeling that taking care of the short term will take care of the long term.

• Assumption:  the good of the individuals in a market economy will take care of the populace.
• Focus on one assuming the other is changing.

In the best of all worlds, each embeds the other:  short term and long-term.

• Sometimes out of kilter, particularly if different groups of people.
• More things missing.

The way the play out, in the executive muddle, is that external pressures like the environment went on the expense side.

• The view is now that you can't exist in the long term without some sense of responsibility.

Argue that disharmony came with the advent of strategy

• Long-term given to strategy people.
  • Strategy has to do with deceit.
  • Short-term people have problems doing deceit.
• Thus, blame on strategy, rather than short-term and long-term.
• Separation allows this to happen.
  • Strategic thinking requires strategic thinkers, thus a separation.
  • First, CFOs, because they were underemployed and got to do the strategic.
  • Then lawyers.
  • Chicken-and-egg.

Within the government commission, introduced a not-for-profit, as well as for-profit and government.

• Not-for-profit didn't want to be mentioned.
• Ikea Furniture is not-for-profit.
  • Few people know this.
• Founder believed two evils:  shouldn't pander to the stock market, and children who inherit the organization turn the company bad.
  • Thus, Ikea became not-for-profit.
  • Became a community of concern.
• People want to keep interesting things secret.

[1:07:35]

Teaching case studies:

• Yves Doz taught Ikea case.
• Alternative, had president of Ikea show up, to teach the class.
  • He read the case, written by a Harvard professor.
  • Good case.
  • But it doesn't have anything to do with the important things to Ikea.
• Three important things to Ikea.
• This case said president had approved the Ikea case, but he had never seen it.
• The president then continued to teach.
• Different realities.
• The ambiguous reality has more.

Issues of governance and community

• To a Harvard professor, those three things don't make sense.
• It's a shift of logical type.
• Strategy as an isolated silo is bankrupt.
• Need CSR -- responsible governance, based on an explicit values base, and sustainable strategies.
  • Sustainable strategy and corporate social responsibility is not a tweak of strategy, it's a shift in paradigm in the meaning of strategy.
• Shell saying that in 15 years to make everything today obsolete isn't something that fits into a Harvard case.

Ikea does have a profit at the end of the year, but as a not-for-profit, what do you with it?

• Fundamental shift in paradigm.
• Travel by cheapest means:  president had to take a bus to Newark, as the cheapest form.

Governance through values.

Using the word governance and not leadership?

• Related but different.
• There are leaders, but haven't used the word leadership in vocabulary.
  • "ship" means development or towards, as opposed to have established.
• If we think non-hierarchically, then there are different types of leadership, e.g. technical leadership.
• The more leaders recognized, the less hierarchical it feels, and the more than governance feels like self-control than external control.

Pushing leadership down, having people with more responsibility.

Article in the Globe & Mail, in Toronto by John Ibbotson:  Thank goodness we have weak leaders in Canada.

• The bureaucracy, leadership in public health worked well in SARS.
  • We got into trouble when the politicians engage.
• In Toronto, because we admire the U.S., Canadians were looking for a "Rudy Giuliani".
  • The Canadian culture doesn't thrive on the hero, and on the individual.
  • When we try to become more American, it hurts us.
• As governance, the American ideal of a hero, or a leader, is a form of governance, but is more the external control form.
  • Maybe Americans may find the message of self-control a little more difficult in today's environment.
• If we're moving towards organizations with multiple lines of authority, don't have good models.
  • Maybe not-for-profits are the best role model.

[1:16:00]

Working on Canadian audit questions, if we improve the standards of inquiry (towards soft information), we would raise the bar and increase the probability of liability.

• If you know something, you're responsible for it.
• If you don't know, you might get hit.

Self-control as adding or removing rules, end up with emergent properties.

• This is what we're measuring.
• Everyone talks about trust in governance, but you can't directly manipulate trust, because it's emergent.
  • We need more trust, but what are you going to do about it?

Canadian Bre-X, and Enron, didn't need anything subtle to know something was wrong.

• How much do organizations willing to show?
• Variety
• e.g. Shell, got into trouble into Nigeria because of Ken Saro-Kiwa, which wasn't their concern now.
  • New arrangement need to honour human rights, but 1920s agreements didn't
  • What did they have to do?
• Time dimension to governance.

Cultural dimension to governance

• A single organization should follow different poliitics in different countries, e.g. different in Asia than in the U.S.
• Organizations are composed of individuals, should adjust to their needs.
• Motivation, attitudes and beliefs.

Putting people together in a commission or a group to work things out is good.

• A person from each culture.
• An English person to head it up initially, because their English is so good, and then they decide that they should never have another English person on the commission.
• No viable alternatives, but impediments are tough.

Improving logistics and technologies, what about the employee?  How to motivate them, with a common strategic direction.

In the U.S., there's a push towards transparency.

• A fait accompli.
  • So much information, that if you try to hide it, you won't succeed.
• To become more transparent in decision-making and finance, it's difficult, but global is more difficult.
  • Become transparent about conflicts and distinctions.
  • Lack of agreement on multiplicity.
• What should be shared/proprietary, need to make people comfortable about how that happens.
  • People aren't all that agreeable about how it should happen.

Crete monasteries dying.

• Space for 200 monks, and there's only 10 there.
• When going concerns, were in fields, growing grapes and making wines with an internal motivation.
• Now, only a few monks, have changed their nature, living lives.
• Becoming corporations, with brands of olive oil and wines.
• Have become different organizations, despite producing the same products.
• An example of entirely different types of governance:  originally a community.
  • Now, a different sort of governance, because the motivation to be a monk has disappeared.

[1:27:20]

[David Ing, as moderator]

Switching to second theme of two for this evening:

• Systems Approaches, New Contexts

[Neither author is present].

Did have two paper contributions

• Heiko Gebauer, Applying Systems Thinking to the Transition from Product Manufacturers into Service Providers
• Lawrence Henesey, More than just Piers: A Multi-Agent Systems Approach to Defining Organisations in a Seaport Terminal Management System

These were both systems applications paper.

Theme: We're now at the 47th annual meeting of the ISSS, so systems science is hardly new. From a business context, have we really learned anything, or has systems science frozen in time? The two papers will lead us towards a discussion of whether this really anything new in systems science for business, either in theory or in practice.

We can have an active discussion without the authors.

• Is systems science dead?
• How are you using system science in your practice, are we advancing, or are we frozen in time.

[Open Discussion]

Have heard systems science is dead, forever.

• Recurrent, iteration.
• See a lot of progress here.
• Several systems communities, participate in management cybernetics and systems dynamics.
• Making progress within the schools:  syntegration in the 1990s; systems dynamics completely separated, with lots of software to teach and explain to others (mental models, etc.)
• Progress within streams.
• Linkage between different areas is important, and yet to come.

In meetings with economists, engineers, people from business schools, all mention systems thinking.

• They stop in the 1970s.
• What came after, in the last 30 years?  Why stop in the 1970s?
• When new professors apply for a job, they build on the package of their mentors, which stopped in the 1970s.
• Some discuss Stafford Beer, but the Stafford Beer of the 1960s.
• Book:  The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge
• Taught in most business schools.
• Ask:  what is the fifth discipline?
• They're not aware that the fifth discipline is systems thinking.
• They continue to talk about organizational learning, mental models.
• Book doesn't just include system thinking, but also systems dynamics.
• If don't use systems dynamics, then just intuition.
• The systems movement is full of life, and starting to be reborn.
• When you show these concepts to the administration, they get enthusiastic.
• Viable Systems Model:  works for for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.

Systems science is sleeping.

• At the 33rd conference in 1999 in Edinburgh, presented a paper, thought just had to finish it.
• Recently, a book, "Who Moved My Cheese".
• Thought was similar.
• Similarly, when reading Peter Senge's book, saw feedback -- a 1940s concept.
• Senge didn't sleep, he took concepts and put them into real-world application.
• So much after the 1940s, but systems sleep there.
• From the business world, sales, marketing and finance have systems concepts.
• George Soros' book on finance, promoted the idea of reflexivity, which is a cybernetic idea.
• He developed this idea independently of this community.
• Sales has feedback idea, as does marketing.
• As systems scientists, we spend too much time debating inside the ivory tower, and need to reach out.

Devil's advocate:  maybe systems, in the U.S., is coming closing to dying that just sleeping.

• As a professor, when have difficulty when say that you have a degree in systems.
• Being told to not title courses as systems.
• Institutes that are getting a lot of money feel like they've gone beyond systems theory:  complexity, chaos.
• These ideas are getting money, not systems.

Can get more money with the word "network" than with "system".

Hasan Osbekhan (who was with Ackoff), since 1974 wrote nothing.

• Wouldn't listen to music before the 15th century.
• Wouldn't read things written after the 15th century.
• Thought writing was quite silly.
• Each of us, if we're really lucky, have one book in us, that we'll write in our lifetime.
• If the people around us are really unlucky, we rewrite that book over and over.
• He pointed to Russ Ackoff as an example, who wrote a 1974 book on systems, and then rewrote it 9 more times.
• Death in the 1970s:  Ackoff's thinking froze somehow, after that book, became an evangelist for that message.
• If it's true, why not say it over and over again.
• Somehow, it's not so helpful to say it over and over again, if something was missing.
• Ozbekhan was a little more humourous, and more reflective, longer historic span.
• Reminded us that systems thinking was about thinking, and not a model.
• People looking for models probably weren't going to find them.
• More an attitude or an approach.
• Looking for connections between things.
• We keep forgetting that message.
• The systems idea keeps dying, then keeps coming back.
• Seems to be dying more rapidly, was in a 10-year cycle.
• Now, the span is collapsing:  every few months it collapse.
• Maybe not such a bad thing that it's dying.

Could say that all professors are lazy bum, and just need to communicate.

• Or, with Ozbekhan, just need philosophy, and all of the rest is irrelevant.
• Need to operate a different levels, and not always with the same people.
• Senge is good communication.
• Need more reflection.
• Read philosophers:  Plato as a statesman, businessman.
• Two issues of concerns:
• Everyone talks about systems, taking on jargon of integration, but not sufficient depth.
• Departments closing down, and people aren't on the arrow.
• Had general semantics, and don't have them anymore.

If a term becomes pejorative, like semantics did, then it gets killed off.

• Somehow, systems does not become pejorative, and renews itself.
• Maybe it's operating in different streams.
• Applications are exciting, and philosophy can't go that far.
• Maybe the streams die, but the ambiguity around it seems to keep it alive.

A bifurcation?

In the Oxford English Dictionary, look at etymology.

• Work done with Gunnar Hedlund for Tom Peters.
• Wanted to export the idea of excellence:  could it be exported to Europe?
• Before the meeting, with Hedlund, wrote a 17-page white paper on excellence.
• In the 12th century, excellence emerged as a pejorative term.
• People around emperor / king / royalty use it as a code word to make fun of the king.
• "Your excelllency".
• King didn't realize he was being made fun of.
• Over the centuries, excellence became positive, and not pejorative.
• Thus excellence is a vacuous content.
• Based on this, Peter never used the word again, but moved on to chaos.
• Terms are important.
• Systems survives as a term, although it dies quite often.
• Doesn't go the way of systems semantics

Systemic therapy in Europe is popular.

• It has come and gone in the U.S.
• Family theory, was based on systems, but hard to get to the grounding.
• People working in the field couldn't explain the systems foundations.
• Mental health is now pushed towards efficiency, short terms.
• Longer patterns isn't a possiblity.
• (And have better drugs, now).

Applications of systems:  are systems thinkers born or made?

What should be the relationship between systems scientists with non-systems people?

• To be systems, or not?
• If we perceive ourselves of being able to give models and guiding people systematically, in cooperation with other models.
• Paradox:  if try to use systems thinking, and construct a huge systems dynamics model, and try to convince people.
• Trying to come up with fancy models to people who don't have the capacity to absorb the models.

People either see and grasp systemically, or they don't.

• There's learning involved.
• When we say that there is value in a systemic approach, it's easy to people who don't think systemically to stereotype.
• If there is not some appreciation of the depth of what goes on, don't know what people can learn or appreciate.

Systems on the outside, or "systems inside" (like Intel inside) where you really don't care how things happen.

• Working with Steve Haeckel, writing Adaptive Enterprise.
• Steve had answers, saying things with certainty, with foundations in systems.
• Steve had learned about systems a long time ago.
• Sent to read more Russell Ackoff.
• Admire Ackoff:  he writes, and it's written down.
• Ozbekhan never wrote anything down, and can't learn from that.
• Question:  do people need to learn the systems approach, and the history.
• Most are MBAs, and their professors may have had foundations in systems theory.
• All of the same questions asked in the 1970s were still there.
• Systems concepts helped.
• Senge gets people into the right direction.
• But then, where?  Purposeful systems, inquiring systems?  Or when you get there, I'll help you?
• A training problem.
• Tom Mandel, emphasis on the primer.
• Teaching in business schools?  In colleges?  In high school?
• Maybe should be teaching in primary school.
• But this is tough:  a large community of teachers to convert.
• Systems outside, versus "systems inside" where the foundations aren't provided, but then miss understanding of what goes on underneath (and it isn't clear that they should care).

Management skills class at Schulich School of Business.

• Didn't want to just teach behavioural.
• Wanted to teach something in 3 or 4 sessions so that students would be attracted to elective course.
• Only got help from Senge:  Daniel Kim is the only one that has published something under 500 pages that isn't a journal article that you need three experts over your shoulder in order to understand.
• An accessibility issue.
• An issue of public image.
• In the 21st century, is it online?
• Found a way to market:  a series of critical thinking, creative problem-solving approaches
• Extend dimenion of time.
• Think loops, not lines.
• Present loops like Senge diagrams.
• Optional learning online experiences.
• Some criticisms:
• Systems thinking doesn't build bridges to new area of development, e.g. chaos, complexity, emergent order.
• There's no reason why not.
• So many systems concepts are already taken for granted, and as a community, don't know how to capitalize on it.
• Tell me about ways that I already take systems thinking for granted.
• Show we how I can use it as a point of departure for further developing and embellishing, like complexity, like patterns of self-organization.

Systems inside, instead of systems outside.

Senge's book is in every executives office, and none have read it.

• Ask them for one archetype, and they don't know.
• It resonates.
• Takes it to the ground:  just extend the dimension of time, think circularity.

Senge was involved with Forrester, back to the 1980s

• Now has good communication skills.

[2:06:50]

Philosophy used to be centered of the university, and no one studies philosophy any more.

• We're teaching things hundreds of years old.
• Philosophy became chemistry and science ...
• System science never got a degree named after it, and it dispersed to other field.
• No central field of systems thinking.

Systems science by itself won't do it.

• Systems science, plus a knowledge of management.
• Systems science provides a depth of understanding.
• In real life consulting engagements, however, tend to bury this because it makes people nervous.

[2:08:50]

Discussing the value of systems dynamics with colleagues

• Need to apply it to their sector.
• Known for knowledge in sector.
• An approach to the company's emptiness.
• Systems science now as too well known?

Systems science accepted as something no longer so important or relevant.

• Now new ideas have taken over.
• This presumes that people understand systems as much as they understand the new concepts.
• It came and went.
• Fundamental principles of systems thinking are still valuable, but there are few people who will dig to the roots to find it.

Past 10 years, taught 21-year old and 22-year old students, management course to honours students in medicine, biology, architecture.

• None is in management.
• Don't use a text, but a variety of readings.
• A few years ago, read Russ Ackoff's book, liked it.
• This past year, they requested to not use it:  it's boring, the examples are really ancient, what did it have to do with the present.
• For the past two years, students have really enjoyed Funky Business.
• It captures 22-year old student.
• Outside English-based languages, it does well, but in English-based languages, it doesn't sell well because of Chapter 5.
• In Germany, best-selling book; sells well in China.
• It motivates people.
• Authors:  Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordstrom.
• Students find that this has captured the mood.
• Ridderstrale was trained in the systems approach.
• Ph.D. contained a lot of systems concepts.
• He found another vocabulary, another set of adjectives, another set of stories to talk about the same thing.
• 21-year students relate to these adjectives, stories.
• Student of David Hawk, Gunnar Hedlund, spent some time at Wharton, at Stockholm School of Economics.
• Dissertation compared two major organizations in R&D.
• One that formalized innovation was a disaster.
• One that made innovation implicit and never formalized it was a roaring success.
• Thus, the non-formal approach was fantastic, but the non-formal approach assured that it would never happen -- which in essence is a systems theme.
• New book this winter, Karaoke Capitalism.
• Capitalists and Adam Smith followers are all part of a play that they don't really control.
• A businessman comes in and sings a tune that isn't his tune.
• The quality of his singing someone else's tune has to do with how much profit he makes.
• In essence, no one is singing their own tune or their own song, so they're not being innovative or original.
• Many themes are systemic, but in another language.
• Seven deadly sins:  the majority of economic activity is set up to either push one fo the deadly sins, or to respond against the push.
• Gluttony is the essence of many companies, e.g. McDonald's.
• Then Weight Watchers props up as the way to deal with the gluttony sin.
• Systemic perspective to make sense of all of this.
• It would be nice to find a way to deal with this trap, and not deal with the seven deadly sins.
• The language appeals to 21-year olds.
• Thus lectures are targeted to under-35s.
• Different vocabulary, different stories, but the same stuff.

Are systems any fun?

• Fun for 21-year olds.
• Funky Business never sold well because of Chapter 5, and on CNBC and CNN, all the interviewers wanted to talk about was Chapter 5.
• Intriguing for cross-cultural people.

Fun is what's relevant, and meaningful in a context.

Much easier to sell the word "network".

• Probed on governance.
• "Community" doesn't sell.
• "Adaptive" on old.
• Can sell "network organization".
• Small bridge to get people from networks to systems.
• Can be systems science underneath.

Can look at http://funkybusiness.com .

• Jonas Ridderstrale also writes a column for the Financial Times every few weeks.

MBA programs don't teach principles per se, it's a trade school.

• Where do you get the foundations?
• Affinity to speak with systems thinkers.
• Ease, and an underlying understanding, but you don't know whether it's because they're brillant, or because they understand systems.

Criticism of systems communities:  frozen in the 1980s.

• Death of systems science in 1983, article by Fred Emery published for the Province on Ontario, on Quality of Work Life.
• Good body of work, but when was the last time we discussed Quality of Work Life as an issue?  Probably 1983.
• Also reading social theory, and communities of practice.
• These people may have studied systems science, but maybe systems inside:  things seem to fit right.
• Fear:  would like to meet systems science leaders, before they die.
• Sense of loss of knowledge.
• Ozbekhan had knowledge, and didn't pass it on.

In evening classes, Ozbekhan taught belly dancing.

• By far, the best professor.

In 2000 conference, in this session, had some presenting about business and dance.

• No movement toward the younger people, because they don't think it's relevant.

Invitation to a session on Syntegration on the Future of the ISSS.

• It's a way of getting a whole picture.
• Using different perspectives all at once.
• Move around the circle, and get a good idea of what each other is doing.
• Scary in the current community:  when we have the most need for multiple perspective, a lot of the leadership in the west appear to be shutting down multiple perspectives, towards the simple.
• New policy in the U.S. for NGOs, have to push the administration line, no questions permitted.
• This is for external organizations.
• Still has to be sold in congress.
• Lowering variety towards fundamentalism, not just Muslim fundamentalists, but capitalist fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists.
• People who don't want to hear evidence that there are other ideas.
• Even have systems fundamentalists.

Encouraging dialogue, cautious of change being attributed to individuals.

• Useful to think of individuals as representatives, who have reached an apex within their systems.
• How do they reflect the systemic changes that are occuring within societies, that may represent forces against participatory dialogue.

Individuals sell this approach.

• Running down on energy, will close here.
• Anyone coming for quick solutions will have been disappointed.

Roundtables tomorrow night.

• On organizational forms and evolutionary paths
• On inquiring systems and practice.

Offer of audio files on CD-ROM with MP3 files.

Will probably have a similar discussion next year at Asilomar.

Feedback on session: like it.

Pointer to presentation on system-net.