This article is drawn from a speech given by Russell Ackoff at a Villanova University conference honoring his lifetime of work in systems theory and practice--and celebrating his 80th birthday. In the address, Russell, who died last month at the age of 90, reflects on what he enjoyed most about being a lifelong systems thinker. This article was reprinted in The Systems Thinker by permission of Plenum Press.

When one reaches 80, one is considered to be ripe and ready for picking. Picking usually consists of the pickers asking the pickee to reflect back on the wisdom he has gained over his lifetime. This request is based on the false assumption that wisdom increases with age. The pickee is then expected to share with the pickers the bits of wisdom he or she may have accumulated. Unfortunately, my bag of wisbits is empty. Whatever I may have once possessed, I have dissipated in my writings.

Pickers may also falsely assume that the clarity with which one can foresee the future increases with age. The fact is that whatever we can see clearly about the future we will take steps to prevent from happening. As Kenneth Boulding once said, If we saw tomorrow's newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen. Unfortunately, as you know, I have no interest in forecasting the future, only in creating it by acting appropriately in the present. I am a founding member of the Presentology Society.

I also have no interest in reconstructing the past as I would like it to have been. I learned from it precisely because it wasn't what I expected, which also explains why I don't remember it. Furthermore, you cannot learn from my mistakes, only from your own. I want to encourage, not discourage, your making your own. Now where do these self-indulgent reflections leave me? Not surprisingly, where I want to be: discussing the most important aspect of life, having fun. For me there has never been an amount of money that makes it worth doing something that is not fun. So I'm going to recall the principal sources of the fun that I have experienced.

Denying the Obvious
I have very much enjoyed denying the obvious and exploring the consequences of doing so. In most cases, I have found the obvious to be wrong. The obvious, I discovered, is not what needs no proof, but what people do not want to prove. I have been greatly influenced by [satirist] Ambrose Bierce's definition of self-evident: "Evident to one's self and to nobody else." Here is a very small sample of the obvious things I have found to be wrong:

Improving the performance of the parts of a system taken separately will necessarily improve the performance of 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 Hyundai can make it inoperable. This explains why benchmarking has almost always failed. Denial of this principle of performance improvement led me to a series of organizational designs intended to facilitate the management of interactions: the circular organization, the internal market economy, and the multidimensional organization.

"The 2009 Pegasus Conference was quite simply the best conference I have ever attended. This was partly due to the excellent facilities and professional manner in which organizational staff orchestrated each minute detail; partly due to the excellent speakers and sessions; and--most important--partly due to the people. To be able to speak with a university director, a physician turned chief knowledge officer, several educators from the Netherlands, Chicago, and Eastern Canada--and so many more: That was a mind-blowing treat! Simply excellent."
--2009 Pegasus Conference Participant Douglas Ross Leadbetter, M.Ed.

Make connections that last a lifetime and build your skills for thriving in conditions of accelerating complexity. At the 2010 Pegasus Conference, keynote presenters Daniel H. Kim and Peter Senge will help us celebrate 20 years of Systems Thinking in Action by looking forward to the next frontiers for learning and leading.

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