EDITOR'S PICK
From Mechanistic to Social Systemic Thinking
by Russell L. Ackoff
An excerpt from a classic Pegasus Conference keynote

PEGASUS CONFERENCE UPDATE
3 New Concurrent Sessions!
• Loosening the Grip of Polarization: PCP’s Approach to Dialogue Design
• Indigenous Wisdom, Inspired Futures: Philosophy and Practice in Asia
• Insightful Leadership: A Coherent Vision for Dutch Schools

EDITOR'S PICK
From Mechanistic to Social Systemic Thinking
by Russell L. Ackoff

Thirteen years ago, many Pegasus Conference participants experienced a watershed moment when they heard Russell Ackoff’s entertaining chronicle of the dawning of the Systems Age. One listener, Hal Williamson, recalls his own response: “I had a huge ‘aha’: you cannot solve a systems problem by an analysis of its parts. Ackoff is brilliant. This insight and others from his 1993 talk refocused my way of looking at the world. In fact, you could say this presentation changed my life!” Like Hal, many of us would say that our capacity for seeing things whole has deepened over the years. And yet, have we completely shed the Machine Age habits of mind that draw us into reductive problem solving as opposed to creative problem dissolving? In its striking clarity, Ackoff’s message endures as a reinforcement of our growing instinct to embrace new patterns of thought and action better suited to the complexities of today and tomorrow. Here’s an excerpt from this classic presentation:

The Advent of Systems Thinking
Why did the concept of systems finally encroach on Machine Age thinking? It has to do with the fundamental characteristics of systems. First, a system is a whole that consists of two or more parts. Each part affects the behavior of the whole, depending on the part’s interaction with other parts of the system. In addition, the essential properties that define any system are properties of the whole, and none of the parts have those properties. For example, an automobile has an essential property in that it can carry us from one place to another. No single part of an automobile—a wheel, an axle, a carburetor—can do that. Finally, once we take a system apart, it loses its defining characteristic. If we were to disassemble a car, for example, even if we kept every piece, we would no longer have a car. Why? Because the automobile is not the sum of its parts, it is the product of the parts’ interaction.

To understand a system, analysis says to take it apart. But when we take a system apart, it loses all its essential properties. Furthermore, its parts lose their properties. The discovery that we cannot understand the nature of a system by traditional analysis forced us to realize that we needed another kind of thinking. This new way of thinking came to be called synthesis.

Synthesis is the polar opposite of analysis. To illustrate, analysis says that the first step to understanding a system is to take it apart. Consider a university, for example. If we wanted to use analysis to define a university, we might first say that it consists of colleges. Colleges, in turn contain departments, and departments are made up of students, faculty, and areas of study. We would continue to reduce the university in this way until we arrived at its indivisible elements. Then we would try to build up our understanding of these elements into an understanding of the entire university.

Continue reading this excerpt...

Buy the DVD.

(When you buy this recording, now available for the first time on DVD, you will also receive a PDF of the digest of the talk that was published as part of our Innovations in Management Series.)

PEGASUS CONFERENCE UPDATE
16th Annual Pegasus Conference
Leading Beyond the Horizon: Strategies for Bringing Tomorrow into Today's Choices
Westin Waltham-Boston Hotel
Waltham, Massachusetts, November 13–15, 2006

Register by September 17 to secure your place and save $300 off the standard conference price!

3 New Concurrent Sessions!

Loosening the Grip of Polarization: PCP’s Approach to Dialogue Design
Maggie Herzig, a Senior Associate and founder of the Public Conversations Project
When deeply held worldviews clash in the public forum, passionate expressions of dreams and fears are typically heard as virtuous by some and as villainous by others. Learn how the Public Conversations Project's approach to dialogue invites the passion of the partisans while interrupting the conversational patterns that keep them from hearing and understanding each other.

Indigenous Wisdom, Inspired Futures: Philosophy and Practice in Asia
Samantha Tan, The Meristem Group; Sheila Damodaran, Singapore Police Force; Stephen Meng, Leadership Dynamics International
Through the story of an entrepreneurial journey that led to corporate success in China and the case study of a societal intervention in Singapore, experience the power of indigenous wisdom and envision how you and your team might integrate perspectives from different traditions and methodologies to co-create inspired futures.

Insightful Leadership: A Coherent Vision for Dutch Schools
Jan Jutten and Guus Geisen, Sustainable Learning; Wiel Botterweck
Innovative Dutch educators, inspired by the work of Peter Senge and Michael Fullan, are radically shifting the system’s capacity for moral leadership and sustainable education practices. Learn how one school is collaborating with partnering organizations such as preschool and health care services, to achieve meaningful change.

To learn more about these and other program highlights, check out the conference website.

FROM THE FIELD
Smart Failures

Learning from failure is a hot topic these days. The cover story in the July 10 issue of Business Week continues the magazine's recent focus on creating innovative cultures and its underside: recognizing that there will be failures—and learning how to learn from them.

Long-time Pegasus contributor Marilyn Darling and her partners at Signet Consulting are featured in a related on-line Business Week article. “Learning on the Front Lines” tells how they worked with client company DTE to apply the After Action Review (AAR) process to reduce the time it takes to restore power after a storm from 230 minutes to 140 minutes (40 percent improvement to date).

In the article, Marilyn observes that, when done right, AARs aren't “a static postmortem event,” but “part of the cultural fabric of an organization.”

Read the on-line article...

Suggested further reading:
Emergent Learning in Action: The After Action Review, from The Systems Thinker, Vol 12, No 8