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Robert N. Phillips
CEO, Lasotell Pty Ltd.
www.lasotell.com.au
How many times have you tried to "improve" a "system" in the
workplace only to find that, after all the hard work and
after deep-down, middle-of-the-night, honest reflection, the
improvement has been only a modest success? Are you still
basically amazed at the number of things that did not seem
to fit quite the way you thought they would? Do you also
feel, in all honesty, that the longevity of the new system
has more to do with your continued presence rather than with
people believing in its inherent worthiness?
Why do such things happen? After all, you identified the
requirements, planned the work, and did all those good
things. Why did the "owner" of the system and everybody else
keep finding all these wrinkly, irritating bits and pieces
along the way?
This article is the first of several articles about Soft
System Methodology, which is best described as an organised
way of tackling messy situations in the real world. Some
examples of messy situations are
- improving health care for elderly in your local district
- deciding how the company should take advantage of
information technology
- improving the productivity in a department
- creating a new workflow system for three teams of people
- planning your career
- running a sports club
(These articles will draw heavily on the book Soft
Systems Methodology in Action [Wiley 2000].)
Soft Systems Methodology has its beginnings in the 1960s
when Gwilyn Jenkins became the Professor of Systems at
Lancaster University. His appointment was the first of its
type in Great Britain. Jenkins's aim was to "find ways of
understanding and coping with the perplexing difficulties of
taking action, both individually and in groups to "improve"
situations which in day-to-day life continuously create and
continuously change." The intervening 30 or so years have
been a process of exploration and evolution of thinking to
get to the Soft Systems Methodology of today. Peter
Checkland has been a dominant figure in this work for the
last 20 years.
So, let us begin.
We all tend to look at a problem situation and say "all we
need to do is…." But a set of circumstances that can be
solved that easily is, by definition, not a "messy
situation." Nevertheless, many people try to address a wide
range of problems in this simplistic way. So, why does it
not work? Two reasons. The easy reason is that "messy
situations" are multi-factorial. There are always a large
number of factors driving the situation, which may or may
not be linked horizontally or vertically. And of course,
there are all the factors on the next layer or two up from
the situation we are trying to resolve. The second reason is
the hard one—messy situations always involve people.
The first approach to addressing messy situations is to try
applying pure System Engineering principles. After all, that
approach works well when the objectives are clear and the
requirements are universally agreed upon. But in reality,
people have their own views and judgements and their own
standards and values. So trying to define an agreed set of
objectives or requirements in a messy situation is like
trying to corral cats! If there is any doubt about that,
consider the political din that arises when anyone suggests
changing the Health or Education system at a state or
federal level, and think about how long it takes to actually
make any change at all.
One of the fundamental aspects of the Soft Systems
Methodology is understanding how human beings interpret the
world around them. Basically, we build a mental model of how
we think a device or human "system" operates and then we
take actions based on that internal model. As experience
teaches us more about the device or system, we modify our
internal model. When reading Checkland's description of that
process, one cannot help but be reminded of the highly
illustrative example given by Donald Norman in The Design of
Everyday Things (Currency/Doubleday 1990) showing how the
average person construed an internal model of how the
cooling system worked in a particular refrigerator that was
poorly designed. (Norman's book is still available at
amazon.com
and we will discuss it further in this column in the next
issue.)
In principle, the human process of model building is a good approach, but
it has several flaws. There is a limit to the complexity of the model one
person can create and retain in the mind. But more important, how accurate
and how complete is the model? If the model is deficient, the outcome will
also be adversely affected. This discussion brings us to the need to have a
way of gauging the appropriateness of the mental model.
We will commence the next article with this topic.
References
Soft Systems Methodology in Action
Peter Checkland and Jim Scholes
2000, New York, NY
John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471986054
The Design of Everyday Things
Donald A. Norman
1990, New York, NY
Currency/Doubleday
ISBN: 0385267746
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