Re: Thinking outside the box in the UK

[Bob Adsett <bob.adsett@blueyonder.co.uk>]

Vic

Not before time has this group of renowned thinkers arrived at the
cause of organisational problems - the way that we think! The only amazing
thing for me is how long it has taken these think-tank gurus to see the
light of appreciating systems thinking and that it may hold some of the
answers to the problems that we face today.

If we want to change the outcomes, we need to reframe the thinking
that we use to understand what is going on. This will only come about
when we appreciate that organisations are constructed of complex
inter-relationships and that it is these connections are where we need to
work. The spaces between the parts are where improvements are
to be found, and an appreciation of 'flow' through the organisation is
pivotal to genuine sustainable improvement.

Unless we start to see systems as the context in which we work we will only
succeed in sub-optimising the parts at the expense of the whole, clearly not
news to members of the DEN. In the UK the government's insistence on trying
to improve performance by focussing on the ends rather than the means in
their Best Value regime has been woefully ineffective. I only hope that over
the coming months Demos can enlighten some of our senior civil servants.

Organisations are not machines and the 'rules' of command and control,
ONLY apply in the physical world where the whole is the sum of the
parts (like cogs in a clock, or part in an engine). If we were dealing
with a physical machine then demanding more from the end or output of
such a system would cause the cogs and gears to spin faster because they are
physically connected.  But when we introduce humans into the equation, then
we are dealing with relationships, which is a totally different reality,
where the physical model of cause and effect (a Newtonian approach) does not
apply.

We therefore need to develop a new management paradigm based not upon
a physical model, but one that sees an organisation as a natural
living system (I don't think Demos have quite gone this far, yet!). A
system that lives, breaths and is complicated by a myriad of feedback
loops and relationships that has to be developed and nurtured if we are
to lead a successful organisation or partnership.

I would agree that Mulgan now seems to be on the right track, the worrying
thing is will his journey take Demos to an understanding of Deming's world?

Bob Adsett

On 26/5/02 1:31 pm, "Vic Forte" <vic@vicf.com> wrote:

Brilliant article in today's Observer - 26th May page 9

http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,722116,00.html