RE: Challenges to systems thinking

["Alan Clark" <alclark@keybiz.com>]

Dear Wayne,

In your posting of 24 June you were challenging some of the assumptions
around treating SoPK as a system.

May I make two points:

1. Surely psychology is about people and understanding their thinking and
behaviour as customers, suppliers or those inside the system under
consideration? Except perhaps if you are a Skinnerian, when it is about rats
and pigeons...

2. According to Deming, SoPK can be thought of as a lens and my in
understanding "the aim is in the name", i.e. Profound Knowledge or deep
insight*, or as Michael Simmons puts it, understanding the whole situation,
thus facilitating transformation or to maintain the transformed state.

[*According to Prof Henry Neave, after one of his visits to Sweden, there is
no direct translation of the English words Profound Knowledge. The nearest
words in Swedish translate back as Deep Insight, which I find incredibly
useful with people who I don't want to frighten with the serious sounding
words like Profound Knowledge. Deep insight also has a nice link back to
Deming's metaphor of a lens. As I proposed on the DEN a few years back, one
can extend Deming's metaphor and represent SoPK as four elements in a series
compound lens.]

Regards

Alan

Alan C Clark
Key Business Improvement
Tel: ++44 (0)1527 598014
Mobile: 07831 508543