RE: System Thinking in the UK

["Aidan Ward" <aidan_ward@antelopes.com>]

Denizens, Jack,

Jack Crawford raises the question of system limits most clearly and
pertinently. In resolving the question around the aim of the system
there are new questions raised, however, which muddy the water again.

In other answers to this question and also to the parallel thread on
theorems being true in their own world, we notice that not all
stakeholders within a system have the same aim for the system or the
same sources of value or the same values to base any of these things on.
Recent business theory (see for example the excellent Reframing Business
by Richard Normann) emphasizes the establishment of collaborations to
produce value where no-one is in a position to manage the system in a
controlling sense.

If safety is a central requirement, (and not just a required public
commitment) then a joint scoping of the system is possible and
necessary. We could note that any poorly committed or hostile
stakeholder can break this definition. This becomes important in
extending safety to security issues.

In the general business case, and in my own interest in security, there
can be no defined system boundary and we could rephrase the other thread
to say any secure system is secure within the world its security is
defined and designed for. In particular it is in practice impossible to
get a satisfactory definition of what a multilateral system is for and
what exactly security is supposed to secure. For instance assets may
have essentially zero internal value but be of crucial value to an
attacker for a purpose the owner has not considered.

The conclusion that I would draw is that to use Deming ideas it is
necessary to focus on the aim of the system, and the aim implies
boundaries. However, there are other aims of the system and we should
balance the top down view with the observation that the purpose of the
system is what it does (POSIWID). As we have seen it is pointless
bleating about good intentions in an education system that fails its
kids. We need to take seriously the system defined by the implication
that the aim must be to advance other interests than the kids'. One way
of promoting this sort of thinking is precisely to look at the various
aims of a system from the perspective of different stakeholders.

Regards,

Aidan Ward 
 Antelope Projects Ltd