RE: Deming on systems thinking

["Ivan Webb" <Ivan.Webb@bigpond.com>]

System thinking is powerful and also dangerous.

Its power lies in its capacity to bring a sense of order to our complex
experiences of reality by enabling us to create and share meaningful models
of these experiences.

Its danger lies in its potential to distort our experiences so that we begin
to 'experience' the world as being made up of simple 'systems' models that
we have actually created in our minds.  I suspect that Deming would have
agreed with his fellow statistician (G Box) who said: 'All models are wrong
but some are useful'.

Systems THINKING helps us create mental models that may be useful in making
sense of our experiences and shaping our responses. Deming's SoPK provides
many checks and balances that make minimize the dangers of systems thinking.

Ivan Webb