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April 29, 2006

The Fifth Discipline - book by Peter Senge - blog by Karl Janowski

Disciplines
System Thinking – common system patterns and how to use them
Personal Mastery – personal continuous learning
Mental Models – our views of how things work, internal representation of external reality
Shared Vision – team has same vision of the result
Team Learning – group learning, increasing team IQ

This is a great book. There is a lot of material for both self and team development. Peter Senge uses examples that make you think, like the MIT beer game where simple delays in communcation cause a game that models beer distrobution to be tougher than it seems.  Can you see the forest through the trees? Peter Senge has taught me the opposite of analytical thinking, instead of zoomming in and break things up into smaller chucks, zoom out to see the whole picture and understand.

Systems - elements interacting, and through their interaction achieve something they cannot achieve without interacting 

Here is a link for the system archetypes: http://www.systems-thinking.org/theWay/theWay.htm

Building Blocks
Balancing Loop – two opposing forces that reach an equilibrium
Reinforcing loop – results in growth or decline
 
Archetypes
Limits to Growth – one reinforcing loop and one balancing, the balancing limits the growth of the reinforcing, you keep putting bigger engines in cars to gain speed at the race track but weight of those engines limits the speed
 
Shifting the Burden- two balancing loops and a reinforcing loop, this happens when you solve the symptom and not the real problem and solving the symptom actually makes the fundamental problem worse
 
Fixes that Fail – a balancing loop foiled by a reinforcing,  you fix a problem but unintended consequences happen and defeat the fix
 
Drifting Goals – two balancing loops, one undermines the balance and intention of the other as the desired state keep moving because, hence the name “drifting goal”, for example you being training for a sport, you set your goal, as you get closer to the goal you start to settle for less and you never reach your goal.
 
Indecision – two balancing loops with delays, the delay causes and endless ping pong effect (in economics many time we assume perfect information, but does supply and demand really influence price? How do you know current supply and demand if it changes instantaneously?)
 
Escalation – two balancing loops oppose each other creating a reinforcing loop, the arms race between US and USSR is an example
 
Attractiveness Principle – limits to growth with multiple limits
 
Growth and Underinvestment – limits to growth with an additional reinforcing loop that has a external standard and some delay, marketing increases demand that leads to the need for more capacity after some delay
 
Accidental Adversaries – four reinforcing loops and two balancing, best explained that there are two things trying to work together for a common cause but each is also working on self development, this self development hinder the other person, example two politicians both running for a party’s presidential nomination (they are both from the same party) while working together to win the presidency for the party, they are also working for their individual nomination, and they both hurt each other through their campaign by exposing each other’s weaknesses thus hindering their party’s chances at the overall nomination. 
 
These two are similar; there are differences in their structure though. Success to the successful archetype allows one to grow. Tragedy of the commons limits both.
 
Tragedy of the Commons – two growing structures share a limited resource
 
Success to the Successful – growth of one limits the other

Other Peter Senge Sites
http://www.solonline.org/
 
http://www.thinking.net/Systems_Thinking/systems_thinking.html
 
http://www.systems-thinking.de/


As a final throught I have seem simularities between game theory and system thinking. The Prisoners Dilemma models the game theory of an arms race. Escalation models it in system thinking. Does balancing loop equlibrium relate to Nash equlibrium?

 

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April 28, 2006

Characteristics of Socio-technical Systems - article by Fred Emery - blog by Karl Janowski

The article can be found online here: http://moderntimesworkplace.com/archives/ericbio/ericbio.html

Here are some ideas discussed in this article:

Systems Topics

A system is a group of elements, that through their mutual interaction, achieve something unique. von Bertalanffy’s definition of a system
 
Emergence – the unique characteristic created through mutual interaction in a system
 
Closed System – a system that does not interact with its environment
 
Open System – a system that does interact with its environment
 
Any open system can become a closed system by defining the environment as part of the system.
 
Many people define a system as a physical group of elements, but many times that definition is wrong because there is more than one unique emergence. So it help to find the emergence first then defined the system as just the elements that through their interaction create that emergence.  Otherwise you’ll have defined a group of systems as one whole system.

Socio-technical Systems

“Systems where man interacts with man, man interacts with machines, and machines interact with machines" What demands does the technical system place on the social system?
 
Eric Trist and Fred Emery (Tavistock Institute) developed the concept of socio-technical systems from their work as social scientists right after World War II. Their main body of work dealt with being open system theory to organizational development.
 
Their famous paper “Participative Design for Participative Democracy”.
 
In ”Characteristics of Socio-technical Systems”, Fred Emery talked about an enterprise being a STS with three main analysis points: analysis of component parts to revel contribution and interaction (work relationship structure), analysis of these parts with reference to problems of internal coordination and control thus created, and analysis of relevant external environment and the way the enterprise manages it.
 
Aspects of technical systems that place demand on the social system
  • Nature of material being worked on
  • Level of mechanization (or automation)
  • Units of operation and grouping of these units into production phases
  • Degree of centrality of different operations
  • Maintenance operations
  • Supply operations
  • Spatial layout of process over time
  • Physical work setting


Task breakdown (simplest terms)

  • Dependent tasks
  • Independent tasks


Two types of dependent tasks

  • Simultaneous interdependence (two tasks must happen at same time for outcome to be valid)
  • Successional dependence (two tasks must be performed either serial or parallel to achieve outcome) 
Formal symbiotic ties between people– sanctioned by management
Informal symbiotic ties between people – “friendships” and other non-sanctioned ties
 
This makes it hard for management to map roles and tasks to a formal structure. Many jobs success is based on informal relationships (“social networking”).
 
Suggestions

“Large groups of people inhibit stable interactive patterns” With groups over 12 people the multiple relationships become too great for every individual to maintain so sub groups are formed.
 
Increase likelihood of friendship via sociometric self-selection.
 
Do not assume “job satisfaction and output are positively related”
 
Manager's job is not to manage the role/task relationship of the worker but the external boundary conditions that relate the worker to the larger organization. 

Individual Psychology of the Worker 

Explore these ideas:
  • “satisfaction” with work/role and alienation
  • “recalcitrance”, control through coercion and manipulation
  • non-sanctioned purposes inside the enterprise
To perform a task one of these conditions must exist:
  • Performance satisfies some psychological need
  • Performance is not satisfying but a prerequisite to achieving other psychological satisfaction
  • Performance is induced by demands perceived to arise from the task itself (“task orientation” the task itself induces strong forces that lead to completion, or task gives individual control that is satisfying)
“dull contentment” sort of satisfaction gained from habitual work

Consider, “The child’s relationship to the learning material is given little opportunity to develop into an interest relationship because it is overshadowed by the teacher-child relationship”

Discretionary content of a task – parts of tasks where worker has choice and authority Time span of responsibility – time free from managers looking over the workers shoulders
 
Alienation – the individual may be alienated from his or her workers, or from the product itself

 

 

 

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