William replied to my comments about Henry Alberts' work with studied
critique. Rick decided to distribute the message with the suggestion that
it be seen as an instance of a generic or prototypical situation. It is
in that spirit that I am responding to the specifics in William's message,
since these specifics tend to be the same kind that one will find in many
other situations; and since my answers are the same ones I would give for
those situations, in most cases.
In a message dated 96-05-14 21:41:27 EDT, you write:
>A cynical comment born out of my experience with the US Department of
>Defense. Henry Alberts has my deepest sympathy. He studied a system that
>grew by topsie for 200 years and during the study it became outdated. His
>original research should be written up in the annals of anthropology.
>
>Why should our Congress have to understand the system? Or why should the
>Department of Defense want Congress to understand it? Congress will never
>have to use the system, so why bother? If Congress did understand the
>system they probably would want to micro-manage it to assure that their
>pork barrels were filled. Is this cynical? I don't think so, I think it
>is merely extrapolating from a long history.
>
>I think the people who have to understand the system are the people who
>operate in it. And this understanding has to be at different levels. For
>instance the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Acquisitions has to have an
>overall knowledge but the Project Manager for a weapons system acquisition
>must have a pretty detailed knowledge of contracting. The design engineer
>has a different knowledge requirement, etc.....
>
EXCUSE MY USE OF CAPS. IT IS TO HELP DISTINGUISH MY REPLY FROM THE OTHER
MATERIAL; NOT TO BE A FLAME!
William says that if Congress understood the system they would want to
micro-manage it.
CONGRESS ALREADY MICROMANAGES IT WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING IT. THERE IS
PLENTY OF EVIDENCE FOR THIS. IF CONGRESS, THE MILITARY, AND THE PUBLIC
UNDERSTOOD THE SYSTEM, CONGRESS COULD NOT MICROMANAGE OUT OF IGNORANCE,
AND WHAT THEY DO COULD BE SEEN BY OTHERS AND INTELLIGENTLY DEALT WITH.
William seems to want to be selective about who understands the system. I
want anyone to have the opportunity to understand it who wants to do;
rather than choosing who that should be; and to make that possible with a
minimum of effort consistent with what it takes to understand it. I am
talking with the General Services Administration about providing a
facility dedicated to that purpose.
>Is the system going to be kept updated? Yes it will be changed, for both
>good and not so good reasons. Will it be kept up-to-date? - categorically
>no! The inertia in the department is too great to either implement a
>change fast enough or to make changes in time to be up-to-date. What will
>happen is that the practitioners will change how they do business in order
>to get their work done more easily. The good changes will work their way
>up the chain until they get into the official instructions. By then they
>will probably be out of date.
IF ANYONE ACCEPTS ALL OF THE EVILS OF THE PAST AS BEING NECESSARY, IT
SEEMS UNLIKELY ANYTHING WILL GET BETTER. WE BELIEVE THAT THE BEST ROUTE
TO UPDATING IS TO MAKE THE SYSTEM VISIBLE, WHEREUPON ANYONE WHO SEES A
NEED FOR UPDATING WILL KNOW WHERE IT SHOULD GO AND HOW TO GET IT DONE.
>How is it to be seen physically? It isn't. I question the need to see it
>physically. First, it is not a physical system. Second, thinking and
>seeing large complex systems physically is probably not what we want to
>do. A physical representation is false for it cannot illustrate all of the
>dimensions much less all of the inter-relationships that have to be known.
>It gives the viewer a false sense of knowing the system.
I WAS NOT CLEAR. WHAT I MEAN BY "SEEING PHYSICALLY" IS TO MAKE
EDUCATIONAL DISPLAYS AVAILABLE, ARRANGED IN PEDAGOGICAL ORDER, WITH
NECESSARY INTERPRETATIONAL ADJUNCTS. I KNOW NO REASON WHY THIS CAN'T BE
DONE, AND WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF DOING IT.
SINCE WE GLEANED THOUSANDS OF RELATIONSHIPS FROM THE 320 PROGRAM MANAGERS,
ONE CAN ASK: "WHO IS THERE OUT THERE THAT HAS NEW DIMENSIONS?" AND WE
CAN ASK "WHO IS QUALIFIED TO DETERMINE THAT MANY DIMENSIONS ARE MISSING?"
FINALLY WE SAY, THAT IF SOMEONE IS QUALIFIED, LET THEM REFER TO HENRY'S
COMPREHENSIVE WORK AND STATE SPECIFICALLY WHAT IS MISSING THAT IS
IMPORTANT.
>What I would much rather have is a group of people from the system and
>from all levels of working with the system. These people would build a
>model of the system that could draw actual data from the operating system.
>Then they would test and learn about the operational system using the
>model. By adjusting the model to match the operational system, and by
>changing the operational system based on their learning these people would
>gain an insight into the whole system that would allow them to make the
>best changes. With luck they may even be able to anticipate problems.
MANY MODELS APPEAR IN THE DISSERTATION. THEY ARE MODELS OF SYSTEM LOGIC,
CONNECTING PROBLEMS AT BASE LEVELS TO CATEGORIES AT INTERMEDIATE LEVELS,
TO LARGE AREAS AT THE JOINT CHIEFS LEVELS, WITH PATHS CONNECTING THEM.
>Is this type of work possible, well yes anything is possible. Would it be
>valuable? I am not sure, but I bet it would make a great bit of doctoral
>research. I could see the subtitle now "A dynamic modeling way to learn
>complex systems". In fact this seems like so nice a boondoggle that I
>volunteer to lead the effort.
SOME DAY I HOPE TO SEE AN ADVOCATE OF SYSTEMS DYNAMICS MODELING AS THE
ANSWER TO EVERYTHING EXPLAIN WHY THEY BELIEVE THIS.
>Is this related to Learning Organizations? I think so, what is suggested
>is a learning laboratory for the enterprise. It is this ability to
>experience the dynamic relationships among the components of a system that
>accelerates learning the system. In large complex systems this learning
>is valuable at all levels of aggregation in the system. The clerk should
>know how their actions influence downstream processes and how they are
>influenced by upstream processes. Senior management should have a real
>feel of the system's response to changing policies.
WE USED TO TALK ABOUT "IMPERATIVE GENERATORS". THESE WERE PEOPLE WHO SAID
"WE MUST DO X" QUITE REGULARLY. ON THE WHOLE WE BELIEVE IT IS BETTER TO
SAY, "HERE IS HOW TO DO X IN CASE IT SEEMS NECESSARY TO DO SO". THIS IS
OUR APPROACH.
>A leader is best when people barely know he exists. Of a
>good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aim
>fulfilled, they will say, "We did this ourselves."
YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO SEE HOW PEOPLE AT THE TOP TAKE ALL THE CREDIT
FOR HENRY'S WORK. HIS NAME HAS NEVER BEEN ATTACHED TO IT. IN THIS
RESPECT, HENRY IS FOLOWING YOUR DICTUM. ON THE OTHER HAND, THE PROGRAM
MANAGERS HAVE ALSO BEEN LEFT OUT OF THE CREDIT LOOP. BUT AT LEAST THEY
KNOW WHO THEY ARE, AND THEY CAN TAKE GREAT SATISFACTION IN WHAT THEY
ACCOMPLISHED, EVEN IF THE LIGHT OF DAY NEVER SHINES ON THEIR PARADE.
And anybody who seriously doubts any of this, as I said before, can refer
to Henry's dissertation (I have a copy in my office), or can compare the
public law that I mentioned against the mile-high stack of stuff that it
replaced.
John N. Warfield
Johnwfield@aol.com
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>