"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system."
From Systemantics by John Gall

Invitation to Systems Thinking Workshop

Day 1 - Session 1

Second session on Thursday - story that I'm stuck in that I'm trying to figure out how to change.
- At any scale
- Or it can be something wonderful that you'd like to replicate

Non-linear thinking
- Doug Engelbart hypothesized about doubling the sizes of things in the physical world. Imagine a dog double the size of a normal dog. What breaks? Double it again. What breaks? Repeat. What breaks? Well, lots of things. One thing: eventually, the linear increase of the sizes of bones fails to support the linear increase in terms of weight of the dog, because the materials that bones are made of aren't intended to support a skyscraper-sized object, no matter how big the bones themselves get.

Questions

When drawing/representing systems, I feel like there are nouns / elements, and verbs / ways things change. I'm not sure how to represent my "verbs" in the system. I'm really struggling to structure this question well, which tells me I don't even understand it well enough to structure. Just putting this out there since I'm struggling with my diagramming and hopefully people trying to figure out the question I'm asking will produce a better question :joy:

Notes on Thinking In Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows

A system produces exactly what it is designed to produce.
We must find the courage to face the reality that systems produce that which they are designed to produce and restructure the system.

The church is often lamented as having failed and the cause is often “the culture.” What if the “failure” is actually the result of the system itself?

Russell Ackoff - Intro to Systems Thinking

Video by Russell Ackoff

A system is a whole that consists of parts each of which can affect its behavior or its property.
A system cannot be divided into independent parts.
The essential or defining properties of a system are properties of the whole which none of its parts have.
- For example, an automobile. The essential characteristic of an automobile is that it can carry you from one place to another.
- When a system is taken apart, it loses its essential properties.
- A system is not the sum of the behavior of its parts, it's a product of their interactions!
Implications:
- If we have a system of improvement that's directed at improving the parts taken separately you can be absolutely sure that the performance of the whole will not be improved.
  - The performance of the system depends on how the parts fit, not the performance of the parts taken separately.
When you get rid of something you don't want, you don't necessarily get something you do want. Therefore, finding defects and removing them is not a way of improving system performance.
- An improvement in a program must be directed at what you want not at what you don't want.
- Determining what you want requires you to redesign the system not for the future but right now and asking yourself what will you do right now if you could do whatever you wanted wanted to.
  - If you can't determine what you would do if you could do whatever you want, how will you determine what you should do under constraints?
Discontinuous improvement is better than continuous improvement. That comes about through creativity.
- Effectiveness over efficiency.
- It's better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.
- Quality should contain the notion of value, not just efficiency.
- The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

#work/notes #inbox

Systems Thinking

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Systems Thinking

Invitation to Systems Thinking Workshop

Day 1 - Session 1

Notes on Thinking In Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows

Russell Ackoff - Intro to Systems Thinking