Blog posts on systems thinking

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Unpacking the Components of Hard Work to Design Better Work Conditions

  “Hard work” is often code for “work I despise doing.” If you create a system where people take pride and joy in their work the same time spent working is not nearly as “hard.” If they are proud of what they accomplish a difficult task is often rewarding, and not seen as working “harder.” As is so often the case “hard work” is really packing together numerous ideas in one phrase.

  • long hours
  • difficult tasks (physically, emotionally or intellectually)
  • unrewarding work
  • unpleasant tasks
  • inflexible work (It is a “hard job” if it prevents you from for example, seeing your child’s basketball game. If you were able to see the game and finish up 2 hours of work after they went to bed that is less hard.)

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• Don't Claim Your Customer's Suffering from Your Management System Results are a "Learning Opportunity"

  If you force the consequences of mistakes on your customers making up excuses about how this failure is a learning experience for you is only ok if you actually spell out how you are changing to assure you don't fail your customers due to this same management system failure again.
  
  You need to design your systems to minimize consequences to customers when something goes wrong.
  
  Acting as though a problem is due to some specific issue only with the exact circumstances that created the consequences is exactly the message you expect from businesses that have no respect for customers.

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• Looking Back at "Some Notes on Management in a Hospital" by W. Edwards Deming

  The head nurse returned to say that the nurse that was to give the infusion had recorded the infusion as given. It is possible that she recorded it in advance, with the intention to give it, and did not correct the record. Is this the regular procedure, to record intentions? Who would know?      An unsuspecting physician, looking at the record for his patient, would assume that the infusion had been given, and could draw wrong inferences about how the patient had been doing on the drug. In my case, as it turned out, no harm. But how would he know? A nurse, or a physician, has a right to suppose that the medication was delivered as ordered and as recorded.

  What is the purpose of the record? To inform the physician about intentions, or to tell him what happened?

  It is even more difficult than usual to avoid blaming people when you are being forced to suffer. But even in this situation Dr. Deming understood the problems were a natural result of poor processes not of failures by individuals to do their best.

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• Science and Engineering Macroeconomic Investment

  The United States has benefited tremendously from the decisions to fund the National Science Foundation (as well as other investments in science) for decades. Other countries have seen the wisdom in those investments and seem to be committing much more to those investments than the US lately. I think it is very wise of them and will serve the world well. But I fear the United States has already allowed itself to lose a great deal of the competitive advantage it built up in the middle of the last century.

  In the last couple decades we have been able to coast on the lead we had. We could have many of the best minds come to our colleges and then keep them here once they graduated with advanced degrees. However, the lead we had is rapidly being eliminated. This does not mean the US will immediately be uncompetitive. But it will mean one of the great advantages we had will be greatly reduced.

  The United States still has competitive advantages that will continue to serve us well in harnessing advanced technology for economic gain. But others have been making strategic decisions to gain some of those advantages for themselves. And the United States will almost certainly continue to see its scientific and engineering leadership in the world erode. And the economic consequences will be dramatic.

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• Break Down Barriers Between Departments

  Addressing these secondary, tertiary… effects is usually more challenging. We normally can’t directly tackle the issue. Just telling people to work together doesn’t do much good if the management system drives them to different behavior. Such support for “teamwork” is merely a slogan without the necessary management commitment. We need to change the management system and the behavior of those in leadership positions in the organization.

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• Using Outdated Management Practices Can Be Very Costly

  The dangers of strict sales targets are well understood by those that study management and human behavior. Sadly our management practices often fail to advance even as those that do seek to understand how to better manage our organizations make great strides in advancing our knowledge.

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• Improving the System to Reduce Costs Isn’t The Same as Cost Cutting

  Cutting costs by fiat via executive orders reduces the capability of the organization. Those costs are often born by customers. In the short term reducing costs in such a manner improves the financial statements. In the long run those cost reductions harm the companies ability to innovate, improve and delight customers.

  If instead we create a continual improvement capability and culture in the organization we will make improvements that in turn reduce costs (the Deming chain reaction).

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• Optimize the Overall System Not the Individual Components

  The results of a system must be managed by paying attention to the entire system. When we optimize sub-components of the system we don’t necessarily optimize the overall system.

  ...

  Optimizing the results for one process is not the same as operating that process in the way that leads to the most benefit for the overall system.

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• Transforming the Management System of an Organization

  I don’t think there are simple answers to the questions that take the form of “do this simple thing and you will have the results you wish to see.”

  ...

  There are principles that can be fairly easily captured (respect people, improve using iterative experiments, use data to learn and test your understanding when possible but also realize that using data is not always possible…), but doing that does not offer a simple recipe laying out what steps to take.  What should be implemented in your organization and what specific steps to take are not obvious, it requires applying the principles to your organization. And doing that also requires building the capability of your organization (including your people) to operate using those principles.

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• Using Checklists to Reduce Process Variation and Improve Results

  At the core the Checklist Manifesto is about determining the critical process conditions and creating a system to assure that the those process items are properly handled.

  ...

  It is critical that checklists be developed at the gemba (where the real work is done) and that they are modified based on experience. A good checklist system integrates continual improvement to adjust checklists based on user experience.

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• Using Deming’s Ideas When Your Organization Doesn’t

  First, you can transform yourself. You can transform your understanding and how you learn (with an appreciation for the theory of knowledge and what conclusions you can and cannot draw from the data you use). You can transform how you act.

  View your organization with an understanding of Deming’s management ideas. Think of the organization as a system. Even if you can’t persuade others to do this, you doing so will help you understand the situation more clearly and allow you to think of solutions that take advantage of this understanding. System thinking will allow you to find leverage points that can be used to multiply the benefits of improvements.

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• Testing Smarter with Mike Bland

  This interview with Mike Bland is part of my series of “Testing Smarter with…” interviews: gaining insights and experiences from many of the software testing field’s leading thinkers.

  it’s not about defects; it’s about feedback and collaboration. If you arrange incentives to produce an adversarial relationship between team members, e.g. if developers are incentivized to minimize defects and testers are incentivized to report defects, then that’s a house divided against itself.

  Mike Bland aims to produce a culture of transparency, autonomy, and collaboration, in which “Instigators” are inspired and encouraged to make creative use of existing systems to drive improvement throughout an organization. The ultimate goal of such efforts is to make the right thing the easy thing. He's followed this path since 2005, when he helped drive adoption of automated testing throughout Google as part of the Testing Grouplet, the Test Mercenaries, and the Fixit Grouplet.

  my advice to both developers and testers is to identify the priorities, the social structures and dynamics at play in the organization. How can you work with these structures and dynamics instead of against them—or do you need to create a culture of open communication and collaboration in parallel with (or even before) communicating the testing message?

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• The Transformation is Everybody’s Job

  There are quotes you can pick to make it seem like executives are responsible for the system and individuals workers have little impact on overall results – “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” This shows the limitation of isolated quotes more than anything else.

  Complex systems have many leverage points and can be influenced in many ways. It is unreasonable to have a broken management system and blame those working within it for the naturally poor results than such a system creates. And executives have more authority and thus more responsibility for creating a good management system that is continually improving. But such a management system requires that everyone in the organization is contributing.

  Those with authority must modify the management system to allow everyone to contribute. But that doesn’t mean everyone else just sits by waiting for those with more authority to transform the organization. Transformation doesn’t work that way. It is a dynamic, interconnected process. It isn’t as simple as turning on a light (or declaring this is our new transformed management system).

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• Organizations as Social Systems

  Organizations are social systems made up of people.

  Social systems often amplify what happens.

  If good things happen, more good things often follow.

  When bad things happen, more bad things often follow.

  To improve it is wise to this into account and design elements of the management system to encourage the amplification of what is good and that seeks to stop what is bad from being amplified.

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• Use FI/RE to Create a Better Life Not To Build a Nest Egg as Quickly as Possible

  Financial Independence/Retire Early (FI/RE) is about creating conditions that allow you to focus on what you value. Some people do focus too much on saving money quickly as though the goal is to save as much as quickly as possible. But that isn’t what FI/RE means. FI/RE doesn’t mean make yourself a slave to saving quickly in order to remove yourself from being a slave to a job until you are 65.

  To me what is most important about FI/RE is examining the choices you make and taking control of the decisions instead of just floating along as so many people do without considering the choices they make.

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