Preface
The world is a messy place. You can gain a competitive advantage over other employees if you can be just a little less messy. Investing in “a little less messy” has exponential benefits that are worthy of your efforts. As messy as this book may be, the benefits of understanding this information will be huge. “Mess” is a systems thinking term coined by one of the famous thinkers in systems: Russell L. Ackoff.
“Every problem interacts with other problems and is, therefore, part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems…. I choose to call such a system a mess.”
—Russell L. Ackoff
Dealing with messes and solving problems taught me three career skills. These led to higher wages, better strategic insights, and the ear of choice executives:
- Understand the whole problem, which led me to Model Thinking.
- Learn from your mistakes, which led me to Loop-Learning.
- Dancing with Chaos, which led me to understand the levels of complexity.
Fixing a problem upstream could create problems downstream was the warning in the certification training materials. They suggested the wise practitioner would observe the whole process and look for potential problems before changing any part of the process.
To observe the whole process, a practitioner would need to map out the tasks. The best approach for that was the Value Stream Analysis and mapping: Model Thinking. Once you made a change, you needed to observe the whole value stream, validate the change worked, and verify it did not introduce errors. If another error did occur, the person could correct it using what they learned, instead of applying whack-a-mole fixes until the process worked again. The wise practitioner would: reflect on the error, review the value stream, talk to the team, and then propose a solution before attempting a new fix. Otherwise, known as Loop Learning.
Relative success would follow the practitioner that observed, mapped/modeled, validated the model, then reflected on what they did to correct the process.
This is an example of real-life experience applied in actual situations. This make-a-model, observe-a-model technique opened my eyes to the effects of social networks in the workplace. The fault lines in a corporate culture popped out like the yellow and white lines on a highway. It highlighted the need for employees aligned to a common goal. This “dancing with chaos” led to a deeper understanding of Systems Thinking and Complexity.
Model Thinking (MT) is a technique to structure your thoughts about people and things and how they interact. Systems Thinking is a specialized form of model thinking that helps you deal with the messier messes. Complexity Thinking/Theory deals with the really messy stuff. This book will cover all of that mess at an introductory level.
You can profit immensely if you can be a little less messy.
Why do I continue to use an unprofessional term like “mess”? The domain of knowledge in this book is normally heavily in philosophy. This topic can spiral out of control into a deep debate about the nature of reality. To join in that conversation requires academic rigor that causes people, the average person, to run for the hills. So, the book will present a messy overview of the topic; one that I gained from practical experience. In addition, it will point you toward additional resources so you can continue your journey on this path.
People ask you to see “the big picture”, but never suggest how. Hence, that is the goal of this book. “Seeing” the big picture is problematic. First, no one lives their life looking through one myopic picture frame. They see the whole world around them. Second, people don’t see a picture, they see video—things in motion. They see everything together as one continuous experience. Last, the video is a small window on the world that is forced within a picture frame.
Have you seen a picture of the blurry thumb? Unfortunately, it has little information and little detail. What about a picture of someone pointing enthusiastically at something outside the picture frame? That has plenty of detail but is missing information. Then again, what about a picture of the Earth taken from the moon? That has all Earth’s information, but none of the detail. Alas, there is a trick to seeing the big picture, but it is relativity easy to learn.
Imagine a professional photographer. They hire a bunch of models for a shoot. The models are “real”, but they represent an “imagined” reality. They exist to help the photographer visualize a situation. The best way to learn about the big picture is to think in models. Not the glamorous, high fashion type model—but a collection of people, things, and their interactions. Imagine a photographer creating a photo: they collect the items and people on a set, then ask them to interact as they snap pictures. Our “big picture” is a model composed of items, people, and their interactions.
I organized this book into two sections: three skills and a deeper understanding of chaos. The first section starts with the three primary skills: Model Thinking, Loop Learning, and Levels of Chaos/Complexity. Starting with elementary modeling, we will move to learning by using models. The first section ends with an overview of the levels of complexity. The limited definition (people, items, interactions) from the first section is insufficient for your work. So, we will explore Systems Thinking as a tool to build more powerful models. Alas, Systems Thinking will eventually fail at modeling complex situations. For that reason, we will finish with Complexity Theory.
Get the picture?