Systems Seeing Adventure – Day 4: Ackoff on Systems

If you want to know more about the System Seeing Adventure, check out this link.

The task for Day 4 is watch and sketchnote the TED talk by Dr. Russ Ackoff on Quality Improvements of Systems. I have tried sketchnoting in the past and it was not very successful. This talk by Dr. Ackoff was just a rapid fire of smart statements worth noting down. I had to stop and rewind the tape multiple times. The fascinating conclusion is though, that I learned nothing new from the talk. It was more the way he put it that blew me away.

I leave you with a photo of mostly unreadable bits of wisdom of the talk. I can only recommend to watch it.

The tasks didn’t end there. The next question was: “How does Ackoff define systems? What other distinctions would you add?”
You’ll find that answer in the right bottom corner of this “sketchnote”.

• A system as a whole contains of parts that make up the behavior and properties of the whole.
• The parts are interdependent. A system cannot be separated into independent parts.
• A system is a product of the interactions of its parts.

From a DSRP-model view I would add distinctions and perspectives. Distinctions to clearer define the system, what is the whole, what it is not. And the different perspectives of the system. Ackoff mentioned the customer / consumer for the context of this talks topic. There are many more perspectives in a system that help to describe the system and its elements.

And the last task is: “What insights do you draw out, and how do those relate to the systems in the situation you’re exploring?”

For me the talk was a confirmation of what I’m writing about for the last four weeks or so. You have to always take the whole system into account when you want to improve something. Taking out some aspect, trying to treat it independently and “improving” it will not work in most cases.

One quote also stuck with me.

Better to do the right thing wrong, than the wrong thing right.

If my QAs and Regulatory folks hear that, they might start to hyperventilate. That’s why we have validation and verification as a must in the medical device context. Validation to build the right thing and verification to build it right.

Also quick shout-out to my favorite podcast: AB Testing with Alan Page and Brent Jensen. Ackoff defined “Quality is meeting or exceeding the expectation of the customer / consumer.” This is what Modern Testing principle #5 is stating as well. “We believe that the customer is the only one capable to judge and evaluate the quality of our product.”
Other aspects of this talk also reminded me a lot of the Modern Testing principles.

I will try to revisit the statements from the talk again sometime soon to get more insights on some. In those 10 minutes was just too much for my small brain to process in such short time.