This is part of my short series on the thinkers, leaders and craftsmen and women featured in The Master’s Approach to Work (pending publication). Here you will find a short introduction to Russell “Russ” Ackoff, featured work, three exercises/lessons from him (and ways to apply them), as well as a selection of quotes. You can also read more about the Look to Craftsmen Project if you are not familiar with the work and check out Profiles in Craft for examples of people applying craft principles in the modern world.
INTRODUCTION
Russell “Russ” Ackoff was one of the great minds of the 20th century. He was a longtime resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on Systems Thinking. For more than 20 years he was a professor of Systems Science at the Wharton School of business, and he was a lifelong friend of both Peter Drucker and W. E. Deming. His leadership theory defined a nascent branch of industrial engineering. He went on to write 30 other books, becoming one of the most influential management thinkers of our time.
Ackoff spent most of the past half-century as the premier evangelist of systemic thinking, which he contrasted with the reductionist, atomistic thinking that had long dominated humanity's approach to problem-solving in his view. Time and again, he would point out, decision-makers faced with crises failed to heed Albert Einstein's warning that we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
“The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems,” was a favorite maxim of Ackoff’s. “The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds. Problems that arise in organizations are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part. Complex problems do not have simple solutions."
The management pioneer Peter Drucker once wrote to Ackoff saying that his early work “saved me – as it saved countless others – from descending into mindless ‘model building’ – the disease that all but destroyed so many of the business schools.” Ackoff worked as an educator and consultant in many industries, including a three-decade association with Anheuser-Busch, helping the brewer achieve dominance in the US.
Ackoff was an advocate of systems thinking because he thought it could deal with the messy complexities of interrelated real-world problems, rather than taking an over-simplified, reductionist view of the world. In his book ‘Redesigning the Future’ (1974), Ackoff discussed the differences between types of situations, some of which he described as ‘difficulties’ and others as ‘messes’. A difficulty is characterized by ‘broad agreement on the nature of the problem and by some understanding of what a solution would look like, and it is bounded in terms of the time and resources required for its resolution’. In contrast:
…messes are characterised by no clear agreement about exactly what the problem is and by uncertainty and ambiguity as to how improvements might be made, and they are unbounded in terms of the time and resources they could absorb, the scope of enquiry needed to understand and resolve them and the number of people that may need to be involved.
Ackoff was a powerful communicator, using anecdotes and aphorisms (e.g. ‘a bureaucrat is one who has the power to say ‘no’ but none to say ‘yes’’ Ackoff et al 2007 p91) to convey his thinking. Others include:
An organisation that cannot accommodate nonconformity will not be able to retain creative people.
Hamming cautioned that “quality ought to be directed at effectiveness. The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.” Unfortunately, we don't have enough wisdom to go around, “he continued. “Until managers take into account the systemic nature of their organizations, most of their efforts to improve their performance are doomed to failure.” Still pertenant.
Art inspires, produces an unwillingness to settle for what we have and a desire for something better. It is the product and producer of creative activity, change; it is essential for continuous development.
Ackoff has been described as a Renaissance Man, architect, city planner, philosopher, behavioral scientist, a trailblazer in the field of organizational operations, the pre-eminent authority on organizational systems theory, best-selling author, world traveler even a humorist. Recognized internationally as a pragmatic academic, Russ, as he was known to all, devoted most of his professional life to dissolving complex societal and organizational problems by engaging all stakeholders in designing solutions.
Before Einstein and his fellow physicists made their discoveries early in the 20th Century, the scientific world assumed that our universe was - essentially - a "giant clock." This mechanical view of the universe was made obsolete by the discovery of Quantum Mechanics, through which the universe was redefined as being an interrelated and interconnected series of waves... of patterns of energy. (I'm using short-hand language here.) The bottom line: computers could not exist without Quantum Mechanics, because its principles make possible how computer chips work.
The mechanical view of the universe... no computers. Quantum Mechanics... computers (and a whole lot more). It's that simple. Before Ackoff and his fellow organizational development theorists made their discoveries in the period following WWII, the management world assumed that solving the problem of how to make organizations work better required using Analysis: breaking the problem (the organization) up into its component parts, fixing those parts (including "those people") that were broken, and putting the organization back together, with the expectation that it would then work. This was also a "giant clock" philosophy.
This mechanical view of problem-solving was made obsolete by the development of Systems Thinking, through which making organizations work better was redefined in recognition of the role played by the design of the entire system. Synthesis - the thinking method involving seeing how different elements in a system interact with each other - replaced Analysis as the method of developing breakthrough operational improvements (otherwise known as Innovation).
NOTABLE WORK
Books
Ackoff, R 1999a ‘Re-Creating The Corporation: A Design for Organisations in the 21st Century’. Oxford University Press, New York.
Ackoff, R 1999b ‘On Passing Through 80’ Systemic Practice and Action Research, Volume 12, Number 4 425-430.
Ackoff R, Magidson J and Addison H 2006 ‘Idealized Design’ Wharton: University of Pennsylvania.
Ackoff and Deming 1992 ‘A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers’
Jackson, M 2003 ‘Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers’ Wiley and Sons: Chichester Miller 2009 ‘A Management Philosopher With Heady Ideas About Beer’ Wall Street Journal 09/11/09
Ramage M and Shipp K 2009 ‘Systems Thinkers’ Open University: Milton Keynes
Speeches & Videos
Ackoff is an easy lecturer to listen to. His points ring true today as they did when he first taught.
If Russ Ackoff Gave a Ted Talk — Russ speaks here about the difference between "continuous improvement" and "discontinuous improvement" as seen through the lens of systems thinking.
Russ Ackoff on Systems Thinking, Part I — Coming soon
Russ Ackoff on Systems Thinking, Part II — Coming soon
QUOTES BY ACKOFF
Ackoff was a powerful communicator, using anecdotes and aphorisms to convey his thinking.
“A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say ‘no’ but none to say ‘yes.”
“An organization that cannot accommodate nonconformity will not be able to retain creative people.”
“Organisations fail more often because of what they have not done than because of what they have done.”
“The less managers expect of their subordinates, the less they get.”
“All of our problems arise out of doing the wrong thing righter. The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter. If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better.”
As the system is subject to continuous improvement, it is“neither perfect nor utopian. The design produced should be that of the best ideal-seeking system of which its designers can currently conceive. (They may, and probably will be able to conceive of a better one later.).”
P.S. Visit my page on Quotes on Craft for more wisdom on the principles of craftsmanship and how they apply to the modern world.