REPLY Future Development Directions (SD6264)

[System Dynamics Mailing List]

Posted by  Bill Braun <bbraun at hlthsys.com>

System Dynamics Mailing List wrote:

> Posted by  Jean-Jacques Laublé <jean-jacques.lauble at wanadoo.fr>
>   To me very simply, business is about maximizing the net revenue from the
> capital invested and preferably maintaining at least this revenue above zero.
>
> Politics is about being elected.
> This makes the business game and the political one completely different.
>   

It may be useful to distinguish between politics and the political process, the 
latter being how we sort out a consensus on problem identification, setting 
goals, determining expected results, and on allocating resources within an 
organization, amongst other things (ref. Pfeffer and Salancik more or less) .

I am now in the middle of an SD project at work, and one of the people on the 
modeling team has openly (in the spirit of advocacy and candor) expressed his 
skepticism that modeling will work. Notwithstanding, he is very supportive of 
giving it a try.

He has come right out and said that his degree of support and interest has a 
lot to do with his perception of the model's (or models') ability to provide 
meaningful insights that advance common goals, and, consequently, his ability 
(and willingness) to take this forward to his boss (the CEO).

I find this pretty normal, and I understand that relationships, trust, and 
confidence are as critical to the project as a valid model using real data 
producing results (Kim Warren's recent post being the poster child for valid 
models using real data).

None of this is politics; all of this is the political process.

Bill Braun 
Posted by  Bill Braun <bbraun at hlthsys.com>
posting date  Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:02:46 -0500