QUERY Let Talk Buckets (SD6367)

[SDMAIL Anupam Saraph]

Posted by  Anupam Saraph <anupamsaraph at gmail.com>

[Uknown Source:] "Business Types  Get a New Kick Out of the 'Bucket' - 
                 Executives Utter the Word To Describe Groups, 
                 Units; 'Silo' Pales  in Comparison" 

[Th]is hardly new for those who think in stocks  
and flows- We look at the stocks as buckets all the time.

Is it time to add taps and drains to the bucket vocabulary to help  
people make the connections to the dynamics of bucket filling up or  
emptying? Time to bring into colloquial vocabulary the notions that  
you can fill the bucket by opening taps or closing drains? Time to  
help people to ask what can open the taps or close the drains?

I am sure many of us have observed the "aha" from even school  
children who are explained the "buckets" of traffic in a city  
(roads), "buckets" of emotions (love, anger, etc.), "buckets" of  
people in the town (buckets of age-groups- or perhaps of different  
skills and professions) or even global warming ("buckets" of gasses  
in the atmosphere)...

And those of us who have facilitated reengineering recognize that it  
results in new "buckets" or reducing old ones as much as it creates  
new "policies" (as defined in Forrester-speak) for regulating the  
volume of "stuff" in the "buckets".

Currently are we losing out by having people use jargon that means  
too many different intangible things to different disciplines,  
methods and to the world? Right from the word system, policy or  
feedback- different disciplines have different meanings for all of  
these, the idea is lost while the word remains.

It's sooo hard for most  people to think of some invisible forces to  
drive changes in variables they may not even accept as being  
important- We all love to "see" and "feel" the world. Is it time to  
leverage our physical understanding of the "bucket" to get the world  
thinking "systems"? Even help them see a "system" as collection of  
connected buckets?

Anupam
Clinical Professor,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Posted by  Anupam Saraph <anupamsaraph at gmail.com>
posting date   Tue, 27 Mar 2007 10:41:29 -0400