REPLY How to promote good work (SD6562)

[SDMAIL Erling Moxnes]

Posted by  "Erling Moxnes" <Erling.Moxnes at geog.uib.no>

It seems easy to agree to the goal put forward by Richard Stevenson: 
"--let's move on and make SD a serious subject for change in the real world."

Following standard SD procedure a description of the problem helps focus 
the analysis and motivate the client. Now clients sometimes, or quite 
often, tend to dislike the idea that problems are created by themselves. 
When Richard criticises most of us for not doing a good enough job, we get 
a chance to experience the client role. Having tried our best for decades, 
harsh criticicm may feel like being blamed. And, we have learned from the 
beer game that it is easy to start blaming each other when the structure 
is the real culprit. Richard and the rest of us should keep this in mind 
when approaching our clients.

Next, after an agreed upon problem description (which in this case seems 
not yet agreed upon) a hypothesis is needed for the cause of the problem. 
What has led to less than desired results? I have seen several costly 
consulting reports (not SD) in essence saying that the cause of a problem 
is that the client is "not clever enough" with the policy recommendation 
"to improve". The questions why and how are more interesting. When Richard 
writes: "The evidence, however, is that the SD community as a whole has 
currently neither the capability, nor the capacity, to build critical mass 
in the business world." it sounds like "not clever enough" to me. Richard 
goes on: "What's the answer?  Well I do have my views.  But I'll rest my 
case for the present." But this is skipping the most interesting part.

Jay W. Forrester gave a sketch of a strategy for the next 50 years in his 
50 year speech. Just as Winston Churchill said that "It is not even the 
beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.", Jay 
made clear that SD is yet far from reaching its potential. The list 
moderator should, and indirectly does, encourage us to focus on how we can 
get more out of the scarce resources we have.


Erling Moxnes
Professor, System Dynamics Group
Dept. of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Bergen
Posted by  "Erling Moxnes" <Erling.Moxnes at geog.uib.no>
posting date  Mon, 3 Sep 2007 17:39:35 +0200