REPLY How to promote good work (SD6569)

[SDMAIL John Gunkler]

Posted by  "John Gunkler" <jgunkler at sprintmail.com>

Those of us who are not academics, and many who are (I suspect), don't have
a lot of time to devote to responding on this mailing list.  So a response
to just two points Mr. Stevenson has raised:

1.  That SD is not spreading

Four or five years ago I took an online course from the American Society for
Quality (on the subject of Six Sigma) that, much to my pleasant surprise,
included a small section on "systems thinking" that taught about causal loop
diagrams, system as cause, and a few other quite well chosen topics.  I have
recently seen their current version and find that the system dynamics
section has grown, and that systems language is being used in many other
parts of the course as well.  [This is a lengthy course -- maybe 80-120
hours of online time, if I remember correctly.  So, to thread systems
language throughout took considerable effort on the part of the course
designers.]  The popularity of Lean and Six Sigma in the business world
means that many managers and other workers are becoming exposed to a SD way
of thinking these days.  I, for one, am quite encouraged by this.

2.  That there are disenfranchised practitioners

In my opinion, mailing lists are successful to the extent that they know
what needs they serve, that those needs are fairly narrowly defined, and
that they stick to serving them (a feature that Mr. Stevenson has called
"censorship.")  There are other mailing lists that attempt to broaden the
dialogue about systems thinking and SD.  I subscribed to one for several
years, until I got fed up with the self-indulgent rantings of people, many
of whom had no technical background or understanding of SD, spewing nonsense
that was nearly impossible to respond to.  It was like arguing religion or
trying to teach calculus to a kindergartener.  Having said that, it still
may be a good idea to have another kind of mailing list in which the people
who currently feel voiceless can speak.  In fact, I'll go so far as to say
that it is a good idea.  The trick will be, I think, to find a way to
cross-pollinate things that arise from the new list into this list --
because I, for one, will not be monitoring that new list on a regular basis.
However when interesting and potentially fruitful ideas arise from the
second list I would like to read about them and perhaps take part in the
discussion.  What we would need, then, would be some few people who are
attuned to this list who have the time and are willing to monitor that new
list, to extract "gems" from it for wider sharing.  Or perhaps we can create
a mailing list mechanism for sharing the titles of current threads (with
hyperlinks to the actual threads), much like a digest does now but with
titles only.  This is top of my head -- what do others think would be
useful?

John Gunkler
Posted by  "John Gunkler" <jgunkler at sprintmail.com>
posting date  Tue, 4 Sep 2007 09:43:40 -0400