QUERY Society Strategy Development (SD6843)

[SDMAIL James Lyneis]

Posted by  "James Lyneis" <jmlyneis at verizon.net>

Dear Colleague,

At the 50^th Anniversary Conference of the International System Dynamics 
Society held in Boston last year, President Qifan Wang challenged us to 
develop a vision and strategy for the next 50 years.  This challenge was 
prompted not only by this significant anniversary, but also by the 
numerous discussions over the past years, many on this list serve, about 
the success of the field and the possible steps that might be taken to 
further that success.  A committee composed of Henk Akkermans, Deborah 
Campbell, Joel Rahn, and Yutaka Takahashi was appointed by the Policy 
Council and asked to define and address issues related to the next 50 
years.  Kim Warren was asked, and graciously accepted, to bring his 
skills to the process.  As the current president, I am pushing this 
process along.

Clearly it is impossible for the 1000-plus members of the Society to 
jointly form a vision and strategy.  Therefore we will be adopting a 
process of polling the members about specific issues or aspects of the 
strategy, then meeting with smaller but diverse working groups to 
develop specific interim work products (for example, position papers, 
model designs, models, analyses), then reviewing interim work products 
with the broader group (again most likely using this list serve).  In 
the end, we hope to have some concrete steps that the Society can take 
to support the growth of the field and the Society.

As a starting point, Kim Warren has put forth below some questions for 
discussion.

I encourage as many of you as possible to participate.  If in addition, 
or instead, you would like to provide input in confidence, please email 
directly to me and I will pass the information on to the committee.

Best regards,


Jim Lyneis
President
System Dynamics Society
jmlyneis at verizon.net

~~~
>From Kim Warren:

Like any strategy process, a key starting point is a clear sense of what 
the organization is trying to achieve. Unlike a self-contained entity in 
business, the public-sector or voluntary sector, the ‘organization’ in 
this case includes anyone interested in seeing system dynamics develop. 
I have deliberately not said ‘the SD Society’ or ‘the SD field’ or 
specified what is meant by ‘develop’, because that is what we want your 
views on.

We would therefore like to start a substantial and diverse conversation 
with anyone and everyone interested in system dynamics to clarify what 
goals the wider community should be pursuing. To start this off, we 
would like everyone to consider the following question:

"It is 2028, and a special global gathering has been organised with no 
other purpose than to celebrate the outstanding progress that system 
dynamics has made since 2008. What achievements would make you - and 
[importantly] outside observers - feel that this celebration is totally 
justified, and how would you measure each of those achievements?"

I am very conscious that neither the SD Society membership, nor the 
readership of this list, come anywhere near to encompassing all those 
with any interest in SD, e.g. many business consultants, influential 
people in public policy, and students in a great variety of educational 
programs. So if you feel there are others who would have important 
feelings on this question, please feel free to speculate on what you 
think their views might be - or better still, forward this question to 
them and encourage them to tell us directly.

Our wish here is not to emerge with the lowest common denominator of 
what would satisfy the largest fraction of our community, but to capture 
as widely as possible the full scope of their ambitions.

We will monitor the discussion and attempt a synthesis when it appears 
that everyone’s creativity and patience have been exhausted. 

Thank you.
Posted by  "James Lyneis" <jmlyneis at verizon.net>
posting date  Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:26:03 -0400