REPLY Society Strategy Development (SD6882)

[SDMAIL Doug Samuelson]

Posted by  Doug Samuelson <samuelsondoug at yahoo.com>

This analysis strikes me as the right way to go.  I would add one other major 
social problem: health and wellness.  We have been living, for the past 150 
years or so, in a fantasy of finding technologies to wipe out all threats to 
human health.  The microbes are learning how to fight back, and the increasing 
complexity and cost of our health care system is already imposing various 
forms of rationing.  Besides, we're not designed or evolved to live forever, 
no matter what we do.  Some of our best-intended initiatives may actually 
impair health overall, by moving resources  from the most cost-effective uses 
to high-cost treatment of relatively low-incidence ailments -- as with the 
shift of nursing care from prenatal health to AIDS in Africa.  (As 
horrifically prevalent as AIDS is in sub-Saharan Africa, prenatal and neonatal 
malnutrition is literally ten times worse.)

Now, would the System Dynamics Society agree that it has failed?  Starting from 
that premise, even with strong evidence to back the conclusion, is unlikely to 
win converts.  I think a more accurate statement is that System Dynamics has had 
some striking successes but has fallen short of the reach and impact its 
founders hoped to achieve.  Many professions, and many businesses and some 
governments, for that matter, reach this situation.  Often the question that 
then moves the organization forward is, "OK, what are we already good at that 
other people want to buy?"  The  next question, basically a refinement of focus 
of the first one, typically is, "Who are the friends of the people we've served 
most effectively, what problems do they have that look like what we did well, 
and can we get our friends to make some introductions?"

In contrast, organizations that begin with a lot of introspection tend to 
generate more bickering than new useful insight.  If you're not selling as well 
as you'd like, reexamining the market(s) and how you're viewed there makes a 
lot more sense than reexamining your own thinking in a vacuum.

So I'd start with the early successes of industrial and urban dynamics, try to 
characterize what those successful efforts and the problems they addressed had 
in common, and look for other opportunities like those.  Urban housing and 
business development is still a mess, but urban dynamics pointed the way to 
some demonstrable improvements.  The health care system has many similar 
dynamics.  We have at least a few policy-makers and corporate executives who 
like what they've seen of this field.  Why not start with an outreach 
initiative, with a solid self-assessment built in?

-- Doug Samuelson
Posted by  Doug Samuelson <samuelsondoug at yahoo.com>
posting date  Tue, 8 Apr 2008 09:13:22 -0700 (PDT)