REPLY Society Strategy Development (SD7146)

[SDMAIL Jack Harich]

Posted by  Jack Harich <register at thwink.org>

A terrific organizational learning experience has just occurred. After three
months of discussion, our first phase of trying to capture "a clear sense of
what
the organization is trying to achieve" has ended.

The purpose of this thread is to initiate developing "a vision and strategy for
the next 50 years" by starting with consideration of member's preferred
"success"
goals.

The opening question "to clarify what *goals* the wider community should be
pursuing" was "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?"

Now then, what did we learn?

- We have 1180 members. Only about two dozen posted goal suggestions. This is
strikingly low.

- Kim was "somewhat taken aback" by this and made some personal inquiries to
some
of the influential members, most of who did not weigh in. Their reasons include
fear that "developing a strategy is a long, complex, process of arguing and
dispute to arrive at a rather vague document about trying to achieve some
abstract and/or unrealistic outcomes," that "we don't need a strategy," and
"Some
individuals and small groups may feel they are getting on just fine in their own
back yard, and don't see a need to get involved in the wider effort."

Here we learned that we will not get a large response to an important question.
Nor will we hear from more than a small fraction of the Society's most
influential members. This could be interpreted as disaster. But in my opinion,
that considers only quantity. If we consider quality of the responses, then we
may have what we need.

We also learned:

- "Very, very few posts actually answer the question what does success look
like."

It's normal when soliciting opinions from a varied membership to receive varied
responses. Suppose most posts didn't answer the question. Then a few did. So,
did
these few answer it well or close? Have we collected enough goals to give us "a
clear sense of what the organization is trying to achieve?" I think the answer
is
yes.

Let's first discuss the number of such goals needed. This can be small. For
example, examine the INCOSE About page at:
http://www.incose.org/about/index.aspx

INCOSE is the International Council on Systems Engineering. They appear to be
about ten times as successful as the SDS. Not in terms of membership size or
budget size, but in terms of value delivered to the customer. The product is
systems engineering knowledge and practitioners. The customer is industry,
academia, and government. Demand from these customers shows that customer
satisfaction is high. Thus value is high.

And they do it all with 1 mission statement, 1 vision statement, and 5 goals.

Another example of a similar professional organization is at
http://www.nspe.org/AboutNSPE/MissionVision/index.html
They do it all with 1 vision statement, 1 mission statement, 8 values, and 3
goals.

Therefore we do not need lots of top objectives, some of which we have been
calling goals. We need a mere handful. They need to be organized into the
standard threesome of mission statement, vision, and goals. The mission is
fairly
fixed. The vision varies over the long term. The goals vary over the short term
in order to surmount current obstacles and reach portions of the vision that
have
not been achieved. They may also contain on going goals. As a starting point for
us to fill in the blanks, here is the standard format:

A. Definition of the field the organization is attempting to assist.

B. Mission statement: This is the main work the org does. It's what we actually
do.

C. Vision statement: This describes the successful outcome, the topmost goal to
achieve.

D. Goals, 5 or less

I believe that what we are ultimately trying to end up with is a vision
statement
for the next 50 years. Once that's clear, the strategy team will develop a
strategy to achieve the vision. The key objectives in that strategy will become
the Goals.

There can be a long vision description behind the vision statement. That could
incorporate many of the fine goals and rationale offered in this thread, as well
as illustrative scenarios. But to create the vision statement the long
description must be boiled down to a simple, clear, memorable short statement.
Otherwise you have a foggy unfocused vision.

The vision is the inspirational goal of the organization. As Peter F. Drucker
describes it in "Managing the Non-Profit Organization", 1990, page 189, "Most
people don't continue to work for a non-profit corporation if they don't share,
at least in part, the vision of the organization."

Imagine we were rewriting the SDS home page at http://www.systemdynamics.org .
This is the closest the SDS website has to an About page, where A, B, C, and D
usually live. Right now we could extract this consensus:

A. Definition of the field: "System dynamics is a methodology for studying and
managing complex feedback systems, such as one finds in business and other
social
systems." (Given the mission below, a one sentence definition of systems
thinking
is also needed.)

B. Mission statement: The encouragement of "the development and use of systems
thinking and system dynamics around the world."

C. Vision statement: (unknown)

D. Goals:
- Provide "a forum in which researchers, educators, consultants, and
practitioners in the corporate and public sectors interact to introduce
newcomers
to the field, keep abreast of current developments, and build on each other's
work."
- (Other goals are unknown)

I'd be cautions about developing C before checking to see that B is high
quality.
For example, here's the mission of INCOSE, the International Council on Systems
Engineering:

"Mission: Advance the state of the art and practice of systems engineering in
industry, academia, and government by promoting interdisciplinary, scalable
approaches to produce technologically appropriate solutions that meet societal
needs."

Because SD is a large subset of systems engineering, our own mission statement
could be created by substituting "system dynamics" for "systems engineering". I
think mentioning system thinking dilutes the force of the statement. It's not
necessary because ST is part of the SD skillset. The phrase "technologically
appropriate" is not necessary. Better is "high quality, cost effective."

Notice the phrase "to produce technologically appropriate solutions." Currently
SD is not seen as capable of producing solutions, but insights that may be
helpful in creating solutions. To me this is a serious shortcoming. It makes the
tool look weak compared to the other tools of systems engineering and greatly
reduces demand. For example, Sterman's "Business Dynamics", 2000, page 4 says
"System dynamics is a method to enhance learning in complex systems." This is
the
book's definition of SD. Well, lots of things can enhance learning about complex
systems.

Here's the Wikipedia definition from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics: "System dynamics is an approach to
understanding the behaviour of complex systems over time. It deals with internal
feedback loops and time delays that affect the behaviour of the entire system.
What makes using system dynamics different from other approaches to studying
complex systems is the use of feedback loops and stocks and flows. These
elements
help describe how even seemingly simple systems display baffling nonlinearity."
SD is an engineering discipline but it's not an approach to solving problems or
designing systems? It's only useful for "understanding?" Then where's its large
scale practical value?

I suspect that SD needs to be reframed as a solution oriented tool. This of
course will require high emphasis on and integration with a problem solving
process. This is so important that at
http://www.incose.org/practice/fellowsconsensus.aspx we see that the field of
systems engineering is defined as "an engineering discipline whose
responsibility
is creating and executing an interdisciplinary *process* to ensure that the
customer and stakeholder's needs are satisfied in a high quality, trustworthy,
cost efficient and schedule compliant manner throughout a system's entire life
cycle."

Note the process diagram. "The Systems Engineering Process" appears to be the
very core of what today's systems engineers are expected to master. SD has
nothing like this.

Once SD has been reframed to being solution oriented and process driven, and the
tool itself and the process are mature, the field will have the ability to
reliably solve difficult complex system problems. This would be a HUGE
achievement because today that can't be done, especially for social as opposed
to
business problems.

INCOSE's vision statement is "The world's authoritative systems engineering
professional society."

I think we can do better. That vision is too inward focused. It can too easily
lead to promoting the organization instead of serving the customer. It's also
not
inspiring. So I'd lean toward a vision statement and related goal like:

- Vision: System dynamics is the world's leading approach to solving difficult
complex system problems, as well as engineering the dynamic core of complex
industrial and social systems.

- Goal: The project success rate where the problem solving process is rigorously
and correctly applied rises to 25% in 10 years, 50% in 20 years, and 95% in 50
years.

This is a vision I could get excited about and would love to participate in
achieving.

It is, however, a bit of a stretch.

"Dynamic core" addresses the fact that SD (or at least stock and flow modeling)
is not the right tool for modeling all of most systems. But a highly evolved SD
could become be the right tool for modeling the core structure. This would
enable
engineers to get the strategy/backbone of the system right, which would lead to
successful system construction or modification.

Note how the vision covers two types of projects: solving problems and
constructing or upgrading large systems. The latter is currently mostly
industrial plants or product/weapon systems. Social systems like organizations,
governments, life forms like corporations, and society itself are seldom
engineered. This would change if the latter part of the vision could be
realized.

The above leads to this sample next iteration of the SD Society's objectives:

A. Definition of the field: System dynamics is a methodology for studying,
designing, and managing complex feedback systems, such as one finds in business
and other social systems.

B. Mission: Advance the state of the art and practice of system dynamics in
industry, academia, and government by promoting interdisciplinary, scalable
approaches to produce high quality, cost effective solutions that meet society's
needs.

C. Vision: System dynamics is the world's leading approach to solving difficult
complex system problems, as well as engineering the dynamic core of complex
industrial and social systems.

D. Goals:
- The project success rate where the problem solving process is rigorously and
correctly applied rises to 25% in 10 years, 50% in 20 years, and 95% in 50
years.
- (More to be determined by the strategy team)

This is just an example to help get discussion flowing in a productive new
direction. Note how clear, comprehensive, and integrated the objectives are.

To summarize, there are lots of valuable ideas in the goals and observations
posted to this thread. They can be used to help flesh out a vision description
and from that, a vision statement. They can also be used to determine the
membership's sense of what our mission should be. Once the mission and vision
are
clear, SDS officers and the strategy team can develop a strategy to achieve the
vision and create the top goals.

The team will no doubt consider deep thinking that has already gone into this,
like Jay Forrester's "SD - The next 50 years," Ali Mashayekhi's talk (with rare
models) on "A vision for the field of system dynamics with some suggestive
policies" at
http://www.systemdynamics.org/newsletters/President'sAddress2001.htm, and
especially George Richardson's "Problems for the Future of SD." (there are many
more)

A final word about SD, from the last paragraph in this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

“You can have the best technology in the world,” he said, “but if you don’t have
a community who wants to use it and who are excited about it, then it has no
purpose.”

Which is why we need the right vision....

I sincerely hope this helps,

Jack
Posted by  Jack Harich <register at thwink.org>
posting date  Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:36:30 -0400