by Robert Fritz
In a now famous story, a pottery teacher divided his class into two groups. He told one group that their grade would be determined by the quality of their work no matter how many pieces they made. 
The second group would be measured not on the quality of their work, but on the quantity. The more pieces, the higher the grade.
At the end of the semester, the results were clear. The group that had made the most pieces also had produced the highest quality work. Ironically, those students who were directly focused on quality were less able to produce quality. How come?
What is the relationship between quantity and quality? Often, the more you produce, the more mastery you will have. Creative mastery comes in many levels. How you make critical decisions along with the ability to be decisive. How your mind understands the creative process as well as a type of visceral understanding that develops over time and experience. How free you are to make mistakes while increasing the sense of the right direction to take.
Learning allows you to move from one level of understanding and competence to a higher level. Usually there are mistakes to make. Usually the more demanding the learning, the more mistakes.
Quantity does not always lead to quality. If there isn't a learning dimension, nothing will change, and quality might even decline. But the most natural pattern when creating anything is a progression of mastery through a progression of learning. How does learning take place?
©2010 Robert Fritz
Click here for part II of Robert's article.
Robert Fritz, a composer, filmmaker, and organizational consultant, is founder of Technologies For Creating® and author of the international bestseller The Path of Least Resistance. This post first appeared in his free monthly e-newsletter, Creating. Click here for more information about Robert and his work.
"Making pottery" photo by Randy Oostdyk; used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
by Michael Ballé
What is the relationship between systems thinking and lean? That's a fascinating question, one not so easily answered, because we're talking about two very different approaches, one a philosophy as well as a set of tools, the other, a practice. In its broadest sense, systems thinking is a framework that takes into 
account the interconnected nature of systems. It is also a thinking tool, which helps us look at the impact of feedback loops on how a system behaves; analyze specific situations to explain otherwise puzzling behaviors; and design interventions with an eye for potential unintended consequences.
Lean, on the other hand, is strictly a practice, not a philosophy. It is based on hands-on know how about how to teach people to improve their own processes in terms of both customer satisfaction and cost management by eliminating waste. Taiichi Ohno, a key figure in developing the lean approach, would often say things like: "Don't look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don't think with your head, think with your hands." As a practice-oriented movement, lean is by and large wary of abstract thinking and generalizations.
Nonetheless, although systems thinking and lean operate at these two different levels, I have learned from personal experience that they are complementary and are based on similar insights. An understanding of system thinking dramatically improves the learning curve of lean techniques. Having worked with systems thinking concepts and system dynamics simulations for years before studying lean practices in detail, I immediately saw the purpose (if not the application) of lean, which wasn't the case for my colleagues without a systems thinking background.
Conversely, at the time, I was part of a group tasked with figuring out ways to practically apply systems thinking concepts in day-to-day operations. Although we experimented, we generally floundered. What we did find was that the lean techniques offered a hands-on way to apply systems thinking concepts. Because lean practices have been developed over several decades, an entire field of experience exists in terms of how to make them work.
The bottom line: Without an understanding of systems thinking, it's hard to get lean right, and without the practice of lean techniques, it's difficult to make systems thinking a day-to-day reality to concretely improve system performance.
To Understand and to Change
The rapid progress of science since the Industrial Revolution has been driven by the close interplay of theoretical and practical advances. I believe that the mutual interdependence of systems thinking and lean offers a true opportunity here. By recognizing the synergies between these two fields, we can drastically increase our capacity to improve systems.
The bad news is that integrating these two approaches means more work. If I'm correct, system thinkers must acquire the discipline of lean practice. This has been my own particular path: fun, interesting, but never easy. And lean practitioners must make the effort to understand systems thinking, which is a significant intellectual investment.
Still, I believe this challenge is worthwhile. In today's hypercompetitive markets, companies need the performance improvement promised by lean. Furthermore, the strong systems thinking undercurrent of lean makes it focus on reducing waste of all kinds, including externalities such as pollution and garbage. Since its humble beginnings to its recent 2020 global vision, Toyota has continuously aimed to offer value to society overall. Considering the problems we collectively face in this new century, a proven method of industrial improvement also intent on reducing waste in all its forms should not be dismissed lightly.
One of the enduring puzzles of the lean movement is why it hasn't spread more quickly through industry: Many try, few succeed. Systems thinking, I believe, could contribute significantly to solving this conundrum by providing an overall framework to lean practice. To paraphrase Karl Marx, the point is not merely to understand the world, but to change it. Systems thinking offers the means to understand; lean, the practice to change. By pursuing both jointly, we can learn faster how to change the world in the right way to face our global challenges.
Adapted from "What Is the Relationship Between Systems Thinking and Lean?" published in The Systems Thinker, November 2009, V20N9.
Michael Ballé is associate researcher at Telecom ParisTech and managing partner of ESG Consultants. He has written several books and articles about the links between knowledge and management (Managing with Systems Thinking, The Effective Organization, Les Modèles Mentaux), and more recently, co-authored two business novels, The Gold Mine, which has received the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research, and The Lean Manager. Michael is co-founder of the Projet Lean Entreprise and the Institut Lean France.
Lock photo by Nancy Daugherty
By Janice Molloy
At our 2008 conference in Boston, keynote speaker Dr. Atul Gawande kept us on the edge of our seats as he spoke about a tool shown to significantly reduce surgical complications: the checklist. Like many other participants, I had tears in my eyes as he recounted the story of a three-year-old Austrian girl who was 
brought back from the brink of death after being submerged in an icy fishpond--all because the rescue team followed a checklist to guide and streamline their response.
Not surprising, Dr. Gawande garnered stellar reviews from participants. But in the feedback on his talk, while praising the presentation, a handful of people commented that the checklist concept seemed simplistic or not applicable to their industry. Anyone who runs events learns not to take isolated comments too much to heart, but I did wonder, had we been off base in thinking that Atul's work would be relevant to the complex challenges of our cross-sectoral audience?
Gawande's recently released book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, puts to rest any concerns I might have had about the general applicability of this approach. In the book, he shows how people in occupations as diverse and complex as building skyscrapers to flying jumbo jets to evaluating multi-million dollar investments use checklists to make "the reliable management of complexity a routine." As he states, "Even the most expert among us [in virtually any endeavor] can gain from searching out the patterns of mistakes and failures and putting a few checks in place."
How often do we identify "patterns of mistakes," come up with fixes, and then fail to change our behavior? According to Gawande, the checklist provides both a discipline and a structure for capturing those learnings, embedding new routines, and continually evaluating their effectiveness. Far beyond a static collection of "to dos," at its best, this kind of resource reflects ongoing, systemic learning.
It also, interestingly, supports open communication and collaboration. Through examples from many different industries, Gawande shows how, rather than being a set of instructions dictated from above, a well-constructed checklist "pushes power out of the center" and gives professionals room to adapt and respond, based on their experience and expertise. Through trial and error in his own operating room, he found that having the circulating nurse, not the surgeon, kick off the checklist sends the message that every member of the team is responsible for the success of the surgery and has the power--and the obligation--to question the process at any point.
It's easy to see the checklist as something "other people" should use--people in other professions or with other job requirements. But Atul argues that, by using checklists, we can improve our outcomes without improving our skill, without "working harder and harder to catch the problems and clean up after them." He observes, "The checklist gets the dumb stuff out of the way, the routines your brain shouldn't have to occupy itself with . . . and lets it rise above to focus on the hard stuff."
Obviously, a checklist isn't a silver bullet--it can't solve deep-seated structural issues in an organization or an industry. Unless users regard it as a living, evolving tool, it runs the risk of becoming just another task. But taken as a way to identify and potentially eliminate failures before they happen, the checklist shows a lot of untapped promise. We're working on ours here at Pegasus; what about you?
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
photo of Atul Gawande by Sarah Viera
By H. Thomas Johnson
Toyota's current quality crisis is not a sign that its longstanding reputation for excellence was a mirage, that its fundamental management system was never really superior to the systems in competing organizations. Rather, it reflects disastrous policies adopted after 2000, when top management's thinking changed 
sharply in a direction that, while consistent with that of most other Western companies, would never have been tolerated at Toyota in the past.
In a bid to surpass General Motors as the world's largest automaker, after 2000, Toyota's top managers became ensnared in a destructive mode of thinking--thinking that focused their decisions and actions on achieving immediate financial targets, no matter the long-run consequences to the company's welfare. Popularly known as "management by results," or MBR, this approach dominated American businesses after 1970 and remains the prevailing business philosophy today.
Before 2000, however, Toyota followed an alternative mode of operating that I refer to as "management by means," or MBM. A company employing MBM succeeds by building and continuously improving the system of relationships among customers, managers, workers, suppliers, owners, and the larger community. The system's purpose is to enhance human well-being by providing safe and useful products and services, meaningful livelihoods, and sustainable financial returns.
One of the first things I learned when I began observing Toyota's operations almost 20 years ago was that accounting-based financial tools, such as cost targets, standard cost variances, performance budgets, and compensation incentives, are not needed in a Toyota plant. Indeed, the company's legendary industrial engineering genius, Taiichi Ohno, reportedly said that he was able to achieve the changes in plant operations that led to what became known as the Toyota Production System because "my boss, Mr. Toyoda, kept the accountants off my back."
While creating and refining its unique MBM management system from the 1950s through the 1990s, Toyota rose to become the most successful and trusted manufacturer in the world. So it was surprising that the company embarked on a "management by results" strategy after 2000. With financial executives gaining control of top leadership positions, Toyota's management grew less attuned to operations than to the demand for steady growth in shareholder wealth and share prices. The current engineering and design failures that have caused unprecedented recalls are classic symptoms of pushing to achieve short-run financial and growth targets beyond the company's current capacity to integrate new plants, new suppliers, new workers, and especially new managers into a coherent whole.
Can Toyota regain the reputation for excellence that it enjoyed until recently? It depends on top management's commitment to restoring and nurturing the disciplined pattern of continuous improvement in operations that originated with the company's founders. Toyota's new CEO Akio Toyoda would be well advised to reflect on how the current MBR thinking espoused by the architects of Toyota's disastrous growth policy of the past decade differs from the MBM thinking that led to its previous record of sustained success.
H.Thomas Johnson is professor of business at Portland State University and Distinguished Consulting Professor of Sustainable Business at Bainbridge Graduate Institute. In 1997, Harvard Business Review named his book Relevance Lost one of the most influential management books of the 20th century, and in 2003, Harvard Business School Press listed Tom among today's 200 leading management thinkers. In 2001, Tom's book Profit Beyond Measure received the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research, and in 2007, the American Society for Quality awarded him its prestigious Deming Medal.
Photo of country road supplied by freefoto.com
By Janice Molloy
Was Russell Ackoff the "Einstein of Problem Solving"? An article published in "The Huffington Post" in the wake of Russ's death in November made this provocative proposition. If this analogy is 
appropriate, then Ackoff may yet have an enormous impact on the way we address longstanding organizational and social challenges.
One of the world's preeminent systems thinkers, Russ was Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and a pioneer in the field of operations research. Described by The Economist as "one of the most influential management gurus of the 20th century," he was the author of more than 25 provocative books and hundreds of influential articles. Click here for other details of his remarkable life.
In a tribute to Ackoff, sustainable development researcher and theorist Steven G. Brant proposes that he "transformed the world of problem solving just as Albert Einstein transformed the world of science." Brant makes the case that, just as Einstein's discoveries irrevocably refuted the mechanical view of the universe, Ackoff's contributions to the development of systems thinking as a management tool upended the traditional, analytical approach to improvement.
Brant goes on to urge us to apply a systems-level approach to the societal problems we currently face. He says, "There is no more critical thing 'we, the people' can do for the long-term health of our nation than to reorient how we approach solving our problems. . . . It is possible to solve the many crises America faces. It is possible to not just solve but dissolve our crises in education, health care, job creation, etc. But we won't do so if we keep trying to solve them the way we have... separately. We must solve them in the context of redesigning the larger sociological system in which they all reside."
You can read the complete blog post here. What do you think of Brant's contention that Ackoff is the "Einstein of Problem Solving"?
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
By Janice Molloy
Daniel H. Pink's latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Riverhead Books, 2009), couldn't come at a more apt time. As the outcry over exorbitant bonuses for Wall Street traders and executives rises yet again, Pink has turned to 
science to learn what truly compels people to perform their best. He found that a focus on financial rewards can lead to shortcuts, unethical behavior, and short-term thinking--the kind of attitudes and activities that contributed to the recent global financial crisis.
Research shows that "carrots and sticks" can still play a role in motivating performance of routine tasks that don't demand much creative thinking. But in a work environment that requires innovation, self-direction, and advanced problem-solving skills, external incentives actually undermine people's ability to come up with novel solutions to complex challenges. In addition, Pink notes, "In environments where extrinsic rewards are most salient, many people work only to the point that triggers the reward--and no further."
Pink has found that the key to personal and organizational success in today's context is drawing on people's higher instincts: our drive for "(1) Autonomy--the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery--the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose--the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves." A genuinely motivating work environment provides adequate and fair compensation; a congenial atmosphere; a sense of autonomy over what, when, how, and with whom people do their work; opportunities to develop mastery; and duties that relate to a larger purpose.
So what practices can, in Pink's words, "strengthen our companies, elevate our lives, and improve the world"? One example he offers is from the Australian software company Atlassian. Once a quarter, engineers are given 24 hours to work on any software problem they want, as long as it isn't part of their regular jobs. The company calls these "FedEx Days," because the goal is to deliver something overnight. The result: Employees have fixed countless long-term software glitches and developed numerous new products.
Google has a similar tradition, in that engineers spend one day a week working on projects that aren't necessarily in their job descriptions. The company reports that half of its new products got their start in the 20% time, including its popular Gmail and AdSense applications.
Online shoe retailer Zappos has injected autonomy into the traditionally rigid, routine work of the call-center employee. Unlike their peers in other businesses, Zappos' workers can use their own discretion in solving customers' problems. They aren't required to follow a script or limit their time with a buyer. As a result, the turnover rate at Zappos is exceptionally low, and its customer-service scores are comparable to those of high-end companies such as the Ritz-Carlton.
Clearly, as Pink reports, "Companies that offer autonomy, sometimes in radical doses, are outperforming their competitors." And that's the bottom line of Drive--by using what research can teach us about human motivation, we can create both more humane and more effective workplaces.
We can also create more ethical ones. When people are driven by intrinsic motivators, they are less likely to cut corners or pursue short-term gains at the expense of long-term value creation. So, how can we get our financial leaders to take these lessons to heart?
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
By Janice Molloy
"I suspect that all it would take would be some well-placed user-friendly feedback to change the world." --Donella Meadows
Think about the last time you undertook a change initiative, whether in your work or personal life. How did you measure progress toward your goal? How did you know when to make adjustments?
The answer in most cases is through feedback. When a company launches a new product, they monitor sales data and customer comments; this information, in turn, influences their marketing efforts and guides them in tweaking the product to better meet people's needs. Without data about the results of our efforts, it's impossible to evaluate performance, fine-tune improvement efforts, and gauge the success of different actions.
In one of my favorite columns by pioneering systems educator Donella Meadows, she recounted learning to drive more efficiently based on the feedback provided by the instrument panel of her gas-electric hybrid car (in "To Make Better Decisions, We Need Better Information," The Systems Thinker, V11N7, September 2000). By watching the indicator lights, she discovered that jackrabbit starts and stops ate away at her miles-per-gallon average; driving at the speed limit had the opposite effect. Meadows concluded, "Three weeks of information I never had before have changed 40 years of ingrained driving habits. I didn't have to be coerced or rewarded; I didn't have to change my values. I just had to see how my actions did and did not conform to my values."
Feedback also plays a vital role in change efforts that take place on a larger scale. In his latest book, Ecological Intelligence (Broadway Books, 2009), Daniel Goleman dedicates a chapter to "The Virtuous Cycle." He recounts how trans fats came to permeate the Western diet throughout the 20th century--and became an unknown contributor to heart disease. But once researchers discovered the dangers of hydrogenated oils, within the span of a decade, trans fats virtually vanished.
What caused this food revolution? According to Goleman, "The federal government never banned hydrogenated oils. No one told food companies they had to stop using trans fat. The crucial shift was in the information available to consumers." Once purchasers understood the dangers of trans fat and were able to use nutritional information on food labels to avoid it, they shifted their buying habits. Food manufacturers quickly responded by removing trans fat from their products and broadly advertising that fact. Consumers spoke, and the food industry listened.
These lessons about feedback continue to resonate today, especially as we head into the negotiations at the Copenhagen climate summit. Our friends at Climate Interactive have created the "Climate Scoreboard," a widget to help monitor the long-term consequences of policy proposals. It shows, in a simple visual form, the expected temperatures in 2100 if curre
nt proposals in the global climate negotiations were fully implemented and indicates how close those proposals bring us to achieving climate goals. When negotiating positions change, a team in Copenhagen will immediately update the analysis.
As in the case of driving more efficiently, this kind of dashboard allows us to see the results of our actions--and then modify them to achieve our goals. And as in the case of eliminating trans fats, the Climate Scoreboard gives us a tool for pressuring others--our elected officials, world leaders, the media, and so on--to ensure that any agreements they make are adequate to the challenges we face. As Daniel Goleman says, "All it takes is a bit of radical transparency."
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
By Mark Alpert
Each year, some the highest-performing companies in the U.S. receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Baldrige Award recognizes organizations with role-model management systems that demonstrate continuous improvements in the delivery of their products and services, have efficient and effective operations, and engage and respond to customers and other stakeholders.
One of the key concepts underlying the Baldrige criteria is taking a systematic view of the organization as a whole. Within the Baldrige framework (below), the system is depicted by seven interconnected categories:
1. Leadership
2. Strategic Planning
3. Customer and Market Focus
4. Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management
5. Workforce Focus
6. Process Focus and
7. Results
Arrows show the linkage between categories, highlighting the relationship between activities and results as well as the importance of feedback between activities to ensure an effective system.
A systems perspective provides organizations the means to create alignment toward a common vision, mission, and objectives throughout the entire organization--fertile ground for systems thinkers. Most of us can only dream of working in an environment where everyone is educated on the power of taking a systems approach and the importance of optimizing the interconnections between the different activities of the business, all in service of one overarching purpose.
But as the Baldrige Award winners show, it can be more than just a dream. And where better to apply systems thinking than to support the development of such an environment within our own settings? Here are a few ideas on how to have a positive impact on your organization:
- Facilitate meetings to help senior leaders focus their attention on strategic direction and your customers.
- Collect data that supports decision making. Help others build confidence in data-driven decision making in order to monitor, respond to, and manage performance.
- Demonstrate how measures, indicators, core competencies, and organizational knowledge can be used to build key strategies.
- Communicate to ensure a crystal-clear understanding of the links between strategies, work systems, and key processes to drive improvements aimed at increased customer and stakeholder satisfaction.
But why stop there. Take it to the next level by getting outside of the organization. Apply the same internal philosophies to the larger system beyond your institution's boundaries. Examine the interconnections that exist between your organization and the rest of the world. Understand the connection between your enterprise and global security, healthcare, climate, food, education, etc., and look for opportunities to strengthen those connections.
Ah, systems thinking at its best--supporting the applications that view organizations as a system, aligning resources, and focusing on the customer. Accomplish it within your organization, and you too could win the Baldrige Award and a whole lot more.
Mark Alpert is president of Pegasus Communications.
By Mark Alpert
I recently attended a wonderful three-day workshop called "Foundations for Leadership." Our instructors Beth Jandernoa and Peter Senge did a masterful job of leading the program. After more
than two decades of facilitating this workshop, Peter has not lost one iota of interest in the subject matter, the people gathered, or the possibilities for what might emerge.
The diverse group of participants from different parts of the world, different organizations, and different functions also enriched the experience. It didn't take long for our commonality and a sense of caring for each other to develop. That process raises a question: If complete strangers can develop a kind of shared vision within a few hours, why does it take us so long to do so within our own organizations, if it happens at all?
We were given the opportunity and the space to look deep inside ourselves to ponder what each of us really cares about and develop a vision for ourselves, our families, and our work. Likewise, we faced the challenges of being completely honest about our current realities. There is a tension that builds in the gap between vision and reality that creates a powerful call to action. That tension tests our integrity and strength to make choices about which way we will be pulled.
If the desire is strong enough and picture real enough, we will be pulled in the direction of our vision. If we are stuck working on the distracting issues of the moment, chances are good that we will be pulled in the opposite direction, away from achieving our objective. This dynamic brings up another good question: Why do we spend so much time and energy fighting fires, blaming others, and taking knee-jerk reactions to the everyday events happening around us? Wouldn't it be better to use our time and energy to work directly on the things we really want to create, the things that move us toward our vision?
Current reality will always be filled with noise, fires, and tugs for our attention. When we can step back far enough to recognize the one step forward, two steps back pattern we tend to fall into and stop long enough to examine the underlying causes of this oscillation, we can refocus our attention and use the tension in our favor to again pull us forward. It's a never-ending journey of improvement. Those who master this process well--and you probably know a few who have--are able to set a goal, achieve it, create a new vision, reestablish the tension, and use it to pull themselves on to bigger and better things.
It's humbling to realize how much room there is to go deeper inside, how much potential is still waiting to be discovered. I get excited by the conscious effort it takes, and I am thankful for the hundreds of opportunities that present themselves every day to practice.
During our closing exercise, one of the class participants shared a song by John Legend, "If You're Out There," which seemed to nicely sum up our focus for the three days. One particular verse toward the end of the song goes, "If you're ready, we can save the world, believe again, start to mend, we don't have to wait for destiny, we should be the change that we want to see . . ."
It gets you thinking, doesn't it?
Mark Alpert is president of Pegasus Communications.
violin photo: Ian Britton/freefoto.com
By Mark Alpert
In business, it is often said that if you're not moving forward, you're falling behind. For most organizations, moving forward means both external growth and internal gains from improved operations.
If you want to know how well things are working--and where there is room for improvement--ask your employees. Conduct an organizational self-assessment. Your employees are your best source of performance information. Who is in a better position to share their unique insights and ideas on how to do things better than the people actually performing the work?
A self-assessment can help ease the pain for leaders who know all too well that change is hard. It's difficult to leave behind conventional wisdom, comfortable processes, and traditional methods for nagging doubts, organizational turbulence, and conscious and unconscious attempts to slow the process down. Unfortunately, when faced with these challenges, a leader's commitment to the shift may waver. In response, employees may be tempted to cling to the status quo, and backsliding can occur.
By asking workers for their insights and feedback, you pull them into the process by raising their curiosity of what others think and their desire to help drive improvements. A well-planned assessment ensures that you ask the right, critical questions, analyze the feedback data, identify high-leverage improvement areas, prioritize, and establish action plans.
The trick is to keep it simple and not get overwhelmed by the resulting feedback or number of opportunities for change that emerge. A well-developed self-assessment has three components:
- An understanding of all the requirements that influence the internal management system
- Data on how those requirements are being met through the deployment of process and procedure
- An analysis of how well the organization is meeting those requirements
An internal assessment can also provide:
- Educational value--use the assessment to help spread an awareness of improvement cycles, best practices, and high-leverage opportunities throughout the organization
- An integrated way to collect information so that it may be meaningfully evaluated
- An evaluation of all of the key aspects of the business
- Historical data for longer-term trends, in response to the question: Are improvements being made?
System thinking teaches that, in a healthy organization, the parts must work together as a complete system and that no one part can perform better than the system as a whole. Successful companies are able to integrate key organizational performance data into their daily management practices to ensure that improvement opportunities are fact-based, systematic, and addressed in a way that benefits the entire organization.
Mark Alpert is president of Pegasus Communications.
photo of lock: Nancy Daugherty