Consulting expertise

[Jay Forrest]

Hi Ed!

In working with clients, the client MUST be involved in the generation of
the CLD or SF diagram. If the client is not involved it is my experience
that they will not understand it, and if they dont understand it they wont
accept it. It is my experience that it is generally easier to build a CLD
and merely talk about causes and relationships and to guide that development
with SF in mind than to try to educate people naive to SF in the nuances of
Stock and Flow. Thus I often start with CLD that the client understands.
If the client is sophisticated enough, I will build an SF diagram initially
or transform the CLD into an SF diagram. If not, I will put the formulas
behind the CLD.

Fortunately the same formulas and structure give the same output no matter
what kind of diagram is on top or how one represents S&F. This is a
pragmatic viewpoint and to reinforce my previous comment, is not intended to
promote sloppiness but rather to provide the client with as sophisticated an
understanding of the problem as the client is will understand.

Thanks!
Jay Forrest


Pteragenesis
Chaos, Complexity, System Dynamics, Studies of the Future
pteragen@neosoft.com
http://www.neosoft.com/~pteragen

[gallaher@teleport.com (Ed Gallah]

I have appreciated the comments re CLD vs SD diagrams, techniques,
descriptions of numerical analysis, etc., and their relationships to
working as a consultant with clients. This is out of my universe, and it
is quite interesting and illuminating to eavesdrop on these discussions.

I am a teacher, however, and I will pass along a comment which has been
useful to me over the years. Despite working up through the ranks as a
teaching assistant in grad school, to being an Assoc. Professor, the most
cogent advice I ever received re teaching skills came from a swimming
instructor when I was training to be a lifeguard/swimming teacher.

"Teach from the known, to the related unknown."

This may sound trivial, but it has been quite useful to me. On reading
John Stermans excellent descriptions of how to work effectively with a
client, this came to mind again.

While sitting through more or less effective lectures as a grad students I
would try to compare the effectiveness of the lecture with this concept.
Boring lectures often came about because the instructor was taking us (or
me, anyway) from the known to more known; there was nothing new.
Frustrating lectures came about because the instructor started beyond my
present knowledge, and went off into hyperspace from there.

I cant help but think that one major difficulty with S&F diagrams is their
unfamiliarity to the client. Consider a situation where you are hired to
teach clients how to build an electrical device, and you had to start with,
"First we can build a diagram. It helps us think about the circuit. Here
are some useful symbols. This jagged line is how we show a resistor.
These two parallel lines indicate a capacitor."

Currently, this approach would not be a problem, because -everyone- who has
ever considered an electronic circuit has seen these symbols. Whether they
are expert in their use is not the issue; they -know- that this symbolic
language is widely accepted and extremely useful.

If this background perception were not available, the client might very
well dismiss the wiring diagram as a bunch of academic fluff.

Returning to S&F diagrams, how different would the situation be if the
client had already been exposed to a cooling cup of coffee, or a pesticide
flushing from a reservoir, or a bank account model with compounding
interest? As perhaps in middle/high school?

Their underlying thought process might then be, "Ive always wondered if
that stuff could be applied to our situation, but Ive never known how to
do it. Heres someone that can help us test this out...." Rather than,
"What is that spaghetti on the page all about?"

As a consultant, you must obviously teach from the known to the related
unknown. But wouldnt it be nice if the "known" were to move up a notch or
two, before you got there?

ed gallaher
gallaher@teleport.com