SD Success
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 1996 1:57 pm
As one of the lurkers on this list, I decided to jump in...
Augusto Carena asked:
"Why - if true - System Dynamics, in nearly four decades, did not exploit
(both in universities and in business) all the enormous potential that many
acknowledge and we practitioners feel? Is this a local problem (we work in
Italy) or a more generalized one?"
This is something I have often been asked in my work with clients. They all
come away very excited, but they want to know, if its really as powerful
as I say, why hasnt everyone been doing it?
I believe that there are several interrelated reasons (its all part of a
big diffusion system after all).
1). The technology for building models was not easy to use. While those of
us with engineering backgrounds didnt have a problem working out the
problems by hand or writing our own code to perform the numerical
integrations, the majority of the business world couldnt easily do it.
They viewed simulation as something that was done in the back room. Those
same business people, though, were the ones who were approving the money
and resources that were necessary to apply the concepts. Since they
couldnt do it, they didnt spend a lot of money on it. iThink and Vensim
have made it significantly easier for "the common person" to develop
powerful models with out having to bother with the details of numerical
integration and math.
2). The speed and scope of business interactions have been increasing
dramatically as a result of technology and global expansion. There are
mountains of information that need (do they really?) to be assimilated
before managers are ready to make a decision and they are expected to make
it in considerably less time than they used to be. I dont mean to say that
business was easy in the past; rather it has become a lot more complex.
We-management-continually evolved our focus in the direction of increasing
detail complexity. It was easier to break things into little "bite-size"
chunks than it was to understand the dynamics of what was happening--we
didnt have the methodology to understand the dynamic complexity. We are
trained from birth to take things apart to try to understand them; we
arent given a lot of guidance on putting them back together again to work
as a whole.
3). The early system dynamics work, though focused on organizational (ie,
business) problems, was written in technical terms. It was a fairly large
leap for managers to understand the work and apply it themselves. With the
publication of Peters book, there was a new language that made it easier
for business people to understand what it was that "those Cambridge people"
were talking about. "The Fifth Discipine" didnt teach how to do system
dynamics, it just popularized it and put helped people to pur into a
context with which they could relate. This has really accelerated the
demand side of the diffusion structure in recent years. Though system
dynamics isnt "hexagons and causal loops", they are important to help
people make the transition from cause and effect to feedback structures.
4). There just arent that many people who have had the opportunity to
study this stuff for a long period. We are finding, consistent with what
others have discovered, that to truly become skilled you need to apply the
concepts. This takes time and coupled with the delay is that other
pressures prevented people from spending too much time applying system
dynamics because it was immediately measurble how "improving the quality of
decisions" lead to better organizational performance. There are only a few
places in the world where you can get deep exposure to the field and only a
small fraction of the students in those schools want to study this field.
I have other thoughts, but Ill let someone else speak for now. Thanks for
reading and I hope this plants some seeds for thought.
One other thing. In SD0148, Gene wrote:
"...referring to what were doing as "Just In Time Learning." People seem
to immediately take to the techniques we offer as they immediately see
their applicability in terms of dealing with the dilemmas they are
currently facing."
We have been using a similar term, but we also added that when you
integrate system dynamics and scenario planning, you not only have just in
time, you have "Just in Case". System dynamics models enable you to be
proactive as well as reactive.
Regards,
Sam Israelit
Arthur Andersen Business Consulting
(617) 330-4102
sam.b.israelit@arthurandersen.com
Augusto Carena asked:
"Why - if true - System Dynamics, in nearly four decades, did not exploit
(both in universities and in business) all the enormous potential that many
acknowledge and we practitioners feel? Is this a local problem (we work in
Italy) or a more generalized one?"
This is something I have often been asked in my work with clients. They all
come away very excited, but they want to know, if its really as powerful
as I say, why hasnt everyone been doing it?
I believe that there are several interrelated reasons (its all part of a
big diffusion system after all).
1). The technology for building models was not easy to use. While those of
us with engineering backgrounds didnt have a problem working out the
problems by hand or writing our own code to perform the numerical
integrations, the majority of the business world couldnt easily do it.
They viewed simulation as something that was done in the back room. Those
same business people, though, were the ones who were approving the money
and resources that were necessary to apply the concepts. Since they
couldnt do it, they didnt spend a lot of money on it. iThink and Vensim
have made it significantly easier for "the common person" to develop
powerful models with out having to bother with the details of numerical
integration and math.
2). The speed and scope of business interactions have been increasing
dramatically as a result of technology and global expansion. There are
mountains of information that need (do they really?) to be assimilated
before managers are ready to make a decision and they are expected to make
it in considerably less time than they used to be. I dont mean to say that
business was easy in the past; rather it has become a lot more complex.
We-management-continually evolved our focus in the direction of increasing
detail complexity. It was easier to break things into little "bite-size"
chunks than it was to understand the dynamics of what was happening--we
didnt have the methodology to understand the dynamic complexity. We are
trained from birth to take things apart to try to understand them; we
arent given a lot of guidance on putting them back together again to work
as a whole.
3). The early system dynamics work, though focused on organizational (ie,
business) problems, was written in technical terms. It was a fairly large
leap for managers to understand the work and apply it themselves. With the
publication of Peters book, there was a new language that made it easier
for business people to understand what it was that "those Cambridge people"
were talking about. "The Fifth Discipine" didnt teach how to do system
dynamics, it just popularized it and put helped people to pur into a
context with which they could relate. This has really accelerated the
demand side of the diffusion structure in recent years. Though system
dynamics isnt "hexagons and causal loops", they are important to help
people make the transition from cause and effect to feedback structures.
4). There just arent that many people who have had the opportunity to
study this stuff for a long period. We are finding, consistent with what
others have discovered, that to truly become skilled you need to apply the
concepts. This takes time and coupled with the delay is that other
pressures prevented people from spending too much time applying system
dynamics because it was immediately measurble how "improving the quality of
decisions" lead to better organizational performance. There are only a few
places in the world where you can get deep exposure to the field and only a
small fraction of the students in those schools want to study this field.
I have other thoughts, but Ill let someone else speak for now. Thanks for
reading and I hope this plants some seeds for thought.
One other thing. In SD0148, Gene wrote:
"...referring to what were doing as "Just In Time Learning." People seem
to immediately take to the techniques we offer as they immediately see
their applicability in terms of dealing with the dilemmas they are
currently facing."
We have been using a similar term, but we also added that when you
integrate system dynamics and scenario planning, you not only have just in
time, you have "Just in Case". System dynamics models enable you to be
proactive as well as reactive.
Regards,
Sam Israelit
Arthur Andersen Business Consulting
(617) 330-4102
sam.b.israelit@arthurandersen.com