Ventana software support forum

Some more thoughts on Accreditation:

First, let met try to point out the bias I am bringing to this issue. I
have a degree in System Dynamics and my current livelihood depends on other
people also wanting to get such degrees, so it should fairly obvious where
my preferences lie.

Given that here are some more thoughts on recent discussion
(SD1410,SD1411,SD1414,SD1412) on accreditation:

1) I am struck by how un-dynamic and one sided the discussion has been so
far. It seems to me that are two reference modes of interest here. What
I, and I assume everybody else, wants to see is continued growth in the
field and then, eventually, a smooth transition to steady state thus
generating the nice S-shaped growth pattern that is common to successful
innovations. The less pleasant alternative is rapid growth followed by
collapse. Many people seem to think that overshoot and collapse only
happens to fads and cant happen to innovations and technologies with real
content. Unfortunately, the data shows pretty clearly that is not the
case, it is quite possible for a field such as SD to have something useful
to offer and still not develop into a widely accepted and used business
tool.

For example, a recent survey showed that among American managers Total
Quality Management(TQM) is "...deader than a pet rock." In addition two
researchers from Emory university, George Easton and Sherry Jarrell, in
doing a survey of TQM usage found fewer than 100 companies in the fortune
1000 with well developed TQM programs, thus its pretty clear that TQM is
not on the radar screen for most American managers. Ironically, Easton and
Jarrell are also able to show that those 100 firms that do use TQM vastly
outperform everybody else on just about every performance measure you can
think of (profit, share price, perceived quality etc.). Anybody who thinks
these tools dont work should take a quick look at how Honda and Toyota
compare to GM and Ford on the various quality and reliability measures. I
think this is a pretty compelling example of a technology that has a lot of
useful content but experienced overshoot and collapse rather than s-shaped
growth, there are many more.

Why did this happen? well there are lots of reasons, but one is clearly
that the field grew very rapidly, spawned hundreds of cottage industries,
converted many consultants and was applied to basically everything under
the sun. Because people without much training were applying the TQM tools
to places where they werent very appropriate the results were pretty
mediocre. This wasnt the fault of the tools, but the fact the popularity
of the tools outstripped the number of qualified practioners.

I believe system dynamics is at far greater risk to suffer from these
dynamics than TQM. SD is a much more complicated and subtle discipline
than TQM and can be applied to a wider range of problems. The SD community
would be foolish not to consider seriously the possibility of overshoot and
collapse and consider ways to avoid such an outcome. Accreditation may or
may not be the solution but I think both its costs and benefits need to be
considered. One thing it might accomplish is to prevent some inappropriate
applications of the tools and thus help avoid the collapse. Personally, I
would be willing to accept a slower growth rate of the field if it meant
the overshoot was avoided.

As a final note on this point, there has been some implication that this
might just be a way to create a barrier to entry to the field, so that
those with degrees can keep it for themselves. Besides finding the
implication personally offensive, I simply do not see how one can accuse
anybody who goes into the education profession as trying to restrict entry
to the field in which they teach.

2) I am also troubled by a number of statements along the lines of
engineering, medicine, accounting have certification procedures because
they are difficult and lives are stake while anyone can do SD. I do not
agree. System dynamics is younger than these fields so its theoretical
basis is not as well developed, but it is no simpler or easier or less
important. Saying that anybody can do SD because they can use the software
is no different than saying anybody can design cars if they can use Pro
Engineer. It is simply not the case.

I once thought that I could just do it since I could build a model and
get it to work, but later realized that a lot of smart people have worked
in the field in the last 40 years (including, arguably, one of the smartest
this century), and it was a bit arrogant to think that I could quickly
figure out for myself everything that all of these people had already done.
I firmly believe that good SD is no easier than good engineering or good
medicine. It is less well developed so less has been written down and a
larger fraction of the accumulated knowledge resides only in the heads of
practioners, but that does not make good practice easier, it makes it
harder.

On a related, note on the idea that people die if a bridge collapses, but
nobody gets hurt from a bad model, so we should certify engineers but not
SD people. I disagree with the first part strongly. Since its inception,
SD has focused on the important problems facing society. Although I dont
have the data, I feel reasonably confident that many more people die every
day due to poorly designed social systems than have been killed by faulty
bridges in the past decade. System Dynamics can make a difference in these
systems, but intervening in them is not without its risks. As an example
slightly closer to home, data shows pretty clearly that people who are
laid off or fired from their jobs are more likely to have heart attacks,
become alcoholics, abuse their families, commit felonies etc. Misguided
consulting projects of all kinds have led to mass downsizing and hence are
indirectly responsible for all of the above. The problem, of course, is it
easy to count the number of people killed by the collapsing bridge and hard
to count the pain and suffering caused by a misguided downsizing effort.
The consultant however is no less culpable than the engineer.


3) Finally, a direct response to Jay Forrest, who wrote:

-----
>From my perspective it appears that it is the practitioners of SD who DO
NOT have degrees in SD who are doing the most to promote and advance the
field.

----

While I have no doubt that his company is doing fine work, I think this
claim is without basis. I wont take the time to enumerate all the work
that PhDs and MSs in system dynamics have done recently, but I think its
safe to say that these people are doing a lot of good work that both
promotes and advances the field. Further people with degrees who work in
the ivory tower spend a fair amount of time introducing the field to new
comers. At MIT, we teach our introductory SD course to about 300 people
per year and introduce the field to another 200-300 people in various
shorter courses. Im sure the other SD programs do similar numbers. I
think almost everybody on this list, degreed or not, is trying to promote
and advance the field, in part, because their livelihood depends on it.


nelson
--------------------------------------------------------------
Nelson P. Repenning
Robert N. Noyce Career Development Assistant Professor
Operations Management/System Dynamics Group
30 Wadsworth St, E53-339
Cambridge, MA 02139
phone: 617258-6889 fax:617258-7579 e-mail:nelsonr@mit.edu