Ackoff Quotes

Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes. —RUSSELL ACKOFF,

A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does. Moreover, it seems to me that much of the advice and instruction related to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing, not the weather.

Nothing consumes time like nothing.

Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.

You rarely improve an organisation as a whole by improving the performance of one or more of its parts

Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes.... Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes. -RUSSELL ACKOFF,' operations theorist

The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems. The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds. […] Complex problems do not have simple solutions.

Our ability to solve problem is limited by our conception of what is feasible.

What appears to be black on white to whites may appear to be all white to black.

A system is never the sum of its parts,” Russell Ackoff, an organizational theorist and a pioneer in the field of systems thinking and management science, famously said. “It’s the product of their interaction.

The less we understand a phenomenon, the more variables we require to explain it.

La elección es creativa y, por lo tanto, impredecible. Al toparse con una elección predecible, ya no se trata propiamente de una elección.

The result is a book that cannot be read easily. It requires study. We hope that some will have the patience and inclination to do so.

All through school, we are shown that making a mistake is a bad thing, something for which we are downgraded. This reveals how little conventional schools are interested in learning, because we never learn by doing something right; we already know how to do it. Doing it right does confirm what we already know, and this has some value, but it contributes nothing to learning. We

Man seeks objectives that enable him to convert the attainment of every goal into a means for the attainment of a new and more desirable goal. The ultimate objective in such a sequence cannot be obtainable; otherwise its attainment would put an end to the process. An end that satisfies these conditions is an ideal… Thus the formulation and pursuit of ideals is a means by which to put meaning and significance into his life and into the history of which he is part.

A similar discrepancy between objective proclaimed and objective practised can be observed in most organisations. For example, one could mistakenly believe that the principal objective of universities is to educate students. But for Ackoff, the principal objective of a university is to provide job security and increase the standard of living and quality of life of those members of the faculty and administration who make the critical decisions. Teaching is the price that faculty members must pay to share in the benefits provided. Like any price, they try to minimise it. Note that the more senior and politically powerful teaching members of the faculty are, the less teaching they do.

There is one other extremely important aspect of synthetic thinking. The systems with which we deal are becoming increasingly complex. Think, for example, of the difference between a neighborhood grocery store and a global chain of retail stores like Wal-Mart or the difference between a tent or shack and a skyscraper. Scientists are searching for a way of dealing effectively with such complexity. Unfortunately, most of them are approaching the subject analytically. The result is identification of such a large number of variables and relationships between them that we are not able to handle them. However, if complexity is approached synthetically, by design, as in the design of a skyscraper or a city, there seems to be no limit to the complexity we can handle effectively.

Exams do not assess anything significant to the future of children, because no one knows how to assess or measure the key factors to the future success of any person, child or adult. They are a closed system; tests exist for their own sake. They measure the ability of the entire school community—children, parents, teachers, administrators—to focus all their efforts on producing good results on tests! Nothing more, nothing less. To

One might wonder how on earth learning came to be seen primarily a result of teaching. Until quite recently, the world’s great teachers were understood to be people who had something fresh to say about something to people who were interested in hearing their message. Moses, Socrates, Aristotle, Jesus—these were people who had original insights, and people came from far and wide to find out what those insights were. One can see most clearly in Plato’s dialogues that people did not come to Socrates to “learn philosophy,” but rather to hear Socrates’ version of philosophy (and his wicked and witty attacks on other people’s versions), just as they went to other philosophers to hear (and learn) their versions. In other words, teaching was understood as public exposure of an individual’s perspective, which anyone could take or leave, depending on whether they cared about it. No one in his right mind thought that the only way you could become a philosopher was by taking a course from one of those guys. On the contrary, you were expected to come up with your own original worldview if you aspired to the title of philosopher.

What is sad is the fact that this entire growing industry has been developed around a system of education that is basically obsolete, and one that no longer serves the needs of the children growing up to face the world of the twenty-first century. It is sobering to consider the unsettling effect that the not-so-gradual dismantling of this educational system will have on the large number of employees who will no longer be serving a useful function in society. We have already seen similar societal upheavals in the transition that has occurred in the world of industrial production.

anyone who observes children closely soon comes to the conclusion that they cannot grow up and master the world quickly enough. Nature endows them with the innate drive to become adults. A child knows all too well the gulf that exists between himself and grown-ups, and is eager to bridge that gulf to reach the adult levels of achievement that he sees all around him. Indeed, only an enormous effort can stop a child from realizing her tremendous drive to grow and mature. This drive is a fundamental characteristic of young animals that is essential to the survival of species throughout the living world. It

Those involved in the redesign process must know what they would do if they could do whatever they wanted. Such knowledge is essential if they are to set meaningful goals for the future. The outcome of such a design is idealized in the sense that the resulting system is ideal seeking, not ideal. It should be subject to continuous improvement with further experience and changing environments. The only certainty is that some of whatever we think we will want five or ten years from now will not be wanted then. Such a vision should be inspiring, a work of art. It should facilitate making short-run sacrifices for the sake of longer-run gains.

Today, there are two worlds that use the word education with opposite meanings: One world consists of the schools and colleges (and even graduate schools) of our education complex, in which standardization prevails. In that world, an industrial training megastructure strives to turn out identical replicas of a product called “people educated for the twenty-first century.” The second is the world of information, knowledge, and wisdom, in which the real population of the world resides when not incarcerated in schools. In that world, learning takes place like it always did, and teaching consists of imparting one’s wisdom, among other things, to voluntary listeners.

As an aside, Sheldon Rovin in his first draft of a guide to Systems Thinking, repeated this old chestnut: The often-quoted tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, ‘When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.’ However, in government more advanced strategies are often employed, such as: 1. Buying a stronger whip. 2. Changing riders. 29 3. Appointing a committee to study the horse. 4.    Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride horses. 5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included. 6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living impaired. 7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse. 82 8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed. 9. Providing extra funding/training to increase the dead horse’s performance. 10.  Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance. 3 11.  Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than live horses. 12.  Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses. And, of course… 13.  Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

The school is teeming with activity. The rooms are small and large, many are special-purpose rooms, like shops and labs, but most are furnished like rather shabby living or dining rooms in homes: lots of sofas, easy chairs, and tables. Lots of people sitting around talking, reading, and playing games. On an average rainy day—quite different from a beautiful suddenly snowy day, or a warm spring or fall day—most people are inside. But there will also be more than a few who are outside in the rain, and later will come in dripping and trying the patience of the few people inside who think the school should perhaps be a “dry zone.” There may be people in the photo lab developing or printing pictures they have taken. There may be a karate class, or just some people playing on mats in the dance room. Someone may be building a bookshelf or fashioning chain mail armor and discussing medieval history. There are almost certainly a few people, either together or separate, making music of one kind or another, and others listening to music of one kind or another. You will find adults in groups that include kids, or maybe just talking with one student. It would be most unusual if there were not people playing a computer game somewhere, or chess; a few people doing some of the school’s administrative work in the office—while others hang around just enjoying the atmosphere of an office where interesting people are always making things happen; there will be people engaged in role-playing games; other people may be rehearsing a play—it might be original, it might be a classic. They may intend production or just momentary amusement. People will be trading stickers and trading lunches. There will probably be people selling things. If you are lucky, someone will be selling cookies they baked at home and brought in to earn money. Sometimes groups of kids have cooked something to sell to raise money for an activity—perhaps they need to buy a new kiln, or want to go on a trip. An intense conversation will probably be in progress in the smoking area, and others in other places. A group in the kitchen may be cooking—maybe pizza or apple pie. Always, either in the art room or in any one of many other places, people will be drawing. In the art room they might also be sewing, or painting, and some are quite likely to be working with clay, either on the wheel or by hand. Always there are groups talking, and always there are people quietly reading here and there. One

Except for practices that incorporate design as the way they practice—for example, architecture and engineering—the art of design is not incorporated into students’ experiences in schools, despite its superiority in many situations, even to such analytical problem solving as scientists employ. The power of design as an instrument of learning is almost completely overlooked by the educational system. For example, the best way to learn how an automobile (or any other mechanism) works and to gain understanding of why it works the way it does is to design one. Moreover, it is in design that people learn what they want.

Reality consists of sets of interacting problems, systems of problems we call “messes.” As previously noted, problems are abstractions extracted from reality by analysis. Therefore, education for practice should develop and apply methodology for dealing holistically with systems of problems. Because messes are complex, this requires an ability to cope with complexity. It is much easier to deal with complexity through design in practice—for example, in designing a skyscraper—than in dealing with it academically in a classroom or research facility. The theory of complexity is not required for dealing with complexity in practice; design can handle it. To

Cizek came to Vienna [from Leitmeritz, a small town in Bohemia, then Austrian] when he was twenty [in 1885], and entered the Academy of Fine Arts. He lodged with a poor family, where, fortunately, there were children. These children saw him painting and drawing, and they wanted, as Cizek has so often related, “to play painter too.” Out of his genuine love for children, one of the reasons of his success, he gave them what they asked for—pencils, brushes, and paints. And beautiful works were created by them. It was a happy coincidence that Cizek was in close contact with the founders of the “Secession” movement, a kind of revolution of young painters and architects against the old academic art. He showed his friends ... the drawings of his children, and these artists were so thrilled that they encouraged Cizek to open what they scarcely liked only to call a school, but for which they had no other name. There children should be allowed, for the first time, to do what they liked [emphasis added]. (pp. 11–12) Needless

The educational environment of children should encourage them to continue to explore the open-ended connections between their experiences, and to be receptive to new interconnections and interpretations of theories and explanations that they have either learned or developed. An oft-repeated story illustrates the deadening effect of thinking in terms of narrowly defined fields.16 A high school physics student was given the following problem on an examination: “Suppose you were in a tall building, and had a sensitive barometer in your possession. How would you use it to find the height of the building?” As anyone who has studied introductory physics will instantly recognize, the instructor was looking for the answer he had prepared his students to give—namely, measure the barometric pressure at the bottom and the top of the building, and calculate the height of the building, using the formula that relates the drop in barometric pressure to the increase in elevation going from the ground to the top of the building. The student in question, a very bright and highly independent soul, found it demeaning to provide an answer that he thought was trivially easy. Instead, he answered, “You can do it several ways. One is to drop the barometer from the top of the building and measure how long it takes to hit the ground [thus illustrating that he knew the relationship between height, distance, and time in gravitational free fall, another piece of ‘physics’]. Another is to attach the barometer to a long string, lower it to the ground, and measure the length of the string [no longer ‘physics,’ but rather ‘carpentry’].” The answer, of course, was declared wrong. The student objected strenuously and brought a storm of protest to bear on the examiner—who then agreed to repeat the same question and give the student an opportunity to provide the “correct” answer. The student, no more inclined to be compliant than before, answered, “I would go to the superintendent of the building and offer to give him the barometer as a gift if he would tell me how high his building is [now we have entered ‘economics’].” Leaving

This was true of any and every aspect of knowledge; you figured out how to learn it, and you exposed yourself to people who were willing to make their understanding public if you thought it could be a worthwhile part of your endeavor. That is the basis for the formation of universities in the Middle Ages—places where thinkers were willing to spend their time making their thoughts public. The only ones who got to stay were the ones whom other people (“students”) found relevant enough to their own personal quests to make listening to them worthwhile. By the way, this attitude toward teaching has not disappeared. When quantum theory was being developed in the second quarter of the twentieth century, aspiring atomic physicists traveled to the various places where different theorists were developing their thoughts, often in radically different directions. Students traveled to Bohr’s institute to find out how he viewed quantum theory, then to Heisenberg, to Einstein, to Schrodinger, to Dirac, and so on. What was true of physics was equally true of art, architecture...you name it. It is still true today. One does not go to Pei to learn “architecture”; one goes to learn how he does it—that is, to see him “teach” by telling and showing you his approach. Schools should enable people to go where they want to go, not where others want them to. The

What is the school like? First, let me set the stage. The school enrolls students from the age of 4 up. No one is too old, although most of our students are 19 or younger. The people in the school, no matter what age they are, are each doing what they want to do. Usually that means that some people are doing things with others, who can be of the most various of ages, and some people are doing things alone. Usually it means that most people are doing things not done in most other schools, and some are doing things that are done in other schools with a very unusual intensity and concentration. It more often means that children are teaching adults than that adults are teaching children, but most often people are learning and unconscious that “learning” is taking place. Doing what they choose to do is the common theme; learning is the by-product. It is first and foremost a place where students are free to follow their inner dictates. They are free to do what we all do when we have the time to, and what we all find to be most satisfactory—they play. Play is the most serious pursuit at Sudbury Valley. Some people play at games, and some play at things we who have more traditional educations are more comfortable with—writing or art or mathematics or music. But we are quite clear at Sudbury Valley that it is doing what you want to that counts! We have no curriculum and place no value on one pursuit over another. The reason that we are secure in feeling this way is that we constantly see that people play more and more sophisticated “games,” explore more and more deeply, that they constantly expand their knowledge of the world, and their ability to handle themselves in it. Children who play constantly do not draw an artificial line between work and play. In fact, you could say that they are working constantly if you did not see the joy in the place, a joy most usually identified with the pursuit of avocations. I

Cizek had used art as the point of entry of his thinking into a whole new world of education—an avenue that had never occurred to me. He realized that children by nature are capable of real, indeed often great, art; that artistic activity is natural for them; and that adult interference in the natural development of children as artists was detrimental to that development. From that starting point, he made a leap into the entire realm of education and child development, concluding that the natural, unhindered growth of children enables them to reach their full potential as human beings, and that adult interference in general is more of a liability than an asset in this process of growth. That leap, from art to all domains of maturation, was an intuitive one for Cizek and his followers. It was not until I read the article referred to in the opening paragraph of this section that I not only gained an understanding of the real basis for Cizek’s intuitive leap, but I also achieved a new and enriching perspective on the nature of education, one that I had hitherto hardly noticed. The key is the observation that certain activities are universal, transcultural, and therefore related to the very essence of being a human. Even more significant and telling—and here once again Cizek hit upon the truth, albeit not consciously—is the fact that these same activities are engaged in by children from the earliest age, and therefore are not, indeed cannot be, the products of sociocultural influences. This places these activities in the realm of biological evolution rather than the realm of cultural history.50 And because these three activities—making music, decorating things, and talking—are the outcome of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, they must represent in and of themselves an important aspect of the exalted place humans occupy in the natural world. In other words, these activities not only represent the outcome of evolution, but they also represent important features that account for the specific place that the Homo sapiens species occupies in the natural order. To allow children—and indeed adults—to engage in these three activities to their heart’s desire is to allow them to realize their fullest potential as human beings. External interference in their exercise, although perhaps sometimes justifiable for social reasons (man is, after all, a social animal too, another aspect of evolution), always involves some diminishing of their ability to become what they by nature are inclined to be. Once this is realized, it is almost impossible to comprehend the enthusiasm with which educators and child development specialists advocate systems for coercing children, against their clear inclination and will, to curtail these activities in favor of an externally imposed adult agenda. Although there might have been some economic justification for such curtailment in the industrial age, there is no longer the slightest pretext of an advantage gained through the suppression of the natural, evolved behavior of children. In

The students at Sudbury Valley are “doin’ what comes natur’ly.” But they are not necessarily choosing what comes easily. A close look discovers that everyone is challenging themselves; that every kid is acutely aware of their own weaknesses and strengths, and extremely likely to be working hardest on their weaknesses. If their weaknesses are social, they are very unlikely to be stuck away in a quiet room with a book. And if athletics are hard, they are likely to be outdoors playing basketball. Along with the ebullient good spirits, there is an underlying seriousness—even the 6 year olds know that they, and only they, are responsible for their education. They have been given the gift of tremendous trust, and they understand that this gift is as big a responsibility as it is a delight. They are acutely aware that very young people are not given this much freedom or this much responsibility almost anywhere in the world. But growing up shouldering this responsibility makes for a very early confidence in your own abilities—you get, as one graduate says, a “track record.” Self-motivation is never even a question. That’s all there is.

There are four different ways to treat problems: • Absolution • Resolution • Solution • Dissolution, redesign These form a hierarchy of effectiveness, from least to most. They are seldom made accessible to students in school. Below the university level, only two are ever used. In some curricula at the university level, three are exposed. The fourth and most effective way is rarely dealt with in the educational system, except in training for professions in which design is the principal process involved. Absolution.

Why is such a wonderful school not the norm? Shouldn’t SVS already have been copied in a million different places? The answer isn’t so simple—or maybe it is. The idea of total freedom for children is very threatening to most people. The kinds of objections that are raised are these: “But there are some basics—how do you ensure that each child learns them?” We at Sudbury Valley are not so certain that there are any basics, but we are certain that our students are in an environment that is real, that is totally linked to the larger community, and that if there are things everyone should learn, the kids in the school surely know it as well as the adults, and it is up to them to ensure that they learn it. Often, people are angry when they learn that most students can learn all of basic math in just 20 hours of classroom work. They feel cheated because they spent years and years of doing repetitive mathematics either because they hated it and weren’t interested and were bad at it or because they learned it fast but were told they had to redrill, redrill and redrill some more or they would forget everything. Now I ask you, would you really forget it if it were truly basic? But

Contrary to the impression that the educational system promulgates, there are no absolute answers to questions; the correct answer to a question depends on the context in which it arises. For example, how much is 2 + 3? The answer depends on “two and three of what?” If we are speaking of 2 degrees Fahrenheit plus 3 degrees Celsius, the answer is different than if we are referring to the number of books on a table. How many students learn that 10 + 10 = 100 in a binary number system? Schools

The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter. If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better.

Managers who don't know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure.

Perhaps the most costly disassembly in which our culture has been engaged is the disaggregation of life itself into work, play, learning, and inspiration. Each of these aspects of life has been separated from the others by creating institutions for engaging in only one at a time, excluding the other three as much as possible. Businesses are designed for work, not play, learning, or inspiration. Country clubs, theaters, and sports stadiums are designed for play, not work, learning or inspiration. Schools are designed for learning, not work, play, or inspiration. Museums and churches are designed for inspiration, not work, play, or learning. However, one of the most important products of systems thinking is the realization that the effectiveness with which any of these four functions can be carried out depends on the extent to which they are carried out together, in an integrated way.

Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. . . . Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes. —RUSSELL ACKOFF,

Aun cuando la aceptación de todas las orientaciones (retornar a un pasado previo, prolongar la situación actual, o acelerar la llegada del futuro) parezca implicar cierto cinismo o resignación hacia el mundo, la realidad es diferente.

La ciencia, (...), involucra la búsqueda de similaridades entre cosas que aparentemente son diferentes. El arte, por el contrario, debe buscar diferencias entre cosas que aparentemente son iguales. La ciencia busca lo general, mientras que el arte va por lo único.

There are three types of parents—first, those who are always fussing after their children, controlling and correcting them and trying to make them walk in the same paths as themselves; then the infinitely preferable variety, who neglect their children altogether; and lastly, the ideal kind, who watch their children from a distance and are ready with encouragement and friendship when that is needed. (Viola, p. 35)

Sommerhoff formalized the insights of Rosenblueth and Wiener, and rigorously showed how goal-directed behavior could be made conceptually compatible with a deterministic mechanical conception of nature.

A system is not the sum of the parts but a product of their interactions. Russ Ackoff