The ITx 2016 Programme may change without notice

Systems tinkering versus systems thinking

Monday 3:20pm - 3:50pm, IITP Conference (IITP Room 1)

Looking back at the industrial revolution, the dominant ‘management paradigm’ was Scientific Management. This was pretty straightforward, focussing on control of function and tailored to mass production.

But this ran out of steam when the world got more complicated. People realized that things depended on so many other things.

A better paradigm emerged when Hammer, Senge, Kaplan and Nonaka shifted the focus to control of information. This new way of thinking, Systems Thinking, was better suited to mass customisation and knowledge work.

Now we have moved on to mass collaboration between multiple parties and we are in the domain of complex adaptive systems. Complex systems’ behaviour can’t be predicted – it just emerges. Systems Thinking assumes that the interactions between system components are complicated but knowable. For complex systems, this gives a false sense of control and is a recipe for disaster. Seasoned practitioners recognize the futility of grand plans for mega-projects. If the project is successful, it’s usually not due to, but despite the project plan.

Dealing with complex systems is different and requires a more experimental ‘systems tinkering’ approach. David Snowden’s sense-making Cynefin framework offers different strategies for dealing with systems that are obvious, complicated, complex or chaotic. Or simply unknown. Described in detail in the highly-cited and Academy of Management award-winning Harvard Business Review article A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making, the Cynefin framework often ‘liberates’ project managers and other roles from the shackles of traditional command and control-based thinking.

This talk also references Agile and DevOps.

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