Dyslexic Management & The Interaction of Parts

Spotted on  Ray Ison's blog

Dyslexic management can't read signs of failure * Simon Caulkin * The Observer, * Sunday November 25 2007

The real British disease is the unerring talent for putting together entities that are less than the sum of their parts. The comical inability to think in systems terms - call it management dyslexia - was on dazzling display last week, all over the front and back pages. First up, the England football team. Management is supposed to amplify effort by providing a creative framework for individual expression that benefits the team. But defeat against Croatia was the reverse, the culmination of unmanagement that over several matches has diminished team effort and turned good players into turnips.

[Snipped a bit]

Second up, a performance by HM Revenue & Customs that makes it hard to know where to begin - with the IT outsourcing that makes it an expensive extra to separate bank details from other personal data, to senior management's decision to dispense with encryption to Gordon Brown's repeated use of the 'one bad apple' excuse: the leak was the result of one individual's failure to carry out procedures - at the dispatch box.

The spectacle of a general blaming his troops is always distasteful, but in this case is also bankrupt. The HMRC leak is primarily the result not of human error, but poor or non-existent systems design which failed in at least three respects: not segregating sensitive from insensitive information, allowing the two to be sent out together, and omitting to encrypt it. If any of those steps had been followed, the further error, of leaving a junior to decide to put it in the post, would have been harmless. This is called fail-safeing - part of any good systems design.

[Snipped a description of a problem in the NHS that could describe some of the problems in Irish Hospital, only they're worse here]

In other words, the Norfolk NHS crisis, like that of HMRC and team England, was self-generated, the result of complete and continuing system-blindness. 'Problems in organisations,' points out Russell Ackoff, one of the first and best systems thinkers, 'are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part.' Treating a single part destabilises the whole and demands more fruitless management intervention; management becomes a consumer of energy, rather than a creator.

Unfortunately, that's the hallmark of 21st century UK management. As last week demonstrated, it still shows no sign of recognising it.

Worth repeating the money quote

'Problems in organisations,' points out Russell Ackoff, one of the first and best systems thinkers, 'are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part.'

A lot to be learned. Not sure anyone is listening in Government buildings in Ireland either.