This slide deck summarizes key concepts from a 1994 presentation by Dr. Russ Ackoff on enterprise architecture and systems thinking. Some of the main points covered include: that quality improvement programs often fail because they are not embedded within a systems thinking approach; a system is made up of interdependent parts where the whole is more than the sum of its parts; and continuous improvement is not as important as discontinuous or creative improvement.

1. This slide deck is derived directly from a 1994 presentation given by Dr Russ Ackoff. (http://youtu.be/OqEeIG8aPPk)
Enterprise Architecture
&
Systems Thinking
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2. EA & Systems Thinking
This slide deck is derived directly from a 1994 presentation given by Dr Russ Ackoff. (http://youtu.be/OqEeIG8aPPk)

3. Quality Improvement Failures
• 2/3 of managers that authorise quality
improvement programs consider them as failures.
Definition of Quality: “Meeting or exceeding the
expectations of the customer or consumer.”
• The customer is the one who authorised the
introduction of the quality program.
• If customer expectations are not met, it is a failure.
• The reason for failures is because quality
improvement programs haven’t been embedded in
Systems Thinking.

4. What is a System?
• A system is a whole, that consists of
parts, each of which can affect its behaviour or
its properties. (e.g. human body)
• Each part of the system, when it affects the
system, is dependent for its effect on some
other part. In other words the parts are
interdependent. No part of the system or
collection of parts has an independent effect
on it.
• A system is a whole that cannot be divided
into independent parts.

5. Implications of being a system
• The essential or defining properties of a system
are properties of the whole which none of its
parts have.
– E.g. a car can “carry you from A to B”. None of the
parts can do that on its own
– E.g. a human body “has life”. None of your parts
live, YOU have life.
• When a system is taken apart it loses its essential
properties.
– E.g. when a car is taken apart it loses it’s essential
properties, it is no longer a car

6. Implications of being a system
• The system is not the sum of the behaviour of its
parts it it the product of their interactions.
• If you have a system of improvement that is
directed at improving the parts taken separately
you can be absolutely sure that the performance
of the whole will NOT be improved.
• But most applications of improvement programs
are directed at improving parts taken separately.
– Example: Take the best part from each car to make
the ultimate car. You don’t even get a car because
the parts don’t fit.

7. Architecture Example
• The Architect:
– Takes a set of properties that the client wants.
– Then produces an overall designs of the house
– Then produces designs for rooms to fit into the
design of the house
– Discovers in the process that he can modify the the
house in such a way as to improve the quality of the
rooms
– But he will never modify the house to improve the
quality of the room unless the quality of the house is
simultaneously improved

8. Continuous Improvement
• An improvement program must be directed at
what you want. Not at what you don’t want.
• When you get rid of something you DON’T
want, you don’t necessarily get what you DO
want.
• If you don’t know what you would do if you
could do anything you wanted to, how can you
know what you would do under constraints.

9. DIS-Continuous improvement
• Continuous improvement isn’t nearly as
important as DIS-continuous improvement.
• Creativity is a discontinuity. A creative act breaks
with the chain that has come before it.
• One never becomes a leader by imitating and
improving slightly (This leads to Porter’s
productivity frontier).
• You only become a leader by leapfrogging those
who are ahead of you; and that comes about
through creativity.

10. Things Right Vs. Right Things
• Peter Drucker made a distinction between
doing things right & doing the right thing.
• Doing the wrong thing right is not nearly as
good as doing the right thing wrong.
• Lean is good at doing things right but Lean
produced cars are still polluting.
• Quality ought to contain a notion of value, not
just efficiency. This is the difference between
efficiency & effectiveness