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Dear List,

I came late to this discussion and have not read much of the
previous input. I hope I am not way off on the meaning of the
thread regarding SYSTEMS TRAINING> A question was raised about
'how many of us teach systems management'.

We spend some time in training systems management, but what has
had the biggest impact on creating systems management has been a
change in policy and decision making.

We have 7 Functional departments at the site where I am located.
Like many functional departments, there was some territorialism,
hiding of information, blaming, etc.

Our first focus was on Leadership training for our Senior
Management Group, which taught the Management group to view each
other as both Customer and Supplier. We then had each department
manager develop a one-on-one relationship with every other
department manager.

The format was rather simple...4 questions every manager had to
complete for each of the other six: What you are doing that you
need to do more of; What you are doing that you need to do less
of; what you are doing that needs to stop; what you need to start
doing.

First there was conversation and clarification of the statements
or requests, then as a Senior Management Group we tracked progress
on corrections of behavior.

An earlier diagnostics that was conducted showed that the
relationship between two department managers was carried down to
into manufacturing. IF our Quality department and Engineering
department were adversaries at the Senior management level so were
the Process engineers and the Quality Techs at the production
level. We believed we saw role modeling taking place. Showing
Senior management this data was really eye opening.

Once issues were out on the table and relationships were being
addressed we began our VISIONING process. This was our first
Total Systems approach. Each department was piecing together a
picture of the future that they all had a stake in. Then we
developed a committment to support each other in acquiring this
vision.

The policies and practices that were changed that had the most
impact were these:

All major decisions would be made by the total Senior Management
Group.

All improvement both within departments and without would be made
by Cross-functional teams incorporating several tiers of the
organization. By having cross functional teams making all
improvements and implementations, there became less and less of a
distinction of project ownership, but an actual increase in
project accountability.

When it came to problems it was becoming more and more difficult
to say "oh, that problem is a Quality Department Issue".

For example: In the past, Ergonomic Issues were looked at as a
Human Resource Responsibility. Who owns that now? It is very
hard to determine: Engineering is constantly looking at the weight
of incoming componants and testing product assemblies set up in
manufacturing to determine if there are any ergo issues and plan
to eliminate them. Quality must analyze ergonomic issues
associated with testing and gaging. Human Resources actually
plays a minor role in all of this...they obtain training for
Ergonomic awareness, but don't even track ergonomic issues on a
Department measurables board.

What I am suggesting is that SYSTEMS management philosophy teaches
that everything is a process within a system. No process can
succeed if it is not placed within a system that supports it. To
teach SYSTEMS management is only half of the story.

Teaching is a process - it will have little or no impact if
SYSTEMS are not CHANGED to support the training that has taken
place. Changing policy and practices to BE TOTAL SYSTEMS focussed
is necessary for the training to be successful.

Thanks,
Rick COrcoran
Excel Industries
Continuous Improvement Manager / Kaizen / EMpowerment

INTERNET:"corcoranre@excelinc.com"

Hi all

As I'm new to this list let me introduce myself with a brief bio then on to
systems management.

I've been working with systems concepts and their role in understanding
and managing complex agricultural and environmental situations for about
ten years. I am currently teaching systems thinking and practice to Natural
Resource Management, Agriculture and Agribusiness undergrads in Australia
at the University of Western Sydeny - Hawkesbury. I have just completed a
MSc using Stafford Beers principles of Neuro Cybernetics to critique the
rural policy development and implementation processes within the Australian
Commonwealth Government's Department of Primary Industries and Energy.

The major concern of the Hawkesbury curriculum is to instill into our
students three primary competencies that have a systemic synergy for
working with people in complex situations. These are effective
communications, life longe learning, or becoming critically reflective
practitioners, and demonstrating a commitment to the epistemological
construct of contextual relativism.

This third competency or applied epistemic frame recognises that there is
no one right paradigm or methodology and that the context should dictate
the perspectives, processes and methods used within the situation of
concern or problematique, until some satisfactory, rather than single
objective optimum, answer is found.

You might ask, how do we convey these complex ideas to a bunch of
undergrads? - we expose them to the realities of real world client based
contexts through group and individual projects based on farms,
agribusinesses or nature conservation settings. We do not use text book
case studies.

Supported by texts like Morren and Wilson's "systems approaches to
agriculture and resource management" or Flood and Jacksons " Creative
Problem Solving: Total Systems Intervention" Wiley and Son, we help our
students find their way through the maze of possible approaches to problem
solving within the complexity of the lifeworld. This is done by exposing
students to a real societal or organisational situation where they are to
find the problem. We then help to define the situation and identify the
type and complexity of the issue or problem to be addressed. Our task then
is to facilitate the students learning by helping them to identify and work
through the most appropriate methodology for the situation. The emphasis
here is on the learning associated with finding their way through the maze
rather than learning off pat the mechanisms of various methodologies or the
detail of discipline based knowledge.

It takes us three years to move students through

1. introducing systems ideas (Draper Kaufman Systems One: An Introduction
to Systems Thinking)
2. then seeing systems as mental games to
3. working with systemic transects of the liebensvelt in a manner
appropriate to clients and stakeholders.

The core "Systems Project" subjects are supported by discipline based
electives that traditionaly were/are core, eg in Farming "Principles of
Animal Production or Agronomy", In Agribusiness "Marketing or Accounting or
Human Resource Management", In Natural Resource Management " Ecology,
Biology or Law" etc etc etc.

The outcome is a graduate who can deal with a range of situations through
creative design rather than one that has a tool kit for only a few types of
problems.

The downside is that staff stress out over the minimalist traditional
discipline emphasis which downgrades their status in their own eyes and
demands that they become facilitators of adults learning rather than
receptacles to fill with information that will be examined.

In terms of curriculum development the whole program must be designed and
coordinated as an orchestrated effort (or system) rather than a gathering
of subjects cobbled together. It seems it is the only way we can get the
epistemic shift required to get people to think and act in terms of
systemics, at an undergrad level.

Good Luck

Gary

At 08:48 AM 3/18/98 -0800, you wrote:
>How many members of this listserv teach systems management?
>What textbooks are you using?
>Do you focus on Peter Checkland's approach or Senge-Forrester's Systems
>Dynamics or Warfield's approach or others?
>Really would be interested in understanding how management educators
>are incorporating systems thinking or systems methodology into their
>curriculums and courses...
>Karen
>Karen Takle Quinn
>
>
Gary Wallace - g.wallace@uws.edu.au