The Weekly Probe No. 2
Welcome to The Weekly Probe: a list of all the interesting things I’ve consumed over the past week related to systems thinking. The content serves as supplemental material to help those wishing to be better systems thinking students. The information presented here are not solutions in and of themselves but help facilitate better tools when creating or extending systems.
IN ORDER TO SUCCEED IT IS NECESSARY TO KNOW HOW TO AVOID THE MOST LIKELY WAYS TO FAIL.
Systemantics
Don’t forget to check out my recent article:?Cherish Your Bugs.
The article is a case study on the dangers of positive feedback loops. Positive feedback loops can be dangerous because they can cover up blindspots within systems until they are exposed. Systems that ignore feedback have already begun the process of terminal instability.
Explore Your Curiosity
Sandi’s article is written for software engineers, but everyone can take something away from it. His premise is that if an engineer has a well-operating system and is tasked with adding functionality, they should consider whether the system is still the best design. Often it isn’t. Taking down the system is more tedious, but it is far more preferable than extending it, making it inflexible.
领英推荐
Marie Kennedy, who writes the blog?Post-Woke, is a mechanical engineer in the aviation space. She suggested my readers, and I learn about FMEA, which they use to identify all possible failures before implementing any new design, product, service, or manufacturing process. The technique originated from the US military in the 1940s and is the first time I’ve seen the acronym SEV outside of the software industry.
There are so many fantastic nuggets in this article, and I highly recommend reading it! One of the main takeaways for me, and something that I was trying to get at in?one of my recent posts, is that Donald has also noticed the default mode of people in the health industry to stress existing systems rather than building new ones. Stressing existing systems to them is easy, familiar. Teaching them new facts and ways of doing work is more challenging but necessary to create new systems.
Donald also highlights the importance of quick feedback loops and argues that new systems are positive even if they don’t achieve their stated goals. The people within the system must iterate until the system achieves all objectives, but most organizations resist and oppose change.
THE FUTURE IS NO MORE PREDICTABLE NOW THAN IT WAS IN THE PAST, BUT YOU CAN AT LEAST TAKE NOTE OF TRENDS.
-KYLE