"When a system is operating as well as possible none of its parts may be .."

Russell Ackoff argues that there are no problems — or everything is a problem / “reality is a system of problems”. Problems are the outcome of us breaking a system down to parts through a finite point-of-view, removing information and properties and by that creating our own problem. 

Using analysis we extract our understanding from the whole of a system by looking at the system through a limited lens. Removing the whole system that can dissolve the problem and creating an artificial limited reality in where the problem a. can not be solved, b. can be solved but will reemerge or c. will create a host of unpredictable new problems (because we can’t predict them them without understanding the larger system).

Some soundbites from the talk:

[3.30] “And this has an incredibly important implication on management that the western world has not yet learned and is responsible for the well documented decline of the west. In any system when one improves the performance of the parts taken separately the performance of the whole does not necessarily improve and frequently gets worse. The basic principle of management used in the western world is divide and conquer. In a corporation you divide the production, marketing, finance, personnel and so on. If it’s a university you break it up into departments, curriculum and programs and then try to manage each one as well as possible on the assumption when this is done the whole will be run as well as possible. And that’s absolutely false. Because when a system is operating as well as possible none of its parts may be.” 

Because when a system is operating as well as possible none of its parts may be.

[09.20] “There is a big difference between doing the right thing and doing the thing right. We are very largely devoted to doing the wrong things right. That is very unfortunate because the righter you do the wrong thing the wronger you become. When we do the right thing wrong we make a mistake, which when detected allows us to improve".

 [12.55] “Being taught is an obstruction to learning. Teaching is a marvellous way to learn. We are professional learners, not teachers”

[15.05] “The principle purpose of an institution of higher learning is first to learn students to learn how to learn and secondly to motivate them to want to do so”

[15.35] “Your success in life after leaving a university depends on your ability to learn in your job or in your activity what you need to know to do the job well. Your future depends on your capacity to learn and your motivation to do so”

[37.50] “We take reality apart into disciplines and we think a discipline represents reality” 

[37.20] “Disciplines are a filing cabinet for knowledge”

[45.50]“Those adjectives [disciplines] describe the point of view of the person looking at the problem. They don’t tell you anything about the problem they tell you about the person looking at it”

[46.00] “I’ve never met a problem that couldn’t be better solved somewhere else than where it was recognised”. 

[52.55]“Nobody owns a problem. A problem is universal”

[55.20] “A case study is not a problem, but an exercise. Because the person who writes the case eliminates information which used in order to formulate the case in order to convince it.”

[59.30] “We leave students with the impression the best thing you can do with a problem is solve it and that is absolutely false because a number of reasons. One is that a problem never stays solved, but more importantly, every solution creates new problems”

[1.00.00] “There is something you can do to a problem that is better than solving it and that is dissolving it. How do you dissolve a problem? By redesigning the system that has it so that the problem no longer exists”.

[1.02.35]“Dissolution involves design, solution involves research”.

[1.06.10] “Reality is a system of problems. A problem is an abstraction extracted from reality by analysis. It’s isolated from reality. Now what happens when you take a system apart? It looses all of its essential properties. And therefore when you tak a situation and by analysis reduce it to the problems of which it is composed you have lost all the essential properties of reality and the essential properties of the parts, the problem”.

[1.07.00] “And therefore the problems that we teach people to solve are illusions. They are not real”