Systems Analysis

Before we do anything else, we will ask ourselves and discuss: what is going on here?

Then we will go over course logistics and ground rules, and I will give a high-level overview of the course.

The word “system” does two very different jobs. Telling them apart is the distinction this whole course turns on.

SSM is a methodology, not a method. It does not give you a procedure to execute. So what does it hand you? We find out on a situation close to home.

We try to find an accommodation, and whatever we find, agree to commit to it for the rest of the semester.

Human situations are complex because they always involve multiple interacting relationships. A picture shows those relations all at once, which a paragraph can only deliver one after another: that is the whole argument for drawing one. Not a flowchart, not an org chart, and not judged as art.

We begin drawing our own situation. Expect me to keep asking one question: who is not in this picture?

The same event can be documented different ways: an announcement, a meeting minute, the student newspaper, an alumni newsletter. What is each one for? And what do we owe the people we talk to?

From today your group keeps a file with one dated entry for every conversation, document, or meeting you take anything from, on what it told you about how this place works. In two weeks we find out what you have been recording.

Identifying “clients,” “practitioners,” and “issue owners,” starting with the course itself. Modeling process vs. modeling content.

Roles like “client,” “practitioner,” and “issue owner” are chosen and not discovered. Different choices open different inquiries.

What are we talking about when we talk about the culture of an organization?

What are the “commodities” signaling that power is possessed, and what are the processes by which they are obtained, used, protected, defended, passed on, and relinquished?

Groups workshop: tracing social and culture structures and how power flows through them.

A relevant system is a choice of viewpoint. A model that tries to be balanced argues for nothing.

Alongside Chapter 4, re-read Chapter 2 on models and root definitions.

A deceptively simple formula: do P, by Q, in order to contribute to achieving R. R is where the worldview hides, and Q is where the transformation is.

The transformation is the hard part, and most first attempts go wrong in the same way. CATWOE is six checks on it, two of which ask who is affected and who could stop you. You will also choose a worldview you don’t hold.

Can you state a view you find unattractive in terms its holders would sign off on?

Why seven activities? Why logical dependency rather than time order? Why is the monitoring subsystem not optional? And why is there no correct model, only a defensible one?

Efficacy, efficiency, effectiveness: evaluating a transformation may involve other criteria too, but it always involves these three.

Four ways to compare a model to the situation it was built to interrogate. Your group picks one and defends the choice. The goal is to find a version of the situation that people who disagree could still live with.

Alongside Chapter 3, re-read Chapter 2 on comparison and discussion.

A model asks questions of a situation: does this happen here? by whom? how is it judged? should it? The trick is knowing which questions to linger on and which to skim past. We are after questions worth asking, not a verdict.

Consensus is rare; accommodation is what is usually available. Rather than discuss that in the abstract, we take one real proposed change and find out what people can live with.

Three groups facilitate, using their models as instruments. Nobody wins this.

The remaining groups facilitate. We may have guests.

Is your change a change to structure, to process, or to attitude? Only one of the three can be done by decree, and it is the one that made our situation. Then two tests, both of which a proposal has to pass.

Does SSM assume a level playing field, and so serve whoever already holds the cards? That is one objection; the sharper ones land on what we learned in the last three weeks, and on how this course itself has been run. Come ready to make the strongest case against the methodology you have spent a semester learning.

On Monday we made the case against this methodology. Today we run the whole cycle again, in one meeting. The situation is not what it was in August, partly because we have been inquiring into it.

First we’ll ask: was our discussion any better than it would have been without all this? Then the real decision: does any of this work leave this room? If so: shared with whom, in what form, with whose consent? We decide together, and it is OK to say “no.”