Posts from the ‘Russell Ackoff’ Category
Russell Ackoff, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, passed away last Thursday, October 29th. His writings have been a source of inspiration for me since I first read his book Reinventing the Corporation. I always felt that there were few others of his calibre:
Both academically rigorous yet practically relevant. He challenged conventional thinking but did not restrict himself to developing theoretical models – he explained how radically new concepts could be implemented by practitioners. He was very concerned about the process used to effect change and insisted on the involvement of a wide set of stakeholders in the change process.
He introduced a number of important organisation design concepts, which I build on in the book that I am currently writing on organisation design. For example, he developed the idea of a circular organisation, based on the application of democratic principles in managing organisations (Many would say this is a completely unrealistic concept, but wait, the future may prove Ackoff right.)
I particularly like his way of explaining what design is all about. He rejected the notion that design should be about “solving problems”, which he interpreted as incremental optimization of the currently existing system. Instead he proposed that design should be about “dissolving problems”, that is, not only eliminating the current problem, but also re-designing the system in such a way that one eliminates the root causes and thus removes the chance that the problem may recur in the future.
Here are links to three videos containing a keynote address he gave in 2004 (the three videos run a total of 30 minutes):
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLU3aoQ7t7c (part 1)
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsF32GAHVfI (part 2)
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z3hJIGHdfk (part 3)
Here’s a link to an interview with him:
http://www.acasa.upenn.edu/p19.pdf
