Personally, I am Environmental Engineer and System Analyst. I started
to use System Dynamic models more or less ten years ago in research
projects, such as the policy study for water resources management and
impact assessment of wastewater pollution control options. I may say
that the Systems Thinking is not a new concept for me because the
first lesson in the courses of System Sciences and mathematical
modelling were about the concepts of SYSTEM and systematic thinking.
However, since I worked in the company, my knowledge about Systems
Thinking has been refreshed by Learning Organisation. The essential
enhancement of my knowledge about Systems Thinking is from one person's
systematic thinking to system thinking in so called "organisation" (it
may be company or a group of people with common concerns). In order to
implement learning organisation, I am trying to involve our customers into
the System Dynamics model building processes instead of giving them
a packed final model or documented results. In this way, it is possible
to avoid 'the problem-solving process being centred on the model which
can thereby become detached from the problem context and its participants'.
The practice is the best learning process. The practice may be continuous
processes improvement and business processes re-engineering in the really
worldor in the virtual world.
The second enhancement of my knowledge is about the role of SD models.
SD models allow us to create a virtual world where we may learn the real
world that the virtual world presented in the much fast and high efficient
way. Traditionally, when the people are facing the complicated system,
they used to develop a completed and sophisticated model to deal with the
complexity. This kind of BIG model may be very useful, but must be time
consuming and costly. When the model that contains hundreds relationships
and thousands variables can precisely simulate what the reality is, it may
be less helpful to understand problem-related infrastructure. Then it is
hard to learn organisation through the model. SD model should be primarily
used for acceleration of the learning processes rather than simulation of
the system. In my consulting experience I'm trying to use some SMALL models
to present typical thinking patterns. The SD model is an instrument to
learn the organisation and to organise an effective learning. Learning the
organisation and organised learning are two of most important prerequisites
in learning organisation.
I did keep my eyes on the discussion in this group for a couple of
months and found most of posts were quite interesting. However, I am
wondering
1) Is the learning organisation just a ideal, a vision or a philosophy?
Or it can be a physical existence. Is it a methodology such as TQM
or BPR that we may implement it in our consultant practice, or it
can never be one of powerful instrument in our problem-fixing toolbox.
In another words, if Learning Organisation is a vision and a new
philosophy it can be useful only when it is transferable to the
problem solving processes, there should be a way to make the transfer
applicable. If it itself is a method there should have a guidlind
to practise it.
2) I agree that there are no clear path to success and no clear path to
follow in building learning organisation. There may be no successful
cases until now. But there must be some experiments undergoing and
experiences documented, which can help others in their efforts. Should
we have chance to share these experiences in this group? I may say, if
we may be able to gradually find or form a path towards learning
organisation this listserver itself is good example of learning
organisation that is worth to be well documented.
My point is should we use the listserver to discuss not only the
philosophy and the vision, but also experience and failure, as
well as the successful procedure that may lead towards Leraning
Organisation.
3) As I know that MIT Learning Organisation Centre has some sort of
intrinsic or inheritance connections with System Dynamic society.
Should learning organisation necessarily be System Dynamic-based?
Until now I didn't see many posts talking about the role of SD
model in learning organisation. Maybe I have not yet got the
disciplines here. It seems to me the people who are interested in
the learning organisation are hooked in theis group; and the prople
who are "playing" with SD models are diverted into "system-dynamics@
world.std.com" listserver.
Are they really so independent from each others?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jie Wang, Ph.D
Integration & Engineering srl. home:
Via Mercalli, 16 Via Angera, 14
20122 Milano Italy 20125 Milano, Italy
voice +39-2-58194445 Voice/fax: +39-2-6695590
fax +39-2-58194429 email: cbogang@icl382.cilea.it
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