The issues You raise with respect to " learning to model" interest myself
and my company a great deal. We do extensive consulting in Australia
where We produce animated management tools which are model-based (in fact,
discrete event simulation models using our own ever-extending software
platform). Since many companies would rather have internal expertise in
using our platform, training in the use of the platform t is often done
for individual companies, and both middle management and line management
people come to this, and some of the middle level people become
proficient.
However, there have been various times when senior management and line
personnel have been involved and gotten very excited by the animations
which portray the way their systems actually work... they usually do not
pursue this very far because of the time pressures of their work.
For us, animation, although it sometimes looks like a game, is very
effective at verifying how people understand the cause and effect
relationships within their business system. In fact, it has a strong
mediating influence, because normal language and concepts just are not
very good at capturing dynamics, concurrency and chains and loops of
interactions in their system. In my observation, this is a significant
source of misunderstanding in the workplace which the animations overcome.
However, the step from watching the animation and being able to build a
model is a big one, for which the main barriers appear to be the lack of
practice in articulation of any systems understanding, lack of experience
in working with the dynamics and variability of system components, and an
effective conceptual framework with which to capture their systems
understanding.
The issue of jargon which You and Dave Birren raised is an interesting
challenge, and raises some important questions for me....
Since everyday language, concepts and understanding lack the ability and
precision with which to describe systems and their dynamics effectively,
attempts to use everyday language appear to be limited to anecdotes and
metaphors, which are incomplete in building a systems language. Does
anyone see an alternative to novice modellers having to acquire new
concepts in order to do effective systems modelling?? I don't see one,
and have always felt frustration as a result when responding to pleas to
remove the jargon from modelling, or to avoiding the use of some new ideas
in general. Although I agree that a lot of jargon is unnecessary, I also
feel that jargon which accurately makes important new distinctions, or
makes distinctions in order that descriptions can be complete and
unambiguous are essential.
The question for me then becomes how to get people's buy-in to the need to
acquire new conceptual tools and terms which are not part of their
ordinary language?
In Australia, which seemed to me to be similar to "Missouri" in this
regard, I found this particularly frustrating even at universities. There
seemed to be a bias from a good number of people, against any concept
which did not live in their experience, and since they only used their
already "tried and true" concepts with which to experience their world...
a kind of brick wall then went up against novelty expressed through ideas.
Does this mean that we should also be putting our attention upon the
transformation of ordinary folk into Learning Individuals, ones who could
become involved in Personal Mastery? Is it sane to try to encourage
people who have succeeded in the world so far... growing families,
acquiring a home, keeping a steady income, etc. to get them to change,
transform, become empowered, revolutionize their conceptual understanding
and personal behaviour? Or is it simply growing old, not to try?
-- Doug Seeley 100433.133@compuserve.com "Is there any time and space where networks do not exist?"