I read 'The Fifth discipline' several years ago. I had actually read 'The
Path of Least Resistance' and 'Creating' by Robert Fritz. These two books
heavily influenced my thinking and apparently Peter Senge's too.
My professional background is as a business analyst with a Master of
Science in Operations Research and Statistics. My applied background
combined with a theoretical education has pushed me to systems thinking as
a way of building effective and easy to maintain computer systems. I am
able to apply my statistical education and my logistics modeling to
influence organizational at the companies I have worked for. I enjoy this
combination of practical analysis and theoretical education. I consider
my education to be systems thinking and my applied background as applied
systems thinking.
>From my experience with systems thinking has been frustrating at times and
jubulant at other times. Why you ask? I have a couple generalizations
that I call Martinisms about work in the '90s.
Historically accountants ruled business when there were no computers. Now
with data storage and access accountants are overwhelmed and incharge.
This is a fundamental change in business systems.
True TQM (statisticis, process development and refinement) has not taken
off in the US as a mainstream business practice because of accountant
mentality. Statistics is about the collection of appropriate data for
analysis. Accounting is about the opposite, account for everthing. How
to orgranize around statistics and analytical thinking have been a tough
leap for most accounts.
Your thoughts?
Martin Jetton
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>