Failure is perhaps our most taboo subject

"At the very least it is hoped that this little book may serve as a warning to those who read it, thus helping to counter the headlong rush into Systemism that characterizes our age...

SYSTEMISM n. 1. The state of mindless belief in Systems; the belief that Systems can be made to function to achieve desired goals. 2. The state of being immersed in Systems; the state of being a Systems-person."

(John Gall, "Systemantics - How Systems Really Work and How they Fail.)

Gall, continues

Systems-functions are not the result of human intransigence. We take it as given that people are generally doing the very best they know how. Our point, repeatedly stressed in this text, is that Systems operate according to Laws of Nature, and that Laws of Nature are not suspended to accommodate our human shortcomings. There is no alternative but to learning How Systems Work... Whoever does not study the Laws of Systemantics and learn them that way is destined to learn them the hard way...

S. Freud, in his great work on the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, directed attention to the lapses, failures, and mishaps resulting from forces operating within the individual. We, on the other hand, are interested in those lapses, failures, and mishaps that are attributable to the (mal)functioning of the Systems surrounding the individual, within which the individual is immersed, and with which he or she must interact and attempt to cope in everyday life.

Specifically, we are interested, not in the process of forgetting to mail a letter, but in the Post Office Box that is too full to accept the letter.

...

And like those lapses followed up by Freud, these lapses have a way of eluding us, of disappearing from our consciousness once the painful event is over. Failure is perhaps our most taboo subject.

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When Memory is thus deliberately frustrated in its basic task of protecting us from too much awareness, we see what we had hitherto failed to notice: that malfunction is the rule and flawless operation the exception.

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The advent of the Computer Revolution merely provides new opportunities for errors at levels of complexity and grandiosity not previously attainable.

...

The world may largely consist of Fuzzy Systems, but fuzzy thinking is definitely not the way to Cope with them, let alone to Prevail.

Comment - John Gall's book is, in my mind, one of the most delightful and yet profound books on "Systems" ever written. I have made a point to reread it at least once every year since 1975, and to buy copies for all my staff and friends at the slightest excuse.

Based, presumably, on his experiences as a physician at the University of Michigan, be captures with humor the best attitude any of us can hope for to take and use to frame the indelicate problem of "systems" in our lives, or, God forbid, systems we are part of and partly responsible for.

A very brief sampling of his summary rules is here. Wikipedia has many more, but I heartily recommend the trip to Amazon to get the latest updated version of his wit and wisdom.

Some of his Rules:

REALITY IS MORE COMPLEX THAN IT SEEMS.

Under precisely controlled experimental conditions,a test animal will behave as it damn well pleases.

THINGS AREN'T WORKING VERY WELL (and never did).

SYSTEMS IN GENERAL WORK POORLY OR NOT AT ALL.

(The behavior is often an unexpected way of failing.)

NEW SYSTEMS MEAN NEW PROBLEMS.

SYSTEMS TEND TO EXPAND TO FILL THE KNOWN UNIVERSE.

THE SYSTEM ALWAYS FIGHTS BACK.

THE OLD SYSTEM IS NOW THE NEW PROBLEM.

A LARGE SYSTEM, PRODUCED BY EXPANDING THE DIMENSIONS OF A SMALLER SYSTEM,
DOES NOT BEHAVE LIKE THE SMALLER SYSTEM.

TO THOSE WITHIN A SYSTEM, THE OUTSIDE REALITY TENDS TO PALE AND DISAPPEAR.

THE CHART IS NOT THE PATIENT.

Unfortunately, this slogan with its humanistic implications, turned out to be misleading. The nurses were neither attending the patients nor making notations in the charts. They were in the hospital auditorium, taking a course in Interdisciplinary Function. (The art of correlating one's own professional activities more and more with those of other professionals, while actually doing less and less. )

"In cold fact, a SYSTEM is building ships, and the SYSTEM is the shipbuilder."

PEOPLE IN SYSTEMS DO NOT DO WHAT THE SYSTEM SAYS THEY ARE DOING.

THE SYSTEM ITSELF DOES NOT DO WHAT IT SAYS IT IS DOING.

and, "Closely related to Orwellian Newspeak and Doublethink, The confusion of Input and Output."

A giant program to Conquer Cancer is begun. At the end of five years, cancer has not been conquered, but one thousand research papers have been published. In addition, one million copies of a pamphlet entitled "You and the War Against Cancer" have been distributed. These publications will absolutely be regarded as Output rather than Input. The cancerous multiplication of paperwork will not be regarded as a malignancy.

[previously published 9/5/06 in my prior weblog ; photo is from my own Ann Arbor photos. ].