Subject: System Objective

Posted by Jay W. Forrester on 9/26/2006
In Reply To:System Objective Posted by Ah Kau LIM on 9/4/2006

Message:

There have recently been several communications related to the objective of a system. I think most of the discussion is not anchored in the structural nature of systems. A company may have an "objective" of increasing profit, or a school system may have an objective of providing better education, but these so-called objectives are not connected to the system behavior.

In a model of one of these systems, every flow, of which there may be large numbers has imbedded in it an objective. The person ordering replacement parts has an objective of maintaining a certain level of inventory. The school superintendent has various objectives arising from the various flows that are being controlled--hiring teachers to fill vacancies, communicating with the public to limit criticism, putting pressure on teachers when discipline falters. Every flow has some kind of explicit or implicit goal embedded in the statement that describes the control of the flow.

Super goals of better performance, happier students, or higher profitability, have no systems meaning or significance except to the extent that they lead to altering local goals at specific flow-controlling points. Often the super, or grandiose, goals have no effect. Frequently, such general goals have the opposite of the desired result because they create pressures on the operating flows that are counterproductive .

The global goals that the discussions have cited are often meaningless or produce the opposite of the desired result because there is usually no grasp of where the high-leverage flows are located. It is only through actual model simulation that one discovers how the multitude of local flows, and their separate goals, cause the total system behavior.

When the behavior of a system is not what is desired, one should start by assuming that the deficiency is because of the policies being followed and often because of policies that people are actively pursuing in the mistaken belief that those policies lead to improvement. One sees corporations, and school systems, in which the known policies that are thought to be a solution are, without people being aware of the consequences, causing the problem. This is a treacherous situation because the favored policies cause increasing difficulty and the greater difficulty provides more incentive for doing the very things that are causing trouble. Is "No Child Left Behind" one of these?
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Jay W. Forrester
Professor of Management
Sloan School
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room E60-156
Cambridge, MA 02139

Follow Ups:

System Objective - Mescheryakov Ilya 9/27/2006 
System Objective - Ralph Brauer 9/27/2006 
System Objective - Michael Cleghorn 9/26/2006 
System Objective - Jay W. Forrester 9/27/2006
System Objective - Steve Wilhite 9/27/2006
System Objective - Steve Wilhite 9/27/2006
System Objective - Steve Bosacker 10/4/2006
System Objective - Jan Morrison 10/6/2006
System Objective - Bill Braun 10/6/2006