Systems Thinking

Guest Lecture

Topic: Systems Thinking

Date: 18/08/2011

Profile of guest faculty: Prof. L S Ganesh, Ex-HOD and Professor at (DoMS-IIT Madras)

Description of Event:

Wikipedia says, Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. We got greater insight of the concept one fine day when prof. Ganesh explained it to us with real world examples. He opened the lecture with an event that happened in 1993 in Bangalore. Farmers were lathicharged during a protest and in that order government signed on a suicide note. It all started with a weed called Parthenium Hysterophorus which affects the growth of crops and its pollination creates asthmatic problems to the people who come in contact. When people complained, government acted upon the issue by forming a committee to look into the matter. In due course of time, they were able to come up with a natural solution, a beetle called Zygogramma bicolorata which fed on parthenium.But the story did not end here.Eventually, beetles ran out of Parthenium and started eating sunflowers in nearby farms. When farmers ran out of options to control them, they protested and government’s response came with a lathicharge.

Now, where can we put systems thinking in this matter! First we need to identify the flow of events. Exactly as prof. Ganesh said,” using the power of mind’s eye”.

Parthenium weedàCity people affectedàComplain to govtàExpert committee formedà solution found in beetleàBeetle ate Parthenium.

When entire mind focus is on solving symptoms of the problem ,we find a plausible solution but the root cause remains unaddressed which gives rise to unintended consequences. In scientific terms, we call it counter-intuitive type 1. Missing the connectivity in nature is a basic reason for CI-1.This happens in various dimensions including national level policy decision making where we have all kind of experts analysing all kind of situations. Some classic examples are: King toad problem in Australia, elk problem in yellow Stone Park. World of allopathic medicines are full of CI-1 situations.

In counter-intuitive type 2, when we reach to the solution for a problem, an anti-problem arises. The primary reason for this phenomenon is: working against the flow in nature. It can be related to a titration experiment where an extra drop leads to a sudden change. In phrasal term, last straw on camel’s back. Common example: consider a movie which gets a ban. It attracts the interest of people and that pulls them to watch it.Prof.Ganesh also reminded us of beetle bailey cartoon where ,to solve the problem of increasing number of rats an incentive of 1 $ was introduced which led to more breeding of rats for the benefit. In Thane and Jalandhar, this case happened for real and people responded in same fashion.

How to resolve these problems:

To address the root causes of the problems as explained earlier, what is needed is a larger window of perception. In this connection, Donella Meadows used a simulation model in 1972 of earth systems which predicted that earth will reach the limit of economic growth in 150 years. This is a cumulated effect of missing infinite connectivity and using “me today” as window of perception to solve systems problems. Great souls who walked this planet had eternity and universality as their window of perception. What we can do is to enlarge the window to learn the way systems work. For a manager, understanding the importance of integration of knowledge and people is a top priority in order to achieve the desired goals.