Systems Thinking: Part/Whole Interactions

Some of the tasty "food for thought" nuggets in this Ackoff video segment:

• Focus on the whole
• Only improve a part if it improves the whole
• Fundamental lesson (to be learned) is to understand how the parts interact; not on how each part acts separately
• The place to attack a problem is not necessarily where the problem appears

In subsequent posts, I'll relate each of these to the property of "flow."

Here's a hint. Check out the 4th Principle of Improving the Flow of Knowledge Work. You can find it in other posts in this blog. By the way, the principle applies to all work and it helps explain why the Toyota Production System is so effective.