Mike: irritated walking to the chair



“A LOGICAL CRYSTAL BALL”

Towards a Good Future – Iteratively

DR. ELIYAHU GOLDRATT FOUNDATION

TOCICO

Michael Round

Academic

Center for autoSocratic Excellence

Rational Systems, Inc.

(913) 515-3911



ABSTRACT

The financial crisis brought the global economy to its knees. The housing bubble bursts. Social Security is in financial and demographic crisis. Medicare. Medicaid. Health Care. Serious problems, yes, but why are they problems? Only in retrospect, it’s often claimed, can we see the unintended consequences of “good intentions”.

But this is politics. What about business?

In business, decisions are made regarding product pricing, bid procurement, marketing, and logistics that we often regret, in retrospect, as poor decisions.

“Unintended consequences” of decisions – political, business, personal – seems an omnipresent phrase to describe “things gone wrong”. But if the effects of an action are logically predictable, can these effects, in fact, be called “unintended”?

Why can’t policy makers, decisions makers, business leaders, … the average person … see into the future?

The anomaly here is, if ever there were a time when “looking into the future” was possible, it’s now! The predictive sciences have grown immensely. Computing power is massive. Organizations are formed to formalize the science of process improvement. Systems Dynamics. General Semantics. Theory of Constraints. Dr. Deming. And others.

In addition to the predictive nature of reality, we’re also conscious of the unpredictability of reality! Complexity. Chaos Theory. The Butterfly Effect. Dynamical Systems.

As the plethora of material to help grows, why doesn’t the predicted effect match reality?

Can it be the massive presence of new – and impressive – material hinders, rather than helps, the decision-making process? Can it be the mere impression of complexity causes decision makers not to check the logical implications of their decisions?

What can be done to correct this?

This analysis – and presentation – will look at the power of the simple mandate of applying “What if”? to any possible action – a metaphorical “logical crystal ball” – to ensure unintended consequences are unpredictable!

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