Russell Ackoff – U.S. Navy two day training in Thinking… — Transcript

Russell Ackoff discusses organizational learning, understanding change, and participative management in U.S. Navy training sessions.

Key Takeaways

Understanding is more valuable than knowledge or information and should be the focus of education and training.
Participative management can help create a positive organizational climate and improve decision-making.
Societal and organizational change requires a shift in worldview to effectively cope with new realities.
Most educational efforts overemphasize information transmission and underemphasize understanding.
Historical eras are defined by shared cultural worldviews that shape how people perceive reality.

Summary

Russell Ackoff, from Wharton School, leads U.S. Navy training on thinking, understanding, and learning.
The training emphasizes participative management and creating a positive organizational climate.
Ackoff distinguishes between information, knowledge, and understanding, highlighting their educational importance.
Most education focuses on information (90%), less on knowledge (9%), and very little on understanding (1%).
Understanding is conveyed through explanations answering 'why' questions, which are the most valuable and difficult.
Ackoff reverses traditional education by focusing first on understanding, then knowledge, and finally information.
He discusses the accelerating rate and profound nature of societal change, referencing Toffler’s 'Future Shock'.
The concept of historical eras is introduced, defined by a shared worldview or 'Weltanschauung'.
Ackoff highlights the transition from the Machine Age to a new historical era, emphasizing the need to understand this change.
The training aims to develop the ability to cope with change through joint understanding rather than just information.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

To a unique opportunity. You're going to be asked to play a part in determining the future of the Naval Education and Training Organization. Granted, there are some things over which we have no control, but within the limits of participative management, I'm earnestly seeking your views and your assistance in creating a positive organizational climate.

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participative management I'm earnestly seeking your views and your assistance in creating a positive organizational climate you shortly will be viewing a tape made by Dr Russell aoff who is from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Dr aoff has authored or

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You shortly will be viewing a tape made by Dr. Russell Aoff, who is from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Aoff has authored or co-authored 16 books and published more than 150 articles. His work in research, consulting, and education has involved more than 250 corporations and 50 government agencies. Recently, Dr. Aoff conducted two training sessions here at CNET, one of which was at Point Clear for the top managers, and more recently, the other was at the Hilton Hotel for middle managers.

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managers and more recently the other was at the Hilton Hotel for Middle managers one of the things you'll hear him say on the tape is that the top brass took three days to arrive at their conclusions while the branch leaders

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One of the things you'll hear him say on the tape is that the top brass took three days to arrive at their conclusions, while the branch leaders only needed two days. So, by the same scheme of capability, I'm sure you will reach agreement in just one day.

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session for the top brass that went for 3 days and they correctly assumed that you could cover the same material in two at least that's the aspiration now let me share with you uh the the basic concept on which this day

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Now, it's a pleasure for me to introduce to you Dr. Aoff. Russ, thank you.

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time is spent in conveying information about 9% in conveying knowledge and about % conveying understanding uh that's not surprising since it's difficult to transmit what you don't have uh the distinction between them is absolutely critical information is what is

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Uh, as you know, there was a preceding session for the top brass that went for three days, and they correctly assumed that you could cover the same material in two. At least, that's the aspiration. Now, let me share with you the basic concept on which this day and the following days' activities are based.

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somebody says down to the right that's information knowledge is contained in the question that begins with how to how do I get the mobile from here it's contained in instructions information is contained in descriptions understanding is contained in

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There's an old adage among educators that an ounce of knowledge is worth a pound of information, and an ounce of understanding is worth a pound of knowledge. Now, unfortunately, in the educational process, about 90% of our time is spent in conveying information, about 9% in conveying knowledge, and about 1% conveying understanding.

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finally into information because we have so little opportunity to try to develop a joint understanding of what in the world's going on in the world my students at the University are required to read the literature of change that began with toffler's book in 1971

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Uh, that's not surprising since it's difficult to transmit what you don't have. The distinction between them is absolutely critical. Information is what is contained in the answer to questions that begin with words like who, where, what, which, how many, when. So, if I were to ask how many people are in this room and I'm told 70, that's information. If I say where is the washroom and somebody says down to the right, that's information.

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and the de emphasis on the nature of the change and they ask a question which I think is very profound how in the world are we going to be be able to develop an ability to cope with this change unless

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Knowledge is contained in the question that begins with how to. How do I get the mobile from here? It's contained in instructions. Information is contained in descriptions. Understanding is contained in explanations, the answers to questions that begin with why, and they are by far the most difficult and the most valuable.

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simplest question in the world to ask and perhaps the most difficult to answer but even the poor answer is much better than none the question is what in the world is happening in the world at a very general level what

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Now, I want to reverse the normal educational procedure in a sense by focusing initially on understanding and then come down into knowledge and finally into information because we have so little opportunity to try to develop a joint understanding of what's going on in the world.

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identified by a cultural cohesiveness brought about by a common view of the world what the Germans call a valan chang a concept of the nature of reality we all have one but we have a great deal of difficulty articulating it because we

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My students at the university are required to read the literature of change that began with Toffler's book in 1971, Future Shock, and has been followed by a whole series. They come away very impressed by the accelerating rate of change, its magnitude, and its profound nature. But they observe one characteristic of this literature, which is the emphasis on the rate of change and the de-emphasis on the nature of the change.

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other a a historic age is a period in which there is a single World viw which dominates and when that worldview begins to change we begin to go through a period of transformation into a new age now the most recent transformation

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And they ask a question which I think is very profound: How in the world are we going to be able to develop an ability to cope with this change unless we understand it? And most of the literature increases our knowledge and information about the change but very little understanding.

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Machine age and this is the age out of which he we have started to come into a new one which I'll also characterize to you the Middle Ages or dark ages as they're sometimes called which preceded the middle age uh was

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So, I want to spend the first period this morning in an effort to answer a question which they keep asking me all the time. It's the simplest question in the world to ask and perhaps the most difficult to answer, but even the poor answer is much better than none. The question is, what in the world is happening in the world at a very general level?

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don't want to dwell on that here but briefly during the medieval period expected life was 27 years it was very brief 40% of the children born died in childhood the average distance that a person traveled from his place of birth

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What possible answer can there be? Well, the thesis I want to present to you is this: that we're in the early stages of a change of age, that we're going through a transformation from one historical era to another. Now, a historical era is identified by a cultural cohesiveness brought about by a common view of the world, what the Germans call a Weltanschauung, a concept of the nature of reality.

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it was natural that the basic question which they asked was what in the world is the meaning of life and the only institution of the day of any Authority the church answered that life is Preparatory for death and if death leads to paradise and

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We all have one, but we have a great deal of difficulty articulating it because we absorb it by osmosis as we grow up from our culture, and it's ingrained in us. And it's that commonality of point of view about the nature of reality that binds us together and enables us to communicate with each other.

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you look at all of medieval art has nothing to do with daily naturalistic activities it has to do with gods angels devils and so on the literature as well Milton's Paradise Lost Dante's Inferno and so on now what happened was The

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A historic age is a period in which there is a single worldview which dominates, and when that worldview begins to change, we begin to go through a period of transformation into a new age. Now, the most recent transformation of this type in our history went quite a while ago, the period called the Renaissance.

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cultures and this aroused their curiosity about the nature of man and there emerged a movement which you all studied at one time or another in school called a new humanism a Revival of some of the ancient Greek learning transmitted into

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The Renaissance was the transformation from the Middle Ages to the modern era, which for reasons that I will explain is called the Machine Age, and this is the age out of which we have started to come into a new one, which I'll also characterize to you.

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by the church during the medieval period the desire to inquire was considered to be inappropriate for a religious person became a virt rather than a sin and so inquiry began and out of that inquiry grew a new view of the world that was based on two

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The Middle Ages, or Dark Ages as they're sometimes called, which preceded the Middle Ages, was characterized essentially by the preoccupation of man with death as a phenomenon rather than life, and with a concern with the spiritual life rather than the objective life of man interacting with his environment.

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the object of or real world from the spiritual and afterlife Worlds the entry brought with it two fundamental beliefs first that the Universe was capable of being completely understood that was a very profound and new belief uh which persisted for almost

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Now, we know the reasons for all that, and I don't want to dwell on that here, but briefly, during the medieval period, expected life was 27 years. It was very brief. Forty percent of the children born died in childhood. The average distance that a person traveled from his place of birth during his lifetime was four miles.

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the last century at the end of the very conference they would try to produce a statement for a press release on the agreement which had been reached during the conference and this particular conference said that it was their

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He lived in a very confined area, came in contact with virtually nobody except a small community into which he was born. Over 95% of the people lived in abject poverty under terrible conditions. And so, it was natural that the basic question which they asked was, what in the world is the meaning of life?

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was built was a commitment to a particular method of inquiry a method of inquiring which you can observe in any child because all this was was a systematization of the way a child tries to learn and inquire into the nature of

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And the only institution of the day of any authority, the church, answered that life is preparatory for death, and if death leads to paradise, and paradise is infinite, then why in the world worry about a lousy 27 years? So, people concerned themselves with the afterlife rather than life itself.

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radio or something of this sort that he's never seen before what's the first thing he will do to it take it apart absolutely first thing he will do is take it apart the next thing you will do is try

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And this, of course, is reflected in the literature, the art, and in everything of the day. If you look at all of medieval art, it has nothing to do with daily naturalistic activities. It has to do with gods, angels, devils, and so on. The literature as well: Milton's Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, and so on.

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that you want to understand the part then try to understand the behavior of the parts taken separately and then try to aggregate the understanding of the parts into an understanding of the whole that process is called analysis so the analytical method plus

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Now, what happened was the Crusades. When Peter the Hermit led the first crusade, large hordes of men, European men, traveled over the face of Europe and came in contact with a number of different communities for the first time and saw a wide variety of cultures.

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happened take a com an object like an automobile the analytical method says if you want to understand it you must first take it apart so let's take it apart and here's a part called the carburetor and in order to understand

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And this aroused their curiosity about the nature of man, and there emerged a movement which you all studied at one time or another in school called a new humanism, a revival of some of the ancient Greek learning transmitted into Europe through the Arabs. Aristotle and Plato were recovered and studied.

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the valve before we can understand the carburetor the carburetor before we understand the automobile how do we understand the valve take it apart the First Fundamental question that was raised was if understanding comes about by taking things apart is there any end

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And as we became more interested in man, we became more interested in man's relationship to his environment, and a major transformation occurred. Curiosity, which had actually been declared a sin by the church during the medieval period—the desire to inquire was considered to be inappropriate for a religious person—became a virtue rather than a sin.

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you will only understand the universe when you understand the end now what's the end the end has to be an indivisible part or element and therefore the First Fundamental doctrine of this era was that everything in the universe reduces

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And so inquiry began, and out of that inquiry grew a new view of the world that was based on two fundamental legs. The first leg was the new optimism that developed as man reentered the world. By the way, that's why the period is called the Renaissance, which, as you know, literally means the rebirth of man.

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apart you will ultimately reach an indivisible particle of matter called a what Atom atomic theories a reductionist theory of nature everything in nature is made up of these little particles can you remember your first exposure to chemistry I can guarantee you that in

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It designates his re-entry into the object or real world from the spiritual and afterlife worlds. The entry brought with it two fundamental beliefs. First, that...

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living thing reduces to a single element of Life called the cell and so on in Psychology it was the atomic idea or the direct observation basic needs instincts and so on even out in linguistics there's the basic element of sound

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called the phoning science was a crusade in search of a Holy Grail that consisted of the element and for 400 years the preoccupation of science was in the identif ification and understanding of the behavior of the elements because we

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believe that in understanding them we could capture and possess the key to understanding the universe so reductionism was the first fundamental Doctrine now once we understood the elements the problem was to put them together into an understanding of the

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whole we had to understand how they relate now it's not surprising that in an age the believe that everything in the universe reduces the simple indivisible parts that we also believe that all relationships in the universe reduced to one simple

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relationship and that relationship was cause and effect we thought that this was sufficient to explain everything in the universe now cause and effect is such a common and widely used concept that we've forgotten what it means means uh

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we use it without thinking anymore well let me just remind you what it means suppose I strike this board so that you hear a noise you automatically assume that my striking the board caused a noise why well essentially you went through two

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inferences the first is if I had not struck the board you would not have heard that noise that is a cause is necessary for the effect secondly if I did strike the board you would have heard a noise that is the cause is sufficient

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for the effect so a cause is something which is both necessary and sufficient for its effect now our commitment to this concept led to a series of consequences three which provide the additional three doctrines on which the Machine Age view of the world was based

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the first is this if I want to understand something I will treat it as an effect and look for its cause because the cause is sufficient for the effect it gives me a complete explanation nothing else is required and therefore there is no need

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to refer to the environment to explain or understand anything we developed an environment free theory of explanation now that sounds almost incredible today but it's true and it's reflected in two things first if I were to ask you to

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write down the most familiar law of physics that you can recall from your high school or college education the law which is normally most frequently put down on paper uh some people can't remember its name but they'll say it was Galileo's

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law that he got from running the balls down the incline do you remember the name of that law the law of freely falling bodies some of the engineers in the group may even remember the law s is equal to 12

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GT2 the important thing about the law is the word freely and its title why was it called the law of freely falling bodies not the law of falling bodies do you know sure you do it was a body falling in a watt

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vacuum right what's a vacuum the absence of an environment all the fundamental laws of physics tell us what will happen in the absence of an environment not in the presence the universality of those laws does not derive from the fact that they

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apply in every environment but from the fact they don't apply in any they apply in an idealized condition in which there is no environment EX explanation was environment free now there's better evidence what we call a place the

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scientist does is research laboratory right what's a laboratory it's a place deliberately constructed by man to exclude the environment the entire purpose of a laboratory is to allow you to study the effect of one variable on another without the intervention of the

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environment because we believe that ultimately understanding in the universe involved understanding cause effect relationships without the intervention of the environment so environment free explanation was one immediate consequence second one I explain this effect when I identify its cause but now I have an unexplained

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cause I don't the world do I explain the cause well the answer is easy I'll treat the cause as an effect and look for its cause the trouble is I have another unexplained cause well I'll treat it as

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an effect and look for its cause question is there any end to the regression is there any way I will ultimately be able to understand everything now if you believe that the universe is capable being completely understood what must the answer to the

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question is there an end to the causal chain what must it be yes there must be and at the end is something called the first cause and we gave the first cause a name what do we call it

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God God was conceived of as the first cause hence the Creator something external to the world that was responsible for its creation our concept and view of God derives directly from our concept and use of the concept of cause and effect you'll see

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later how that's undergoing a transformation as our attitude towards C cause and effect changes the third consequence of cause and effect thinking was this to understand anything you must identify its cause must everything that occurs have a cause well if you believe that the

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universe is capable being completely understood what must the answer be yes therefore everything that happens is caused the cause determines the effect because it's sufficient for it and therefore the doctrine of determinism nothing happens by chance chance is simply a word for

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ignorance when we don't know what the cause of something is we say it happened by chance that doesn't mean it was uncaused it only means we don't know what the cause is and so the world was conceived of as

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one in which everything occurs in accordance with natural law therefore if we knew the elements of the universe and knew the laws that determine their behavior we would have complete understanding of the universe and that was the Newtonian

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dream now when you put all this together what did the world look like Newton told us he said the world is a machine now he did not say it was like a machine he said it is a machine furthermore he told us exactly

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what kind of a machine it is he said it is a hermetically sealed clock now a clock well it is you know it's the way we ultimately tell time it's a clock we tell time by the movement of

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the planets but it's hermetically sealed what does that mean no environment it is a self-contained entity not contain in anything else so it is a closed mechanism now if you believe that the world is a machine as we did for 400

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years it was not only a machine it was a machine created by God why to do God's work every Western religion regardless of other differences preached that we are here to serve God's will we are elements of the

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machine he created to serve his purposes the world is a machine to do the work of God now you put that together with a second belief which came from much older Source Genesis which says Man was created in

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the image of God now what's that mean that means that man believes that he resembles God more than anything else on Earth that's not surprising since man said it but we believed it now if you form a syllogism with two premises one is that

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the universe is a machine created by God to do God's work and the other is man is like God then what should man be doing creating machines to do his work and that was the origin of the Industrial

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Revolution it was man's effort to imitate God as he understood him and all the characteristics of the Industrial Revolution which we don't have time to go into here deriv directly out of this view of the world if you were to read one of the

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classic works of mechanization of work like Frederick Taylor's work you'll find the first chapter is called work analysis says if you want to mechanize work the first thing you have to do is break it up into work elements a work element is a task so

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simple it can only be done by one person at a time do you ever have two people try to tighten the same screw at the same time can't be done that's a work element the objective was to reduce work

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to its elements so that they could be mechanized more easily what does mechanization mean it means the use of an object to apply energy to matter so is the transform matter the atom was believed to have only two properties mass and energy and

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therefore work had to be defined in those terms those two properties the application of energy to matter so as to transform matter and mechanization was a substitution of machines for man's muscle to get work done of course we

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never completely mechanized anything and so we combine men and machine each of them doing Elementary tasks into the modern conception of a production line a production line is simply the organization the aggregation of work reduced to its elements the elements

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performed by men and machines and as you'll see later when a new way of thinking comes about a whole new concept of work will emerge as a natural consequence now I haven't told you a damn thing that you don't already know

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the only thing I hope I've done is organize things that you've known but probably haven't articulated when it comes to the changes which have begun to occur since World War II you may be much less familiar with it so I want to spend a little more

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time on that why does an age begin to end because it generates problems that cannot be solved within the concept of the world that prevails those types of problems are called dilemas a dilemma is a problem which you

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cannot solve without changing your view of the world let me just mention a few because they began to occur about the turn of the century and by World War II they were prolific all over the place the first one which

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occurred was the one that arose out of the concept of determinism formulated as early as the Renaissance by the French philosopher dayart I'm sorry move back okay if determinism holds in the universe then how in the world you explain Free

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Will how can Choice be explained this was the central problem of Western Philosophy for about 300 years philosophers struggled with this uh interminably and they only began to reach a consensus about 1900 about the turn of the century and the consensus

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that was ultimately reached filled volumes but fortunately there was one philosopher who had the unusual gift of brevity and Clarity who was able to State the fundamental doctrine that emerged in a few sentences he said there is no such thing

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as free will it's an illusion it's an illusion granted by a merciful god who realizes how dull our life would be if we didn't have it and then he went on to explain he said man is like a fly riding on a trunk of an

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elephant who thinks he's steering it he says the elephant doesn't mind and it makes the ride more interesting now what was the Dilemma we didn't believe it we simply did not believe that there wasn't free will but our view of the world said it couldn't

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exist an unresolvable problem a second one that rocked a scientific ific World emerged in the 1920s when a young German physicist verer Heisenberg proved a principle called the uncertainty principle the atom or the basic element of matter has only two properties mass

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and energy suppose we want to determine the mass and energy of a particular atom at a given moment of time what Heisenberg showed is that the more accurately you can determine the mass the less accurately you can determine the

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energy and conversely the more accurately you can determine the energy the less accurately you can determine the mass therefore you can know with certainty only one of the two properties of an atom and under those circumstances you will have complete ignorance of the

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other now that challenged a fundamental view of the Machine Age what was it that the Universe could be completely understood it said an effect that was was impossible there was an immediate response by America's leading philosopher John dwey who wrote a

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marvelous book called The Quest for certainty in which he responded by saying we must give up the concept that the universe is capable of being completely understood complete understanding is an ideal that we can continually approach but which in principle we can never

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attain and that was the first fundament Al change of a belief we converted from understandability as an attainable thing to something that is unattainable but approachable The Dilemma that ultimately broke the back of the Machine age uh began to emerge during World War II but

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reached widespread Consciousness in 1947 when Norbert Weiner's book called cybernetics appeared I was a graduate student at the time finishing up my work and I can remember the excitement in the University when that book appeared we knew that something very important was

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happening but we didn't know what and we really didn't have an answer till 1954 in 1954 another book appeared written by a German biologist who had migrated to Canada under Hitler and he wrote a book the content of which was not nearly as important as

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his title the man's name was ludvig Von Balan and the title of the book was General systems theory and the critical concept was system because it presented the ultimate Dilemma to the Machine age that broke its back now let me show you

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what that was and how it happened to understand what happened you have to understand what a system is now system is like cause and effect everybody talks about systems and like the weather you know everybody talks about it ain't doing anything about it

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and similarly with systems we don't understand what we're talking about so let's take a close look a system is a set of two or more elements that satisfies three conditions two or more elements I'm going to use a little short

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H here now before I discuss the three conditions observe that this already tells tell you something about a system it tells you what it isn't what isn't it it's not an indivisible part it's divisible the first condition each

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element in the system can affect the behavior of the hole can affect the behavior of the hole now consider yourself you're a biological system called an organism your heart affects your performance hormons your lungs your stomach your pancreas your brain your liver each part

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can affect the behavior of the whole well not quite there is one part of the human body that nobody's ever been able to find a use for what's it called appendix what does the word appendix mean added on or attached to it is not a

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part of is that beautiful if the medical Sciences ever find a use for the appendix I have to change its name because then it will no longer be appendant it'll be a part of okay second condition the way each element affects the

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hole depends on what at least one other element is doing I'll just put this briefly depends on other elements one or more let me State this differently no element has an independent effect on the whole the effect that it has depends on

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what other elements are doing or put another way the elements are all connected now come back to the human body it says the way the heart will affect your performance depends on what the lungs are doing we all know that if

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the lungs stop operating effectively so will the heart if you damage the brain it will affect all kinds of other pieces of you the parts are in inter connected no part has an independent effect on the whole the third and most interesting

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requirement for a system is that if you take the elements and line them up in any way at all it doesn't make any difference how you do them and then we form subgroups of them in any way at all

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doesn't matter how you form these groups of elements each group of element will have these two properties each group of elements will have an effect on the behavior of the hole and no group of elements will have an independent effect on the

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whole so if you form elements called a metabolic system another one called a nervous system another one called the motor system and so on these subsystems these groups of elements each have an effect on the behavior of the body but

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none of them have an independent effect they interact okay therefore we can summarize this in a simple statement that a system is a whole which cannot be divided into independent parts now what's so startling about that well we have to go a little deeper to

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see why there are two critical properties of a system first every system has essential properties there're the properties which Define the system allow you to recognize it for example an automobile is a system it's a mechanical system how do you know

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when it's an automobile well the answer is simple when it takes you from one place to another the essential property of an automobiles that can carry you from one place to another I came in this morning and looked around and decided that you

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people are human beings I may have been an error but I I suspect not why well I saw you doing things which are characteristically human you were talking you were drinking coffee reading writing those are all essentially human

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activities now the essential properties of a system are properties of the whole which none of its parts have for example what's the essential property of an automobile it will carry you from one place to another name me a

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part of an automobile which can do that no a wheel won't take you from one place to another the engine certainly won't take the engine out and put it in the floor won't even take itself anywhere you can write your hand

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can't it's easy enough to prove remove it from your arm and put it on a table and it'll just lay there you can read your eye can't the eye removed from the head can't do a damn thing can't even see the brain

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removed from the head can't think these are properties of the whole not of the parts and therefore when a system is taken apart it always loses its essential properties that's the first critical thing if I bring an automobile

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into this room and take it apart the one thing you can be sure of is it won't take me anywhere second critical characteristic of a system when I take a part of a system out of the system of which it's a

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part the part loses all of its essential properties what's the essential property of an engine of an automobile it's the mode of power which moves the car right but if it take the engine out of the car it can't move

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anything essential property of the hand it can hold things it can point it can gesture but removed from the arm it can't do any of those things the essential property of the eyes is an instrument of vision but removed from

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the head it doesn't see anything and so on so the two critical aspects of a system which we began to recognize in 1954 as a result of the focus on systems was that the essential properties of a system or properties of

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the whole which are lost when the system is taken apart right secondly the essential properties of the parts are lost when the part is separated from the system of which it is a part now I can show you the ultimate

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dilemma of the Machine Age here's a system that we want to understand and remember it was during World War II that the concept of system emerged because we began to build them here's the system we want to understand

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now the Machine Age says the way you understand the system is to analyze it that's the only way we had of understanding anything analysis and thought were synonymous words if one person said I had a problem and analyzed

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it and somebody else said I had a problem and thought about it what's a difference even today you'd have a lot of trouble identifying a difference all right what's the first step of analysis what do we do to the

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system take it apart but what happens when you take system apart you lose all of its essential properties second step of analysis said un try to understand the behavior of the parts taken separately what happens when you take a

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part of a system separately you lose all of its essential property so in the mid 1950s we became aware of the fact that a system could not be understood by analysis and that was the Dilemma that broke the back of the Machine Age the

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importance of systems was growing tremendously we wanted to understand them and we couldn't by the only method of thought available to us and so the latter part of the 50s we saw the development of a new way of thinking to

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complement analysis not surprisingly that method is is called synthetic thinking it is the absolute opposite of the analytical process let me remind you now analysis is three steps first take it apart secondly understand the parts and then thirdly aggregate the understanding of

Speaker A

the parts into an understanding of the whole all right first step take it apart what's exactly the opposite of that put it together all right that means if this is a system system that we want to understand instead of looking at

Speaker A

it as a whole which is to be taken apart we will look at it as a part to be put into a hole therefore the first step of synthetic system is a synthetic thinking is to identify a whole of which the

Speaker A

system that you're trying to explain is a part A containing hole second step of analysis was to try to explain the behavior of the part of the system taken separately what's the opposite of that explain the behavior of the

Speaker A

containing ho third step of analysis is aggregate the understanding of the parts into an understanding of the whole third step of synthesis is disaggregate the under understanding of the whole into an understanding of the part just absolutely the reverse right

Speaker A

down the line now that's very abstract in general so let's take a specific case so you can see the difference between them let's take a familiar object a university somebody comes along and wants to know what a university is they

Speaker A

haven't seen one maybe they're from the aberin tribe in uh New Guinea you say well the university is a system which consists of Parts the major parts are called colleges now we all recognize that a college isn't indivisible so we continue

Speaker A

we say now a college is a unit of a university that breaks up in the smaller units called departments now we recognize that a department can be further divided we say A Part a department has three components to it faculty students and subject

Speaker A

matter and they're the elements of a university we're down the Rock Bottom now now you explain to them what a faculty member does and is and that's very difficult to do it's perhaps even harder to explain a student and then finally subject matter

Speaker A

now you can put the three together to get a department a department is an aggregation a faculty who presumably know a subject matter trying to communicate that knowledge to students who presumably don't know it that's all a myth but that's the way it goes and

Speaker A

now you have the concept of a department then you say you put departments together to produce people that are capable of a certain kind of professional activity that creates a college and so on up the line now what that process does analysis

Speaker A

of a university is reveal how it works it reveals its structure it does not tell you why it works the way it does it can't absolutely can for example the automobile as it developed in the United States was a six passenger

Speaker A

vehicle we all know that it's been changing recently we all know that why was it a six passenger vehicle in the beginning and why is it changing now I defy you to answer that question by taking automobiles apart

Speaker A

conceivable way why does the British car have the steering wheel on the right and ours on the left you try taking them apart to find the answer to that you can't the answer to a y question never lies inside the thing but it lies in its

Speaker A

relationship to something that contains it why was an automobile a six passenger vehicle because the average size of the American family was 5.6 and they designed the car to take the average American family why is it getting smaller the average size your American

Speaker A

family is now 3.2 four passengers will do it and so on the explanation always lies outside if we take a university now and say it's a part of the educational system first step of synthetic thinking then say what the purpose of the

Speaker A

educational system is is to transmit a traditional knowledge and understanding and information and to create new ones and to create a capacity to generate more and so on you said say what its activity is you explain it and then what

Speaker A

is a university you explain the university by identifying its role or function in the larger system of which it's a part you explain the six passenger vehicle by showing what it did it carried the average American family it

Speaker A

had nothing to do with its structure therefore what we learned in the 50s is that what analysis yields is knowledge not understanding to get understanding we must use synthetic thinking now that does not negate the value of analysis science doesn't

Speaker A

progress that way it always Builds on top of the old it says we must combine analysis and synthesis to both know and understand our environment and the combination of those two came to be called systems thinking and it's for that reason that I

Speaker A

will refer to the emerging age as the systems age now what happens in here well let's just take a look we've already seen that you give up the concept of complete understandability this becomes an ideal which we can approach but never

Speaker A

obtain analysis is supplemented by synthesis to produce systems thinking now what happens here to know something you have to reduce it to its elements to understand something you have to expand it to the larger system right to understand the

Speaker A

university I have to understand the function I have to understand education well how do I understand education I'm going to have to put it in a big system Society what's the role of Education in society how am I going to understand

Speaker A

Society there I am off again just in the other direction same question is there any end to the process of expansion now this is your midterm exam that question the basis of what I've told you what must the answer to

Speaker A

that question be is there a single hole which contains everything yes you're wrong anybody got a different answer somebody said no h you're wrong and you have to understand why you're both wrong if the universe cannot be understood in

Speaker A

principle and if there is an ultimate Hall that contains everything what can we say about it we will never know it you can never know it because then you would understand the universe if there isn't you will never be able to

Speaker A

prove it therefore that becomes a meaningless question in this view of the world scientifically meaningless doesn't mean it's psychologically meaningless a lot of people are very uncomfortable with a concept that's called the expanding Universe a universe that has

Speaker A

no limits they feel much more comfortable psychologic Al by assuming there is a single hole that contains everything it's perfectly okay if you want to believe that you can nobody can ever disprove it nor can you prove it so

Speaker A

it's a belief which you can entertain and a lot of people do the first generation born in the system his age the so-called Baby Boom kids that came out after World War II were beginning to absorb systems thinking as a part of their growing

Speaker A

up and they began to grope for an ID of this all containing hole and they gave it a name you know what they called it they called it God but it was a very different God it's not God the Creator anymore

Speaker A

it's God the whole see look at yourself for a moment are you the creator of your stomach of course not that's a ridiculous thing you are your stomach plus your heart plus your brains and so on you didn't create them

Speaker A

you're not external to them you are their summation this was a concept of God not as a Creator something external to the universe that created it but God as the universe not our creator but the whole of which we are a

Speaker A

part in the early 1960s I was visiting the University of California at Berkeley and I was having lunch one day with the head of the bookstore during the course of the lunch he turned to me and he said what do you

Speaker A

think is the largest selling book at the University of California bookstore system he said the Bible he said no no no not even near it I said Randon MC's Maps he said no I made a couple of other

Speaker A

guesses no all wrong then he named a book I had never heard of he said the iching you know what the iching is book on Zen Buddhism how come because the Eastern religions are precisely religious in which God is

Speaker A

conceived of as the ultimate whole that contains everything else it's a nistic concept of religion and the kids began to discover it because that concept of God was compatible with the systemic view of the world it wasn't accidental that we had a tremendous

Speaker A

development of interest in Eastern religions at this time this didn't mean that the East was in the systems age they weren't because they never had science but they had the system concept we had science and didn't have the

Speaker A

system concept and we're in the beginning in an era where the East and the West are coming together because we're increasingly absorbing the concepts of systems which are old in the East and they are increasingly absorbing the concepts of science which are old in

Speaker A

the west and so the Twain have begun to meet it's not accidental the conversation between China and the United States has become only really effective in the last couple of years so what we have now is an open-ended or

Speaker A

a closed universe but that's a matter of choice it's not a matter of compulsion now what happened to cause and effect that's a marvelous story that I wish there was time to go into in uh detail see I got to check my schedule

Speaker A

here let me try to sketch it for you it was a young man who graduated from Harvard in 1896 he was a very odd guy had his undergraduate degree in civil engineering his master's degree in Psychology and his Doctorate in

Speaker A

philosophy you can tell he's a nut his first job was as an instructor in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and two years later in 1898 he wrote the most profoundly radical argu article on science of the last

Speaker A

century what he revealed is during the entire Machine Age science had been cheating now what did he do he said consider an acorn and an oak tree here's an acorn and here's an oak he says is the acorn the cause of an

Speaker A

oak tree obviously it is not why not well remember the two conditions of a cause first an acorn is clearly necessary you cannot get an oak tree without an acorn but it is not sufficient how do you know that well if

Speaker A

I take an acorn and I throw it into the ocean I don't get an oak tree or I put it in the arctic ice cap or a desert I won't get an oak tree it is not sufficient therefore the relationship

Speaker A

here is necessary but not sufficient now this was not a discovery of this young man whose name was Edgar Arthur Singer that was not his Discovery that's been known for a long time how did science handle this it called this

Speaker A

relationship probabilistic causality or nondeterministic causality one of those two terms were used now that's what singer said was cheating why because there can't be any such thing as probabilistic causality if a cause is by definition necessary and sufficient then what's the probability

Speaker A

of the effect if the cause occurs one and can't be anything else there's no meaning to probability of a cause determinism is a consequence of causality of the meaning of causality it's a contradiction to have nondeterministic causality he said this is a

Speaker A

fundamentally different relationship it is not causing effect and he gave it a new name he said this is producer product and then he went on for the rest of his life exploring the consequences of this and again we don't have the time

Speaker A

to go through it here but let me just try through the use of a metaphor to give you a feeling of what he did how many of you have ever traveled abroad and came across a fruit or a

Speaker A

vegetable you never saw before okay I've just gotten the signal that it's time to stop so let's have a brief stretch

Topics:Russell AckoffU.S. Navy trainingorganizational learningparticipative managementinformation vs knowledge vs understandingsocietal changehistorical erasWeltanschauungFuture Shockorganizational climate

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Russell Ackoff and what is his role in this video?

Russell Ackoff is a professor from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, known for his work in research, consulting, and education. In this video, he leads a U.S. Navy training session on thinking, understanding, and learning.

What is the difference between information, knowledge, and understanding according to Ackoff?

Information answers questions like who, what, where, and when; knowledge answers how questions and is contained in instructions; understanding answers why questions and is conveyed through explanations, making it the most valuable and difficult to transmit.

Why does Ackoff emphasize understanding over information in education?

Ackoff points out that education spends about 90% of time on information, 9% on knowledge, and only 1% on understanding, yet understanding is crucial for coping with change and making meaningful decisions, which is why he proposes reversing the traditional educational approach.

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