Ackoff's Best
Book

Ackoff's Best

His Classic Writings on Management

Russell L. Ackoff
Wiley, 1999
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

This book collects provocative, insightful essays by Russell L. Ackoff, architect turned city planner turned behavioral scientist turned professor. True to his convictions about systems thinking, his pieces form a coherent whole. Like a successful system, the whole of this book is greater than the sum of its parts. And what parts: the roots of systems thinking; a properly irreverent approach to bureaucracy; the role of planning; a standard for mission statements; effective advertising advice. Ackoff is a voice in the wilderness as he fondly remembers his bureaucracy-bucking, folly-filled, smart-as-heck past. Although this book tends to veer toward the academic, managers and students of management will find it useful. getAbstract recommends it to anyone seeking insight on creativity, education, and science. Tear into this book a little at a time; you won’t be disappointed.

Summary

The Systems Age

If you’re going to be in business, you should know a thing or two about systems - after all, the coming decades belong to them. A system is anything that consists of more than one element. Each element affects the whole of which it is a part. To visualize this, think of the human body. If something goes wrong with the heart, the rest of the body is in trouble. The same holds true for the lungs, the stomach, etc.

But these elements do not act alone. They act according to each other. They are interdependent. Again, to return to the body: The heart acts a certain way because the brain works a certain way because the lungs act a certain way, and so on.

In systems, elements cannot form subgroups. The elements are all too interconnected, too tied into each other’s activities. If an element deserts a system, it loses something. No matter how hard a heart beats on its own, it ain’t a human. At the same time, oddly enough, every system contains certain potential that none of its parts contain.

Systems don’t add up. Their whole is somehow greater than its parts because, in systems, interaction is king. If you dismantle a system, you lose its essential...

About the Author

Russell L. Ackoff , Ph.D, founded and chaired INTERACT, a Philadelphia-based educational consulting firm. He has been the Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, since 1986. He has written many articles and books, including Management in Small Doses and The Art of Problem Solving.

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