I have been revisiting Churchman’s writings on Systems Thinking recently. In today’s post, I am looking at his book, The Systems Approach. It is a wonderful book that examines the systems approach from multiple viewpoints and walks the reader through Churchman’s thinking on the subject. Churchman was heavily inspired by philosophy and was considered to be a pragmatist. This shows up in his writings.

He notes that:

Systems are made up of sets of components that work together for the overall objective of the whole. The systems approach is simply a way of thinking about these total systems and their components.

He notes that there are several systems approaches. He considered four such advocates to these approaches.

1. The advocates of efficiency – they claim that the best approach to a system is to identify the trouble spots, and especially the places where there is waste, e.g., unnecessarily high costs, and then proceed to remove the inefficiency.
2. The advocates of the use of science in approaching a system – they claim that there is an objective way to look at a system and to build a “model” of the system that describes how it works. The science that is used is sometimes mathematics, sometime economics, sometimes “behavioral”.
3.  The advocates of the use of human feelings, i.e., the humanists – they claim that systems are people, and the fundamental approach to systems consists of first looking at the human values; freedom, dignity, privacy. Above all, they say the systems approach should avoid imposing plans, i.e., intervention of any kind.
4. The anti-planners – who believe that any attempt to lay out specific and “rational” plans is either foolish or dangerous or downright evil. The correct “approach” to systems is to live in them, to reach in terms of one’s experience, and not to try to change them by means of some grandiose scheme or mathematical model. Most of them believe that experience and cleverness are hallmarks of good management.

In the following chapters, Churchman discusses the problems with these approaches.

In one of the chapters, Churchman utilizes the age-old story of the group of blind men and an elephant to slowly poke holes in the idea of systems thinking itself. He noted:

There is a story often told in logic texts about a group of blind mean who are assigned the task of describing an elephant. Because each blind man was located at a different part of the body, a horrendous argument arose in which each claimed to have a completed understanding of the total elephantine system.

What is interesting about this story is not so much the fate of the blind men but the magnificent role that the teller had given himself – namely, the ability to see the whole elephant and consequently observe the ridiculous behaviors of the blind systems describers. The story is in fact a piece of arrogance. It assumes that a very logically astute wise man can always get on top of a situation, so to speak, and look at the foolishness of people who are incapable of seeing the whole.

 Churchman challenges the whole notion of what is meant by a system, and what is considered to be its parts, environment, and objectives. He challenges the notion of how we claim to measure the performance of a system. One example he gives is that of a medical laboratory that tests specimens which doctors send in. He asks – what is the objective of the laboratory? He states that the obvious answer might be to make the test results as accurate as possible. Then he points out that the test results being accurate may not actually improve the accuracy of the doctor’s diagnosis. Another example he gives is that of a student trying to achieve the highest grade possible in a course as if the measure of that system’s performance is the grade achieved. He points out that their stated purpose is to learn, but their real measure of performance is the grade.

Churchman also challenges the notion of environment for a system. The environment of the system is what lies “outside” of the system. This also is no easy matter to determine. When we look at an automobile we can make a first stab at estimating what’s inside the automobile and what’s outside of it. We feel like saying what lies beyond the paint job is the environment of the automobile. But is this correct? Is it correct to say, for example, that what lies beyond the paint job of a factory is necessarily outside of the factory as a system? The factory may have agents in all parts of the country who are purchasing raw materials or selling its products. These are surely “part” of the total system of the factory, and yet they are not usually within its walls. In a more subtle case, the managers of the factor may belong to various political organizations through which they are capable of exerting various kinds of political pressures. Their political activities in this case certainly “belong” to the system, although again they hardly take place within the “shell” of the system. And, returning to the automobile and considering what it is used for, we can doubt whether its paint is the real boundary of its system.

In the book, Churchman wisely notes that we are deceived by our ideas of the system. We come to believe that what we perceive is the reality and get deceived by our model of the system. But these models seldom capture the basic human values. These models also deceive us by hiding our own inability to truly understand all the aspects of what we call a system, and the complexity of its internal politics. At the same time, Churchman also remarks that each of these solutions may also make improvements. He notes:

And yet when one looks at the solution and sees its wrongness, one is also deceived, because, in searching for the wrongness, one misses the progressive aspect of the solution. We have to say that the advocate of the solution both deceives and perceives. We have to say that the solution is ridiculous and serious. We have to maintain the contradiction or else we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the consistent.

The ultimate meaning of the systems approach, therefore, lies in the creation of a theory of deception and in a fuller understanding of the ways in which the human being can be deceived about his world and in an interaction between these different viewpoints… What is in the nature of systems is a continuing perception and deception, a continuing re-viewing of the world, of the whole system, and of its components. The essence of the systems approach, therefore, is confusion as well as enlightenment.

With this, Churchman parts us with his four principles for his systems approach:

1. The systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another.
2. The systems approach goes on to discovering that every world view is terribly restricted.
3. There are no experts in the systems approach.
4. The systems approach is not a bad idea.

Churchman is asking us to welcome multiple perspectives. Our notion of the system is provisional. So is everyone else’s. It is based on our worldviews and value systems. When we blame the system, we engage in a fictional undertaking. What we call a system is entirely our creation and is very limited. Every system is based on a terribly restricted worldview. There are no experts who can see the whole and “fix” the system. There is no whole system since every system is embedded in an even larger system. Even with all this, the systems approach is not a bad idea. We need to utilize empathy and perspective-taking when it comes to the systems approach. We need to have epistemic humility by understanding that our viewpoints are limited. Churchman’s ideas promote a humble, inclusive, and multifaceted approach to understanding and addressing complex problems. He wanted ethics to be an important part of systems approach.

Always keep on learning.