Is our fishbowl too big?

Imagine you are in a fishbowl. Imagine that you can see all around it, so you're completely aware of what's going on inside it. If you saw other fish causing havoc to the fishbowl environment so that the water is getting polluted and that the bowl has sprung a leak, would you ignore that? "Gosh, the water is running out and if I/we don't stop it draining the bowl, soon we'll have no water left!" If that was your reality, would you act?

If people want to do a good job, why don't they?

You often see it written or hear it said that people don't want to do a bad job at work. They may not love their job ("it's a means to an end") and they may not be workaholics ("I work the hours I'm paid"), but nevertheless while they are at work they don't want to do a bad job because it's demoralising and not good for self-esteem.

Viable Systems Modelling for Project Management part 8

In this series so far we have looked at each of Stafford Beers 5 Systems within the Viable Systems Model, relating them to project management, and also how the model is recursive so that the 5 systems are repeated at both lower and higher levels. I promised a round-up final post that proposed a VSM check-list for project management. That was over a year ago - how time flies! But I have got there eventually.

Viable Systems Modelling for Project Management part 7

If you have followed this series so far you’ll know that we have looked at each of Stafford Beers 5 Systems within the Viable Systems Model, relating them to project management. What more is there? Well Beer’s model is recursive, or fractal, and this is what this article covers.

Viable Systems Modelling for Project Management part 6

We have finally reached System 5 in our survey of the Viable Systems Model and how it applies to project management. As noted in the previous article, System 5 is responsible for top-level decisions.

Viable Systems Modelling for Project Management part 5

You can divide project management into three very broad areas of activity: governance, management and work stream activity. If you’ve followed this series on VSM so far you’ll hopefully realise that System 1 (operations) maps on to work stream activity, and Systems 2 and 3 map on to management. So it doesn’t take a genius to realise that governance maps on to Systems 4 and 5.

Flow and bottleneck game

This game simulates the flow of items between workstations and can be used to demonstrate a number of Lean flow and variation principles. The basic set-up is to have a number of “workstations” (these could also represent teams or single workers) in a chain. Items are added to one end of the chain and output at the other. Each workstation uses dice to decide how many items are processed (the throwing of the dice simulating random variation within the limits of 1 - 6). The number of outputs is recorded over a number of cycles.

Viable Systems Modelling for Project Management part 4

In Stafford Beer's VSM systems, Systems 1 and 2 are concerned with the operations of the system (see previous posts). However in any system there is the need to intervene if the operations are potentially in conflict (which can cause oscillation) or not doing what the system needs in a changed environment. This is where the higher-level systems, 3, 4 and 5, come in, and this article deals with System 3.

Viable Systems Modelling for Project Management part 3

My last post explained how the first of Stafford Beer’s VSM systems, System 1, can be applied to project management. Now we continue with looking at System 2. For a reminder of the whole VSM model see my overview post.

Viable Systems Modelling for Project Management part 2

In my previous post I introduced Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model (VSM) and how project management can fit in with it. In this part we’ll be looking at the first of his five systems: System 1 – Operational Units.