System thinking

[David_10]

How effective has been system thinking in HP. What problems does HP have in implemnting this new system.

[Anthony Goonetilleke]

What exactly do you mean by "system Thinking"?
Do you mean implementing new HPUX systems?
Are you talking about Superdome?
Are you talking about DRP?
or do you just want to be the first person who posted a message to this new forum :-)
and maybe I just wanted to be the first person who answered :-))

[Joseph T. Wyckoff]

I did a search on the web for system thinking, and came up with a few hits...

It looks like this intends to be a holistic view of complete systems - not just hardware, but the people around them, the problems they need to solve, and so forth.

In other words, a focus on what problem is to be solved - not technically, but in the grand scheme of things, and what new problems a change will introduce.

NOT what is the technical issue today, rather, what are your goals for the week...

I know of a few people that I have run across with some formal training along these lines, the view from 5 feet, 500 feet, 5.000 feet, and so forth. As you get further away the details change, and some things that seemed tremendously important at 5 feet are irrelevant higher up.

The web hits also included references to TQM, total quality management, which encompasses the idea that we want to maximize or manage the customer experience, and therefore maximize profit...and that any of the components can be critical, therefore the system must be viewed as a whole, etc...

I have at least one peer who is very cynical about TQM - not about the goals, but the realities. In his experience, TQM meant more meetings, and change for the sake of change. And more slogans, including the slogan, 'no more slogans.' Yet another corporate fad of the month.

I am a bit more optimistic. I do see many of these things being attempted within HP.

FOTM's, (fad of the month's) seem to work best (not suprisingly) when there is a champion commited to the fad... I mean committed in an ethical, moral, PERSONAL sense (I MUST improve quality!) The problem I see is that these champions are isolated - perhaps they have influence within their own organisation, but elsewhere within the firm there is a different champion with a similar goal and methodology (different fad) - but dis-similar enough that communication doesn't happen or that goals conflict.

Perhaps the goal in one department is quality, in another is cost. These need not be utterly conflicting...but price and cost are different, and TQM intends to manage cost, not price...

Anyway, I have hope, and I see efforts within HP.

I must add that I am relatively new to HP (3 years) and that I have not worked for a fortune 1000 company prior to working in HP.

[Dwight Stewart]

System thinking is indeed the concept of including hardware, software, networking, and storage as parts of a whole, both from a Sales and from a Support perspective. If I recall correctly, this idea has been around a while.

In answer to your question regarding how hard it is to implement, in my opinion, HP only became successful in this area when the organization structure and rewards structures changed sufficiently to support the mindset. Hence, we now are making progress because we have the hardware and software support organizations merged, and we have all of HP Enterprise Sales and Support under one executive - Ann Livermore.

Beyond "Systems Thinking", what you will hear from HP these days, from Carly all the way down to the local sales rep is "TCE" or "Total Customer Experience".
Here the idea is not just to break down the silos between hardware and software, but to integrate all the parts of HP which interact with a customer (like ordering, installing, HP consulting engagements, HP Education) and having them work together to provide a single, world-class experience for the customer. I can't say it as well as Carly, so I'd recommend checking out some of her recent speeches on www.hp.com and especially any presentations from HPWorld which make it to the web.

[Ravi Sodhi]

I enjoy this subject area a lot and have dabbled in it minimally to develop some system thinking maps using causal loops. The nice thing of using systems thinking is the insights and realizations you arrive at about greater degress of connectedness of problem at hand to other areas, people, organizations etc. A metaphor I remember (Peter Senge??) is that the problem you address, the first solution you jump to might not be the right one! All you saw and reacted to was the top or visible part of the iceberg. The bulk of the iceberg (70-85%) is hidden below the surface. It is through brainstorming and root cause analyis, and asking more questions that you can start to diagram a systems map that shows causes, effects and linkages. This then allows you to focus on placement and position of your very targted solution!