Russell L. Ackoff

Tags for Russell L. Ackoff

Books

The Democratic Corporation: A Radical Prescription for Recreating Corporate America and Rediscovering Success

Re-Creating the Corporation:

Creating the Corporate Future:
Presents a participative systems approach to interactive planning. Describes how to formulate the system of problems and opportunities that face a corporation.

Ackoff's Best: Timeless Observations on the Life of Business
From managing teams, maximizing the effectiveness of information systems, and problem solving, to creativity, crime, and the role of the corporation in a democratic society, these writings are a cornucopia of insights, observations, and powerful lessons that will help you improve the effectiveness of your organization.

The Art of Problem Solving Accompanied by Ackoff's Fables:
Shows how to develop an understanding of the art of creative thinking and design creative solutions. Based on real problems faced by real managers.

Beating the System: Using Creativity to Outsmart Bureaucracies
"Coauthors Russell Ackoff and Sheldon Rovin have spent their lives studying how organizational systems work, and here they share both perversely entertaining anecdotes about the abuse of individuals by a variety of bureaucracies, and descriptions of

Idealized Design: How to Dissolve Tomorrow's Crisis...Today
Envision your ideal solution: then, work backwards to where you are. Start-to-finish techniques and examples drawn from hundreds of companies, non-profits, and government organizations will show you how to use idealized design.

Systems Thinking for Curious Managers: with 40 New Management f-Laws
Finished just before Professor Ackoff's death late in 2009, Systems Thinking for Curious Managers opens the door to a joined up way of thinking about things that has profoundly influenced thinkers and doers in the fields of business, politics, economics, biology, psychology. Although Systems Thinking was 'invented' early in the 20th century, even Peter Senge's best-selling "The Fifth Discipline" (Systems Thinking is the fifth discipline) failed to popularize the term. But now, in business and academia, in the public sector and in the search for solutions to the environmental problems we face, Systems Thinking is being talked about everywhere. This timely book presents 40 more of Russ Ackoff's famously witty and incisive f-Laws (or flaws) of business - following on from his 2007 collection "Management f-Laws". All those in this collection are new and previously unpublished. Andrew Carey's extended introduction ties these f-Laws into the rest of Ackoff's work and gives the reader new to Systems Thinking a practical guide to the implications of Systems Thinking for organisations and managers.

Management f-Laws: How Organizations Really Work
A full collection of more than 80 of Russell Ackoff's management f-laws: the uncomfortable truths about how organizations really work, what's wrong with the way we design and manage businesses, what makes managers tick... and how we can make things work better.

Articles

Design and Planning in Organizations view details
A great introduction to the Spring 1996 Center for Quality of Management Journal on this topic.

Management Gurus and Educators view details

An Idealized Design of the U.S. Healthcare System view details
"A consortium consisting of representative stakeholders in the National Healthcare (so-called) System has produced a "true" redesign of that system."

A Day with Dr. Russel L. Ackoff view details
web link broken :-(
Video of presentation to the Chicago-Kent College of Law.
"Among the topics Dr. Ackoff discussed during the workshop were:
- The history and application of systems thinking
- How do social systems allow us to understand and overcome long term problems in today's environment?
- How can you effect change within the system in which you play a role?"

A Brief Guide to Interactive Planning and Idealized Design view details
"Interactive planning is directed at creating the future. It is based on the belief that an organization's future depends at least as much on what it does between now and then, as on what is done to it. Therefore, this type of planning consists of the design of a desirable present and the selection or invention of ways of approximating it as closely as possible. It creates its future by continuously closing the gap between where it is at any moment of time and where it would most like to be."

The Future of Operational Research is Past view details
"I hold academic OR and the relevant professional societies primarily responsible for this decline-and since I had a hand in initiating both, I share this responsibility. By the mid 1960's most OR courses in American universities were given by academics w

Resurrecting the Future of Operational Research view details
"In a previous paper I tried to show that OR is in a mess. There is no one solution to a mess. What is needed are designs and inventions that will enable Operational Researchers to formulate their ideals explicitly, pursue them effectively and do so in a

A Systemic View of Transformational Leadership view details
"Therefore, a transformational leader is one who can produce, or encourage and facilitate the production of, a mobilizing vision of a transformed system. Equally important, the leader must be able to inspire and organize or have organized an effective pursuit of that vision and maintain it even when sacrifices are required."

Transforming The Systems Movement view details
"Systems thinking produces radical and potentially revolutionary visions of public institutions. Nothing short of such visions can transform the state of world affairs. I believe we have an obligation to the global society of which we are a part to make

From Mechanistic to Social Systemic Thinking view details
An excellent article based on his presentation to the Systems Thinking in Action Conference.

All articles by Russell L. Ackoff

Author Quotes

It is far better to do the right thing wrong than to do the wrong thing right.

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If there isn't joy in work, you won't get productivity, and you won't get quality.

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Invterview of Dr. Deming and Dr. Ackoff
Managers who don't know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure.

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Management f-Laws
The end of one problem may be the beginning of another.

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The Art of Problem Solving
The basic managerial idea introduced by systems thinking, is that to manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately.

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On Purposeful Systems
Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.

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0471002968
Errors of omission, lost opportunities, are generally more critical than errors of commission. Organizations fail or decline more frequently because of what they did not do than because of what they did.

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A Major Mistake That Managers Make
The basic managerial idea introduced by systems thinking, is that to manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately.

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A system is more than the sum of its parts; it is an indivisible whole. It loses its essential properties when it is taken apart. The elements of a system may themselves be systems, and every system may be part of a larger system.

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We have also come to realize that no problem ever exists in complete isolation. Every problem interacts with every other problem and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems. Furthermore, solutions to most problems produce other problems; for example, buying a car may solve a transportation problem but it may also create a need for a garage, a financial problem, a maintenance problem, and conflict among family members for its use.

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Redesigning the Future