Systems Thinking For Effective Managers

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

About the Author Prashun Dutta, a veteran with over three and a half decades of work experience initially as a management consultant with the National Productivity Council and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and later as a senior executive at Reliance group of companies, has a heady mix of management consulting and industrial engagement under his belt. A postgraduate in industrial engineering and a Fellow (equivalent to PhD) of the IIM Calcutta, he has worked in the areas of strategy, structure, and systems for an array of businesses and governmental organizations. As a senior executive with Reliance Industries, Prashun started with managing the business analysis function for the Polyester Fibre Group and went on to assume the role of chief information officer (CIO) at Reliance Infrastructure. Subsequently, he became the CIO at Tata Power from where he superannuated in 2015. Now attached to Gaia Smart Cities, a startup company in the smart cities, and Internet of Things (IoT) space as Advisor, Prashun is applying his systems thinking approach anew.

The diverse experience is posited on a polymath personality. with wide-ranging interests from history through quantum physics to tennis and music. Acquaintance with such apparently disparate areas allows Prashun the appreciation of subtle commonalities and interlinkages that exist between them. The consequent "big picture" that emerges, feeds the passion for systems thinking and Prashun has an abundance of it. This book is a direct outcome of this intrinsic fountain.

Like most articulate/eloquent individuals, he delivers talks on a variety of topics and has written extensively in several magazines and journals. A recipient of several awards both for his work and as a thought leader, he now lives in Mumbai with his wife and two sons.

Preface It all started in the January of 1990, when I received an invitation to attend a "workshop on systems thinking," to be conducted by the systems group of the consulting firm I worked for. Meeting up with friends in the beautiful weather of the host city was a motivator and I consented willingly. During the sessions spread over three days, I garnered an indistinct idea of systems and a tepid curiosity to investigate further. Subsequently, I got assigned to a consulting project taken up by the systems group and that presented me with the opportunity to delve deeper into its intricacies. The next six months were both busy and educative as 1, amidst the consulting assignment, was attempting to unravel systems concepts.

This learning turned out to be particularly revealing, though, in retrospect, I realize I had just begun the journey. The concept of an interconnected world of holism, integration, and assimilation was both thrilling and inspirational. Quite suddenly, John Donne's No Man Is an Island or Blake's To see a World in a Grain of Sand started making more sense. I glimpsed what Tagore felt when he remarked about the "eternal wonder of unity." Looking around, the concept of "quantum entanglement" or the lessons of the Upanishads were no longer confined to a cerebral discussion of intellectuals, but grounded in the reality we commoners encounter. Of course, historians, economists, and sociologists have often viewed their subject as a whole and extracted lessons therefrom. I deduced that Arnold Toynbee, Romila Thapar, Adam Smith, Niklas Luhmann, and several others who have written and spoken about integrated collectives and systems have furnished a basis for holistic thinking.

While learning was enjoyable, practicing this in consulting assignments was gratifying. I felt much more confident in taking on large projects and their outcomes were very encouraging Shifting from consulting to an executive position gave me further scope to apply this acquired knowledge. Learning, of course, continued unabated as I read more and tried out those concepts in my functioning. With growing responsibilities, systems approach was the guiding star in their execution, often with favorable results-appreciation far outweighed criticism. I also discovered that several managers, and all visionaries, were intuitively system- ic in their thinking. Even amongst my peers I noted that some had adopted many of the aspects of systems thinking without being familiar with the nomenclature. Without any formal training, they had realized the importance of such an approach from their years of experience.

Foreword For several months last year, commuters in Gurgaon suffered from an unusual bottleneck A new flyover to speed up the traffic could not be opened to the public. Also, a station for a new rapid rail metro line, which would reduce the road traffic, could not be opened. The reason was that the flyover landed right in front of the entrance of the station. The location of the two at the same point created a huge safety hazard. For a year before that, citizens had been watching both solutions to their commuting problems being employed simultaneously. Both agencies were rushing to complete their own solution. Two solutions should have been better than one. However, they crossed each other and made the citizens' life worse. Clearly, both departments were not seeing the whole picture. Or, having seen it, they were not willing to cooperate with each other. And so the citizens suffered. We can see many examples of the absence of systems thinking and systems acting around us in our daily lives. Some are clearly visible, as in the conflict between the rail and road improvement projects in Gurgaon. However, many other instances of silo- thinking and silo working, which are not as concrete, have even more profound effects on our lives. Fear of increasing unemployment is becoming a problem in almost all countries with the advent of technologies which are displacing human beings in manufacturing, in services, and even in knowledge sectors. Even before the advance of technologies in the past 15 years, many countries in both developed as well as developing world-Spain, Greece, Italy, India, and countries in the Middle East, for example-were already affected by rising unemployment of youth. Technology is not the only cause for unemployment in societies; there are many other causes too. Therefore, economists and policymakers correctly say that an entire "ecosystem" must be improved to generate more jobs and livelihoods The question is: Who is responsible for improving the entire ecosystem? Business leaders say it is not their job, the government should do it. Within government, then, which ministry is respon sible? The education and skills ministries, who should ensure that enough suitably skilled people will be available to work? Or the industries ministries, who should ensure that there will be enough jobs for these people when they are ready to work? If they do not coordinate their policies carefully, there would be no jobs for many more educated and skilled people ready to work. Which is already the situation in several countries.

**Contents and Sample