Systems Intelligence: The New Management Revolution
A Documentary Television Series
Introduction
Taming a wildly fluctuating stock market and eradicating executive corruption are not the critical issues in reviving the ailing American economy despite media reports. The significant remedy is to be found at a few outstanding companies, schools, and hospitals that continue to produce better and better products and services at lower cost with enthusiastic workforces. This combination of results is still considered by most business people to be impossible—and the fact it is being done is an unrecognized and unreported story.
These visionary organizations have learned that sustained success is based, not on traditional American ingenuity, but on a new way of thinking and working together built on an entirely new set of assumptions. Grasping this new thinking is difficult. This documentary series will allow the audience to see and experience it.
There is an urgent need to generate a national discussion about the new systems thinking driving management practices that consistently produce sustained success in some businesses, schools and hospitals. This thinking is revealed in the dramatic differences between the outstanding performance of the few successes and the rest of American organizations falling by the wayside or struggling to get by. Such thinking is the pathway to larger systems understanding desperately needed in our society.
The stories selected for the series include some of the Baldrige National Quality Award winners that exemplify human-systems thinking.
In three one-hour documentaries for public television, we will explore the revolutionary linkage between meaningful work, satisfied employees, better products and services, generous profits and delighted customers. The series will document this revolution in management practices and development of people and why changed thinking is essential for lasting improvements in any enterprise.
This new set of transformative assumptions expands the role of employees and customers from merely workers or consumers to involved participants. It introduces a needed change in traditional capitalism and fosters new relationships and commitments between workers, customers, shareholders and managers. It also underlines their common stake in the success of the organization as well as the larger society.
The Project in Brief
"Systems Intelligence: The New Management Revolution" reports how this systems- and people-based management is working—in elementary schools, universities, hospitals and businesses, from offices and hotels to fast food drive-throughs. The reports explain that the same system principles work in all kinds of enterprises as well as in personal and professional relationships. Education, health care and business will each be the focus of a one-hour report.
As an educational service, the project will provide an interactive, Web-based outreach program (Win-Win Capitalism). The outreach will direct inquirers to practical management help and enable people in all fields to learn more about these principles.
The outreach will consist of:
• edited case studies,
• learning modules,
• online instruction for practitioners by economic sector, and
• educational partnering with leading organizations.
Our previous documentaries and study materials, 10 and 20 years old, generated thousands of inquiries and are still being used worldwide in classrooms and organizations for management study and training.
The Unreported Story
We have discovered that the organizations pioneering this new thinking are often not in touch with one another and seldom influence management practices elsewhere. Every part of society needs to understand what it takes to be organizationally effective. "Systems Intelligence: The New Management Revolution" will alert the viewing audience to the benefits of the new thinking and stimulate interest about the issues it raises.
An embedded old-style of thinking and familiar American practices--hard work, good intentions, better mousetraps, advertising sizzle, experience, best efforts, quick fixes, and cost-cutting--aren’t enough. People are asking whether any form of management can truly deal with global volatility, fluctuating economies, complexity and rapid change. We think there is an affirmative answer.
While the media remain preoccupied with CEO compensation, misbehavior and profits, we will explore the root causes of why some organizations succeed and others fail.
Systems Thinking in Brief
Systems thinking--with attention to continual improvement--looks at the organization as a complex human social system and closely monitors the quality and effectiveness of employee interactions. It capitalizes on the diversity of the workforce. It regards the organization as a system within the larger economic and world system. Skill in systems thinking allows people to identify patterns, movement and important connections in what previously appeared to be unrelated single events. This skill, in turn, enables people to distinguish between real improvement and mere change while avoiding unintended results. Learning to think and manage in a new way sounds simple, but the ramifications are profound when applied to managing groups of people—from a family to a Fortune 500 company.
Certain ideas and practices of systemic learning are new and counter-intuitive. However, in the past 20 years they have become essential for success. Hence the need to develop a new set of assumptions about the way things are.
Evidence indicates that systems thinking enables sustained superior performance, changes people’s outlook on working with others, and can be taught and practiced by people at all levels and from all backgrounds. It is useful in all kinds of enterprises. Some experts believe that lasting organizational or personal success is no longer possible without the this new way of thinking.
Range of Stories
The series will explain how a small Tennessee chain of fast food drive-ins, a luxury hotel chain, a baseball bat manufacturer, a school system in upstate New York, a hospital in Washington, DC, an automobile plant and many other organizations have improbably yet successfully practiced these ideas.
Workers, managers, and CEOs will tell how their thinking changed and their personal lives and relationships have been transformed as they have found increased meaning and satisfaction in their jobs and relationships.
History
"Systems Intelligence: The New Management Revolution" will document the development of this new way of thinking as a next step in the quality improvement efforts begun in America in the 1980’s. It will also look back at earlier 20th Century attitudes about managing for efficiency that originated with the practice of Frederick W. Taylor’s scientific management.
Certain aspects of the systems view appeared in the 1980’s with the quality management thinking of W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran. Since then, the contributions of Russell Ackoff, Stafford Beer, Stephan Haeckel, Chris Argyris, Michael Beer, Peter Senge, Michael Maccoby, Myron Tribus and other scholars and management students have kept its development ongoing.
At the same time, major companies prospered under visionary leaders into the 1990’s and then slid back into old practices with corresponding loss of profitability and product/service quality. We will look at some of these stories to identify the factors that lead to success or failure and to illustrate the vital role of systems-thinking leadership.
CC-M Organization and Production Team
The production team includes: Clare Crawford-Mason, producer; Lloyd Dobyns, writer and narrator; Scott Stein, producer; and Reuven Frank, consulting producer; Louis Savary, writer and instructional designer; and Robert W. Mason, executive producer. This team, incorporated as CC-M Productions, has reported on the new management philosophy since the 1980 NBC white paper If Japan Can...Why Can't We? This report introduced the new management ideas of systems thinking to high-volume manufacturing, specifically the practices of continual improvement, customer focus and decisions based on data. According to Across the Board, the magazine of the Conference Board, If Japan Can... started a revolution in American management that has never stopped.
Quality or Else: The Revolution in World Business, the 1991 PBS series and book, clarified the practice of the new methods. It reported that some U.S., Japanese, Korean, and European companies help employees improve themselves and thereby get their commitment to the organization's mission. This relationship was just as important as systems thinking, customer focus and data-based decisions. The series also reported how this new management philosophy of continual improvement could be used to improve service, health care and educational organizations
Qualifications
Clare Crawford-Mason, a former NBC senior producer, was also for nine years Washington Bureau Chief of People Magazine. As a prize-winning journalist and television producer, she has been the first to raise public debate on a number of important social and organization issues: spouse abuse (NBC and People, l975); child sexual abuse (NBC and People, l977); abortion as a political issues (NBC and People, l979); America’s falling productivity problems (NBC and People, l980); The White Citizen’s Council Movement North (The Washington Daily News, l965); institutionalization of retarded citizens (The Washington Daily News and NBC, l971); the US government as a slumlord (NBC and The Washington Star, l974); prenatal care for poor women (The Washington Daily News, l965).
Scott Stein, producer. Stein produces media experiences that integrate television, print and the Internet. He has worked for AOL, Oxygen Media, VH1, Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo, Inc., and PBS. He was a member of the creative team that produced Quality or Else (PBS, 1991), its companion book (Random House, 1992), and study curriculum. His latest project is an innovative youth e-mentoring and Internet learning initiative funded by the AOL Time Warner Foundation and piloted by People Magazine and America Online. He is also engaged, with the Foundation, on a range of initiatives that prepare young people and institutions for the ongoing shift to a knowledge-based society, the importance of digital literacy, and lifelong learning.
Lloyd Dobyns, writer and reporter, formerly of NBC News, is a leading reporter on economic and management issues. He has collaborated with Ms. Crawford-Mason on all the above TV and video productions. They co-authored Quality Or Else: The Revolution in World Business (Houghton Mifflin, 1991) and Thinking About Quality: Progress, Wisdom, and the Deming Philosophy (Times Books, 1994). Mr. Dobyns is currently professor of journalism at the Jacksonville State University, Alabama.
Louis M. Savary, Ph.D., management educator, writer, and designer of instructional material ensures that programming achieves its educational objectives. This function is a vital aspect of the editorial process. Dr. Savary, who holds doctorates in theology and statistics, has written over 75 books on management, educational, and spiritual topics.
Robert W. Mason, M.B.A., (Harvard, l971) a student of the Deming philosophy since 1980, was the founding executive director of the National Smithsonian Associates and developer of Smithsonian Magazine. He has been the executive producer of CC-M's productions and provides general management leadership.
Reuven Frank, pioneer television documentary producer and former President of NBC News, will be the consulting producer. He was the executive producer and co-writer of If Japan Can... and the consulting producer for Quality... or Else!
Non-Profit Status
CC-M has joined with the CTC Foundation of Washington, DC, to establish this project as a not-for-profit educational undertaking eligible for 501 (c) (3) tax-deductible contributions. Howard McClintic, the CTC Foundation's executive director, directs fundraising and will oversee administration. He can be reached at 202 312-2913 (McClintH@ctc.com)
Introduction
Taming a wildly fluctuating stock market and eradicating executive corruption are not the critical issues in reviving the ailing American economy despite media reports. The significant remedy is to be found at a few outstanding companies, schools, and hospitals that continue to produce better and better products and services at lower cost with enthusiastic workforces. This combination of results is still considered by most business people to be impossible—and the fact it is being done is an unrecognized and unreported story.
These visionary organizations have learned that sustained success is based, not on traditional American ingenuity, but on a new way of thinking and working together built on an entirely new set of assumptions. Grasping this new thinking is difficult. This documentary series will allow the audience to see and experience it.
There is an urgent need to generate a national discussion about the new systems thinking driving management practices that consistently produce sustained success in some businesses, schools and hospitals. This thinking is revealed in the dramatic differences between the outstanding performance of the few successes and the rest of American organizations falling by the wayside or struggling to get by. Such thinking is the pathway to larger systems understanding desperately needed in our society.
The stories selected for the series include some of the Baldrige National Quality Award winners that exemplify human-systems thinking.
In three one-hour documentaries for public television, we will explore the revolutionary linkage between meaningful work, satisfied employees, better products and services, generous profits and delighted customers. The series will document this revolution in management practices and development of people and why changed thinking is essential for lasting improvements in any enterprise.
This new set of transformative assumptions expands the role of employees and customers from merely workers or consumers to involved participants. It introduces a needed change in traditional capitalism and fosters new relationships and commitments between workers, customers, shareholders and managers. It also underlines their common stake in the success of the organization as well as the larger society.
The Project in Brief
"Systems Intelligence: The New Management Revolution" reports how this systems- and people-based management is working—in elementary schools, universities, hospitals and businesses, from offices and hotels to fast food drive-throughs. The reports explain that the same system principles work in all kinds of enterprises as well as in personal and professional relationships. Education, health care and business will each be the focus of a one-hour report.
As an educational service, the project will provide an interactive, Web-based outreach program (Win-Win Capitalism). The outreach will direct inquirers to practical management help and enable people in all fields to learn more about these principles.
The outreach will consist of:
• edited case studies,
• learning modules,
• online instruction for practitioners by economic sector, and
• educational partnering with leading organizations.
Our previous documentaries and study materials, 10 and 20 years old, generated thousands of inquiries and are still being used worldwide in classrooms and organizations for management study and training.
The Unreported Story
We have discovered that the organizations pioneering this new thinking are often not in touch with one another and seldom influence management practices elsewhere. Every part of society needs to understand what it takes to be organizationally effective. "Systems Intelligence: The New Management Revolution" will alert the viewing audience to the benefits of the new thinking and stimulate interest about the issues it raises.
An embedded old-style of thinking and familiar American practices--hard work, good intentions, better mousetraps, advertising sizzle, experience, best efforts, quick fixes, and cost-cutting--aren’t enough. People are asking whether any form of management can truly deal with global volatility, fluctuating economies, complexity and rapid change. We think there is an affirmative answer.
While the media remain preoccupied with CEO compensation, misbehavior and profits, we will explore the root causes of why some organizations succeed and others fail.
Systems Thinking in Brief
Systems thinking--with attention to continual improvement--looks at the organization as a complex human social system and closely monitors the quality and effectiveness of employee interactions. It capitalizes on the diversity of the workforce. It regards the organization as a system within the larger economic and world system. Skill in systems thinking allows people to identify patterns, movement and important connections in what previously appeared to be unrelated single events. This skill, in turn, enables people to distinguish between real improvement and mere change while avoiding unintended results. Learning to think and manage in a new way sounds simple, but the ramifications are profound when applied to managing groups of people—from a family to a Fortune 500 company.
Certain ideas and practices of systemic learning are new and counter-intuitive. However, in the past 20 years they have become essential for success. Hence the need to develop a new set of assumptions about the way things are.
Evidence indicates that systems thinking enables sustained superior performance, changes people’s outlook on working with others, and can be taught and practiced by people at all levels and from all backgrounds. It is useful in all kinds of enterprises. Some experts believe that lasting organizational or personal success is no longer possible without the this new way of thinking.
Range of Stories
The series will explain how a small Tennessee chain of fast food drive-ins, a luxury hotel chain, a baseball bat manufacturer, a school system in upstate New York, a hospital in Washington, DC, an automobile plant and many other organizations have improbably yet successfully practiced these ideas.
Workers, managers, and CEOs will tell how their thinking changed and their personal lives and relationships have been transformed as they have found increased meaning and satisfaction in their jobs and relationships.
History
"Systems Intelligence: The New Management Revolution" will document the development of this new way of thinking as a next step in the quality improvement efforts begun in America in the 1980’s. It will also look back at earlier 20th Century attitudes about managing for efficiency that originated with the practice of Frederick W. Taylor’s scientific management.
Certain aspects of the systems view appeared in the 1980’s with the quality management thinking of W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran. Since then, the contributions of Russell Ackoff, Stafford Beer, Stephan Haeckel, Chris Argyris, Michael Beer, Peter Senge, Michael Maccoby, Myron Tribus and other scholars and management students have kept its development ongoing.
At the same time, major companies prospered under visionary leaders into the 1990’s and then slid back into old practices with corresponding loss of profitability and product/service quality. We will look at some of these stories to identify the factors that lead to success or failure and to illustrate the vital role of systems-thinking leadership.
CC-M Organization and Production Team
The production team includes: Clare Crawford-Mason, producer; Lloyd Dobyns, writer and narrator; Scott Stein, producer; and Reuven Frank, consulting producer; Louis Savary, writer and instructional designer; and Robert W. Mason, executive producer. This team, incorporated as CC-M Productions, has reported on the new management philosophy since the 1980 NBC white paper If Japan Can...Why Can't We? This report introduced the new management ideas of systems thinking to high-volume manufacturing, specifically the practices of continual improvement, customer focus and decisions based on data. According to Across the Board, the magazine of the Conference Board, If Japan Can... started a revolution in American management that has never stopped.
Quality or Else: The Revolution in World Business, the 1991 PBS series and book, clarified the practice of the new methods. It reported that some U.S., Japanese, Korean, and European companies help employees improve themselves and thereby get their commitment to the organization's mission. This relationship was just as important as systems thinking, customer focus and data-based decisions. The series also reported how this new management philosophy of continual improvement could be used to improve service, health care and educational organizations
Qualifications
Clare Crawford-Mason, a former NBC senior producer, was also for nine years Washington Bureau Chief of People Magazine. As a prize-winning journalist and television producer, she has been the first to raise public debate on a number of important social and organization issues: spouse abuse (NBC and People, l975); child sexual abuse (NBC and People, l977); abortion as a political issues (NBC and People, l979); America’s falling productivity problems (NBC and People, l980); The White Citizen’s Council Movement North (The Washington Daily News, l965); institutionalization of retarded citizens (The Washington Daily News and NBC, l971); the US government as a slumlord (NBC and The Washington Star, l974); prenatal care for poor women (The Washington Daily News, l965).
Scott Stein, producer. Stein produces media experiences that integrate television, print and the Internet. He has worked for AOL, Oxygen Media, VH1, Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo, Inc., and PBS. He was a member of the creative team that produced Quality or Else (PBS, 1991), its companion book (Random House, 1992), and study curriculum. His latest project is an innovative youth e-mentoring and Internet learning initiative funded by the AOL Time Warner Foundation and piloted by People Magazine and America Online. He is also engaged, with the Foundation, on a range of initiatives that prepare young people and institutions for the ongoing shift to a knowledge-based society, the importance of digital literacy, and lifelong learning.
Lloyd Dobyns, writer and reporter, formerly of NBC News, is a leading reporter on economic and management issues. He has collaborated with Ms. Crawford-Mason on all the above TV and video productions. They co-authored Quality Or Else: The Revolution in World Business (Houghton Mifflin, 1991) and Thinking About Quality: Progress, Wisdom, and the Deming Philosophy (Times Books, 1994). Mr. Dobyns is currently professor of journalism at the Jacksonville State University, Alabama.
Louis M. Savary, Ph.D., management educator, writer, and designer of instructional material ensures that programming achieves its educational objectives. This function is a vital aspect of the editorial process. Dr. Savary, who holds doctorates in theology and statistics, has written over 75 books on management, educational, and spiritual topics.
Robert W. Mason, M.B.A., (Harvard, l971) a student of the Deming philosophy since 1980, was the founding executive director of the National Smithsonian Associates and developer of Smithsonian Magazine. He has been the executive producer of CC-M's productions and provides general management leadership.
Reuven Frank, pioneer television documentary producer and former President of NBC News, will be the consulting producer. He was the executive producer and co-writer of If Japan Can... and the consulting producer for Quality... or Else!
Non-Profit Status
CC-M has joined with the CTC Foundation of Washington, DC, to establish this project as a not-for-profit educational undertaking eligible for 501 (c) (3) tax-deductible contributions. Howard McClintic, the CTC Foundation's executive director, directs fundraising and will oversee administration. He can be reached at 202 312-2913 (McClintH@ctc.com)
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