In a 2004 speech at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Russell Ackoff told a story about an operations researcher at General Electric who was asked by the CEO to evaluate GE’s corporate objectives. He took a list of the company’s stated objectives, which sound like most organizations’ objectives, and compared them to corporate decisions for the last five years.

Every decision violated one or more of the stated objectives.

He then evaluated the decisions to see if he could figure out what objectives they served and he found that 92% of the decisions supported one objective: To maximize the wealth, security, and quality of life of the people who made the decisions.

If you think such behavior is limited to the business world, think again. Ackoff, who was a professor at Penn, was so bored at faculty meetings that he documented what they discussed for two years. The word “student” was mentioned once. According to Ackoff, “Teaching is the price the faculty must pay for the quality of life it wants.” He adds: “If you think this or any other university is dedicated to teaching students, you’re wrong. It’s about maximizing the quality of life of the faculty.”

Who does your organization serve?

To transform your organization, you must understand what the organization is pursuing, not what it says it’s pursuing, change those objectives, and design a new system to meet them. Ackoff quotes Peter Drucker, who said, “There’s a difference between doing things right and doing the right things.”

If you do the wrong things right, you will still fail.

You can watch Ackoff’s 30-minute speech at the end of an article on the Huffington Post here.

Help grow our community

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...