Russell Ackoff 1919 -2009

Just heard the news that Russell Ackoff passed away on the 29/10/2009...

My first thoughts went back to Hull, where I had the pleasure and honour to meet him. He was very friendly, straight and challenging. You could not stop questioning yourself after listening to him...

When I first met him and told him about my PhD, he asked me straight away: "So why do you think your planning exercise became difficult to implement?" I said, well, people think in different ways to being systemic. He said "maybe you have not considered the wider environment in which your organisation is in".

I finally understood what he meant when he brought the case of a multinational farmaceutic company which was focused on growth rather than on development. In this case he told us how he suggested to this company to think of the local communities where they were operating (environment), with a view of promoting their development. For Ackoff, focus on growth was the wrong way to improve. An organisation that does not consider the society in which it is in, is operating in a way unethically.

After one of his talks, I managed to convince him and Vince Barabba to follow me on an 'unofficial' visit to the university, and I took them to the students' canteen and the library. Ackoff did not understand why the staff members had a different canteen. He brought that up in his next talk. For him, a university could be more of a community, although he also said that it was in the university where security was first established to protect the 'foreign' scholars from the locals.

Ackoff also spoke about courage, and how we need it to promote more systemic thinking and change (specially when we dissolve rather than when we solve problems). We know there are many ways to design changes, some which are systemic, some which are not, but whatever approach we choose to use, we need courage to make things happen, belief in ourselves, and determination. Just today I was talking to my students about courage, to bring technology into place, to add value to their organisational processes.

Thanks for all your ideas Russell...for interactive planning (IP), and for your courage...we will miss you greatly!