Contributed by Gordon Hall of the The Deming Learning Network in Aberdeen, Scotland

"If management sets quantitative targets and makes people's jobs depend on them - they will meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it" (Deming)

Measurement is important - but it is in how we use measures that are crucial.

This practice of using targets and measures to ask staff to try harder is still widespread. It comes in many forms:

• The public sector with its targets
• The Offshore Safety function with its incentives etc
• Competitive tendering
• The dominance of traditional accounting information with its focus on "management by results".

Ten Things to do in a Conceptual Emergency

Author/Publisher: International Futures Forum
Length: 31 pages

Steve Byers originally reviewed this book in August of 2005. Due to popular demand, we are taking another look at this powerful little book.

What exactly is a conceptual emergency? Consider the blind men who, touching only one part of the elephant, could not envision the whole. The International Futures Forum (IFF) suggests we live in the age of the missing elephant. "In today's world the most advanced among us know little more than one small piece of the elephant, and there are now so many different pieces, they change so rapidly and they are all so intimately related one to another, that even if we had the technology to put them all together we would still not be able to make sense of the whole."

That is, we find ourselves in a new world that raises fundamental questions about our competence in key areas such as governance, the economy, sustainability, and even consciousness. "We are losing our bearings." This is the "Conceptual Emergency" and these are TEN Things to do:

1. Design for a transition to a new world

2. Give up on the myth of control

3. Trust subjective experience

4. Take the long view

5. Form and nurture integrities

6. Practice social acupuncture

7. Sustain networks of hope

8. Converge ideas and action

9. Re-perceive the present

10. Move beyond an Enlightenment consciousness

On a daily basis we are inundated with more and more data, information, ideas, tools, issues and demands. Facing this growing complexity of life, we may intuitively struggle for control rather than enjoy the mystery. The IFF suggests that we "give up on the myth of control."
While the struggle for control may be a natural response, this quest for control leads to a cycle demanding even more control. "An alternative is simply to accept the complexity and participate in it. Relish diversity and the unique quality of all things. This engenders a sense of belonging – and hence reinforces the motivation to participate."

In addition to these ten strategies, the second part of the book includes applications delivered as "Emergency Response: stories from practice" about IFF work in communities, health care, and other circumstances of social learning. The book would also make a fine textbook for any one of a number of disciplines - economics, business, organization development, systems thinking, and even philosophy.

The International Futures Forum offers additional resources on their website.

The Ongoing Discussion (OD) for May will feature futurist Joel Barker. On Wednesday May 24th and Friday May 26th, Joel will lead a discussion focused on Strategic Exploration.

This month's OD announcement will be released by May 19th. For those readers not already on the OD mailing list, contact Bill Bellows to be added to this list.

• PBS Special - Good News: How Hospitals Heal Themselves
  This documentary reports the depth of the patient safety problem and how two large hospital systems have saved lives and reduced errors, infections and waste by using Toyota Management Principles. These methods could improve every hospital in America dramatically and reduce health-care costs by 50%. It does not require outside help or additional funding. Check your local PBS station for air times.
  
  
• UK Deming Forum to be held May 23-25 at the Robinsons Centre, Wyboston, Bedfordshire
  
  
• The 50th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences to be held July 9-14 at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California
  
  
• The 16th Annual Pegasus Conference, "Leading Beyond the Horizon - Strategies for Bringing Tomorrow into Today's Choices," to be held November 13-15, Waltham, Massachusetts
  
  

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