Q2) Alan, I love the idea of systematic and symptomatic clouds (although I'm starting to think of them as Cause and Consequence clouds, because I get a little confused and have to stop and think about the words systematic and symptomatic). I've never seen the idea of separating them before. Can you describe the difference between them and how you "discovered them"?
Probably my own new discoveries in TOC and the Thinking Processes were triggered in late 1999/early 2000 with an increasing frustration that (at least in the way we explained and applied TOC) we seemed to be moving further and further away from TOC’s fundamentals – it felt like TOC was becoming more and more complex (rather than more and more simple) and more and more difficult (rather than easier and easier to apply)…and here I include myself especially…I realized that although I received for example a fair share of compliments for my presentations some attendees always left feeling “this seems too complex or too difficult or too theoretical for us to apply”. Not only that, but I was also noticing how many “TOC practitioners” were simply not using the tools on a daily basis. When they used it, they always made breakthroughs – so why were they (we) not using it more? Initially I thought it was just me feeling this frustration, but started hearing it from more and more people – both practitioners and customers. There was a quote from Einstein that has kept me up for many nights “Everything should to made as simple as possible, but not simpler…”
I realized in some cases we were over-complicating TOC unnecessarily and in other cases, we were over-simplifying things with negative consequences on the magnitude, speed and reliability of getting step-change improvements in performance.
One such a case was the 3 Cloud process that provided the potential of a “short-cut” directly to the Core Conflict of a whole subject matter. To me, there was no doubt that this was a real breakthrough in the TP (compared to the “old way” of UDE’sà Current Reality Tree à Core Conflict) – providing much greater simplicity but also increasing significantly the speed, ease and reliability of reaching the “true core conflict and core problem(s)” of a subject matter.
At the same time, as many “success” cases I had (both in my own analysis and those of my Jonah Program students or companies for which I facilitated the 4x4 process), I also had as many cases where it felt like - when we were converging the 3 clouds into one - we were somehow “forcing it” with the resulting core conflict not really feeling as it was the deeper core conflict of the 3 UDE’s and their conflicts we started with. So I started wondering whether, in our attempts to make it simpler…we did not end up making it too simple…
I “discovered” the symptomatic and systemic clouds (or as I sometimes used to refer to them – the cause and consequence clouds -) when I was again struggling with the facilitation in a 4x4 where we used the “3 cloud approach” (using it to coverage from 20 UDE’s – one per participant in the 4x4 – to 20 clouds and then one core conflict) and suddenly realized the problem was with the instructions we were giving to participants to convert their Ude’s into conflict clouds.
When a participant was doing their cloud from their UDE the instruction (at that time) to fill in box D was “What action, related to the UDE, do you find yourself complaining about? “.
When reviewing all the work, I realized most were mixing up the answers and then we really struggled to converge the clouds. Sometimes participants were filling in the box with the answer to the question “What action are you complaining about that you think is CAUSING the UDE?” and sometimes “What action are you complaining about that YOU now feel pressure to take to deal with the CONSEQUENCES of the UDE?”
It realized that the 1st action is a “systemic issue” and therefor part of an unresolved “systemic conflict” - while the second action was a “symptomatic issue” (trying to find a way to deal with the UDE/symptom) and must therefore be part of an unresolved “symptomatic conflict…”
Probably the words “systemic and symptomatic” was influenced by the company I was keeping at the time – I had quite a bit of discussions at the time with Prof. Antoine van Gelder, a well-known and very experienced TOC practitioner who also happens to be a doctor and who heads up the Dept of Internal Medicine at the Pretoria University. We frequently use the “patient” analogy in TOC so I thought the insight into at least two different conflicts related to every UDE, fits well with the use if systemic and symptomatic issues in the medical world.
For those who have seen my presentation at TOCICO 2003 in Cambridge where I first presented this insight, I tested my hypotheses out on Eli’s own past analysis (considered my most as typically the best TP analysis) and found that for example, in his analysis project management, Eli was in fact very consistent – but that he wrote all the “symptomatic or consequence conflicts” from the Project management UDEs – i.e. (D)contained the actions the Project Managers felt pressure to take to deal better with the Ude’s once they had happened and therefore, I believe Eli found the Core Symptomatic Conflict (i.e. Pressure to compensate for early mis-estimations vs Pressure Not to compensate...)
Well, I tried to find all the CCPM rules from breaking this Core PM Conflict, but simply could not and realized that breaking the symptomatic core conflict gives you only the new execution rules….there is really no way you could get the new planning rules from it…the only way I found was to do also the systemic conflicts for the 3 or more selected UDE’s and then find the Core systemic or planning conflict. Breaking this would then give you the new planning rules.
So, the instructions I now give is quite simple:
· For the Systemic Conflict: The question for box (D) is “What action do you think most likely caused the UDE or (if there could be more than one cause) which action/decision caused most of the UDE?” Example: If UDE is High Inventory, answer could be “Decision to make to forecast”
· For the Symptomatic Conflict: The question for box (D) is “What action do you feel most pressure to take to deal with the UDE”? Example: If UDE is High Inventory and person asked to deal with UDE is Sales Manager, the answer could be “Pressure to reduce prices (to reduce high inventory”.
