ix SSM [Soft System Methodology] , as described in this book, is not a
tool or technique to be used occasionally but a way to think and act every day... One of Checkland and Poulter's
main messages is that it is only by taking part in SSM practice that you will really understand and enjoy the benefits...
and what they have successfully done is to write the ideal companion for getting involved in improving messy, complex situations
through the use of SSM - a proven and practical way to engage in reflective practice.
xi Our aim is a very simple one: to provide an account of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) that is short,
definitive and will enable anyone interested to learn about it, to teach it or to start using it in real situations.
xi-xii the pattern of activity found in Systems Engineering - namely, precisely
define a need and then engineer a system to meet that need using various techniques - was simply not rich enough to deal with
the buzzing complexity and confusion of management situations.
xii in management situations, defining the need to be met is itself always part of the problem.
Management always entails What to do? as well as How to do it? Given this, the Lancaster research saw the emergence
of a radical alternative to Systems Engineering, namely the new approach which became known as SSM.
Having been honed in several hundred projects within the programme of action research, SSM
is now a mature and well-tested approach.
p.4 So what is it? It is an organized, flexible process for dealing with situations which someone
sees as problematical, situations which call for action to be taken to improve them, to make them more acceptable, less full
of tensions and unanswered questions. The "process" referred to is an organized process of thinking your way to taking
sensible "action to improve" the situation; and, finally, it is a process based on a particular body of ideas, namely
systems ideas... systems ideas are fundamentally concerned with the interactions between parts of a
whole.
p.6 This concept of worldview... is the most important concept in understanding the complexity of human
situations, and indeed, the nature and form of SSM.
p.6 any approach able to deal with the changing complexity of real life will have to be flexible...
It needs to be flexible enough to cope with the fact that every situation involving human beings is
unique. The human world is one in which nothing ever happens twice, not in exactly the same way. This means that
an approach to problematical human situations has to be a methodology rather than a method, or technique... SSM provides
a set of principles which can be both adopted and adapted for use in any real situation in which people are intent on taking
action to improve it.
p.7-8 systems ideas concern interaction between parts which make up a whole; also, the complexity
of real situations is always to a large extent due to the many interactions between different elements in human situations...
The core systems idea or concept is that of an adaptive whole (a "system") which can survive through time by adapting
to changes in its environment... A system S receives shocks from its changing environment E... what is said to be
a system must have some properties as a single whole, so-called emergent properties.
p.9 every single real-world problematical situation... has one characteristic in common. All such
situations contain people trying to act purposefully, not simply acting by instinct or splashing about at
random. From this observation comes the key idea of treating purposeful action as a system.
A way of representing purposeful action as a system, i.e. an adaptive whole... was invented.
p.10-11 these purposeful activity models can never be descriptions of (part of) the real world.
Each of them expresses one way of looking at and thinking about the real situation, and there will be multiple possibilities.
So how can the model be made useful? The answer is to see them as devices (intellectual devices) which are
a source of good questions to ask about the real situation, enabling it to be explored richly.
p.15 The application area for SSM is very broad. This is not due to megalomania on the authors' part. Rather
it stems from the wide applicability of two key ideas behind SSM. One of these is to create a process of learning
your way through problematical situations to "action to improve" - a very general concept indeed. The other
is the idea that you can make sure this learning is organized and structured by using, as a source of questions to
ask in the real situation, models (systems models) of purposeful activity. This is because every real-world
situation contains people trying to act purposefully, intentionally. It is the sheer generality of purposeful action
- the core of being human - that makes the area in which SSM can be used so huge.
p.21 Observer 1 [hard systems methodology] "I spy systems I can engineer."
Observer 2 [soft systems methodology] "I spy complexity and confusion; but I can organize exploration of
it as a learning system."
p.21-22 In SSM the (social) world is taken to be very complex... It is continually being created and recreated
by people thinking... and taking action. However, our coping with it, our process of inquiry into it, can itself be organized
as a learning system. So the notion of systemicity ("systemness") appears in the process of inquiry into
the world, rather than in the world itself.
p.22 SSM is an action-oriented process of inquiry into problematical situations in the everyday
world; users learn their way from finding out about the situation to defining/taking action to improve it. The learning
emerges via an organized process in which the real situation is explored, using as intellectual devices - which serve to provide
structure to discussion - models of purposeful activity built to encapsulate pure, stated worldviews.
p.25 as knowledge of a situation was assembled... it became normal to begin to draw simple pictures of the
situation... they were found invaluable for expressing crucial relationships in the situation and, most importantly, for providing
something which could be tabled as a basis for discussion.
p.38 in order to ensure that learning can be captured, SSM users create an organized process
of enquiry and learning. They do this by making models of purposeful activity and using them as a basis for asking questions
of the real-world situation... The task is to construct a model of a purposeful "activity system" viewed through
the perspective of a pure, declared worldview, one which has been fingered as relevant to this investigation. In order to
do that we need a statement describing an activity system to be modelled. Such descriptions are known in SSM as Root Definitions
(RDs)
p.45 The most common error - even among logical thinkers - is to take your eye off the root definition and
start modelling some real-world version of the purposeful activity being modelled.
p.61 Every real-world problematical situation will contain people trying to act purposefully,
with intent. This means that models of purposeful activity, in the form of systems models built to express
a particular worldview, can be used as devices to explore the qualities and characteristics of any problematical
situation. [JLJ - perhaps even suggest promising moves in games]
p.63 SSM... does not seek "solutions" which "solve" real-world problems. Those ideas are a mirage when faced
with real-life complexity... Instead SSM focuses on the process of engaging with that complexity. It offers
an organized process of thinking which enables a group of people to learn their way to taking "action to improve";
and it does that by means of a well-defined, explicit process which makes it possible to recover the course of the thinking
which leads to action.
p.104 The authors of this book are naturally keen to see SSM as a taken-as-given approach relevant to any
human situation which entails acting purposefully, with intention. [JLJ - great. I will apply SSM to game theory and see what
happens.]
p.113 "information" is created when human beings attribute meaning to data in a particular
context... No one creates an information system for its own sake. The nature of an information system is
that it helps or supports or enables someone carrying out some purposeful activity.
p.148 the true nature of SSM [is] a process of inquiry into problematical situations which
learns its way to taking action to improve the situation in question.
p.148 Academic discussion is fundamentally concerned with the clash of ideas rather than the people
who express those ideas. Too often, however, debates among academics become personalized and descend to playground
levels. We hope to avoid that here.
p.149 breaking away from the assumptions that the world contains a set of interacting systems, and
that organizations can be taken as systems, is the core move in the development of SSM. Its systemicity, its 'systemness',
lies in the process of inquiry; the world, and organizations within it, are not taken to be systems. It is
the (temporary) process of inquiry which can be created as a system, one which learns... models in SSM are only devices to
structure a debate about change.
p.152 systems models of purposeful activity are merely the simple devices which enable real-world
complexity to be discussed in a structured way.
p.168 the best way to learn about SSM is to use it, however crudely you do this at first...
the understanding of a situation gained through the use of SSM is not gained for its own
sake, but to become a spring for action. This is an action-oriented approach.... any problematical situation
in human affairs may be tackled with some confidence. [JLJ - perhaps even directing search and exploration efforts in playing
a game]
p.169 the very best uses of SSM seem always to exhibit a certain dash, a light-footedness, a deft charm.
In this sense the role of the approach is akin to that of the calvary in nineteenth century war: it can add a certain tone
to what might otherwise be a vulgar brawl.
p.172 practice is always linked to theory, and that all theory is in the end provisional, and may
be replaced as new experience accumulates.
p.173 This shift from goal seeking/optimizing to sustaining relationships/learning turned
out to be a much bigger shift than was at first realized.
p.196 [SSM] enables and helps those using SSM to make sense of the problematical situation and to
learn their way to identifying well-thought-out ideas for improvement... once internalized as a natural way of thinking,
[SSM] can be used to guide the process of "managing" anything." [JLJ - perhaps even the time-critical selection of positions
to explore further and choosing a move when playing a game of chess]
