Summary: Lectures by Dr.Russell Ackoff

I have recently started getting interested in systems thinking. I got started in this field by Donella Meadows’ “Thinking in System” which was great. And a few weeks ago I discovered Dr. Russell Ackoff (Hat tip to Trond Hjorteland for that). His genius for telling stories and correlating these funny stories back to a systemic view of the world is as good as anything I have ever come across.

There are a lot of videos of him explaining systems and management etc on Youtube, but like a lot of old-time proponents of a specific topic, many of them carry similar explanations, examples, and deductions. So I thought I will summarize and condense a few of the most “academic” of these videos to bring out the common and prominent ideas.

I absolutely recommend that you listen to the original lectures because these notes do not convey the richness of thought, expression, and experience that the lectures contain. I only hope to give you a quick boost in terms of ideas before you have to decide to commit ~4 hours of time. I have spent ~20 hours over the last two weeks listening to Russell Ackoff and I do not regret it one bit.

A system is a whole that is defined by its function(s) in a larger system of which it is a part and that consists of at least 2 parts without which it cannot fulfill its defining function