System feedback should be included in solution system design so that the performance of the system's components can be improved over time. When it becomes apparent that the system is not meeting its objectives, feedback makes it possible to take corrective actions. Timely feedback results in timely corrections. Feedback "loops" that are designed into a system with the intention to achieve timely corrective actions provide system internal feedback.
In some cases, the corrective action might be to cancel the program, but this kind of feedback represents failure. Program cancellation is the type of feedback that comes from external sources, and it is often directed at eliminating the resources for a program, usually resulting in a significant waste of resources. Political parties are notorious for canceling the programs created by opposing political parties, in some cases resulting in frequent changes in approach to the same problem, which can results in a waste of resources without meeting any of the program objectives along the way.
Technidigm-2000 helps reduce political flip-flops and extremes in external feedback, but it also emphasizes the need for good internal feedback. System weaknesses result from unknowns, from unanticipated defects, and from deliberate defects. Research can reduce the number of unknowns. Experience can reduce the number of unanticipated defects. Careful screening of personnel can reduce deliberate defects. Nevertheless, the quality of a system's output will periodically be less than what was intended by the system designers.
Internal feedback requires us to measure or sense the system output. Sensing and assessing the entire output of a system is often difficult or too expensive. Depending on the importance of the system output, we might establish a supporting system such as a quality control system to monitor the output of the system statistically, generating an acceptable level of feedback information in a timely manner. In cases where representative sampling makes sense, some of the system's output still might be unacceptable, but the overall output is viewed as acceptable, and less effort is needed in the output monitoring process. Minimizing the resources devoted to monitoring output improves solution system efficiency.
Many government safety oversight programs have to rely on sampling processes, but the samples are so small relative to the size and complexity of the industry systems being monitored that the oversight programs are often ineffective. When the oversight programs overextend themselves in an effort to obtain a larger sample, they sometimes initiate unintended consequences for the systems sampled. This is most often caused by trying to apply generic guidelines to specific cases, violating the fifth dimension of context.
The result is a long list of examples where the application of supposedly fair and impartial safety requirements or criteria has produced ludicrous results. Thus, government safety oversight programs are particularly in need of feedback in the form of quality control systems to ensure that the resources expended are efficiently achieving the intended objectives. Unfortunately, since such feedback is costly, it is more efficient for the government solution system to achieve its narrow oversight objectives by acting as a special interest group. It is more cost effective to a government agency to make generic rules and require generic compliance, without regard to overall efficiency, something that is of interest primarily to those being regulated and governed.
The absence of true feedback and quality control systems in government regulatory environments is a common problem. All systems and supporting systems, such as those for quality control, require power supplies (resources) that can be costly. Under tight budgets, it is often the support systems that are the first to be neglected when resources are cut back. Thus, an expensive social or regulatory program is likely to have a poor quality control system, resulting in little feedback regarding actual goal achievement.
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) obviously can not have enough resources to inspect everything that they would like to inspect. Questions of the overall validity and effectiveness of the OSHA inspections that are accomplished are not seriously addressed, if at all, except by those who want to eliminate the agency. OSHA functions primarily at level two, generating facts by the hundreds during each inspection, but seldom coming up with what it all really means in terms of worker safety. Yet, they can drive a safe business into bankruptcy by requiring everyone to comply with the same rules.
A facility might have been in business for 50 years and not have had any safety problems, but compliance is still required. Often, compliance is easier than arguing the specifics of a long list of "findings." OSHA inspectors just can not be expected to understand the full context of every safety item. Moreover, inspectors are judged more on how many findings the inspector generates, not on their quality or reasonableness. Feedback on quality and reasonableness is often too expensive and too difficult for an oversight agency to undertake.
Even if the resources are available, it is possible to err in the other direction and give too much of the available resources to quality control, resulting in inefficiencies with regard to achieving system objectives. Optimization of quality control systems to ensure the desired product quality with minimal quality control is the topic of J. M. Juran's three-inch thick Quality Control Handbook. Unfortunately he primarily addresses industrial quality control, and even then he can only be very generic: How many widgets do I have to inspect to ensure that 99 percent of them have no defects? Importantly, he dedicates a large portion of his quality control book to people-related topics of training and management. Overall, industrial quality control is largely industrial common sense, with a little math thrown in.
As a result of this focus on failures, polarization severely inhibits our ability to document level two, circumspect facts that might be useful in the feedback process. Due to the polarized treatment of system output, the discussion of many social programs is reduced to level one opinions or (even further down the scale), to off-the-level distortions and (for zealots) outright lies. Both sides of an issue can look at the same system output facts and use them to try to achieve their opposite system objectives. Thus, perfectly reasonable social programs can be destroyed along with those that are not reasonable.
Unconstrained polarization leads to waste, making it far more difficult to optimize a level four solution system. Discouraging or preventing a level four consideration of an issue and all of its ramifications relegates the issue to ineffective and unnecessarily expensive programs. However, once a level four solution system is in place, the polarized systems are far more constrained to being on-the-level and to participating in a more balanced manner.
The key to resolving most complex issues is getting them to level four and keeping them there, while understanding and managing the various system interfaces, polarized or not. Getting to level four is a difficult task, but it is an impossible task if the main players in the issue do not understand what level four is or if they do not understand systems and the importance of the interfaces among systems. Thus, it is important for everyone to understand and use the 12 Technidigm-2000 elements.
Return to Technidigm.org Home Page