Geoff Royston 14 September 2017. OR 59 ... âDesign thinkingâ is penetra(ng business management ... formal mathema cal theorem of juggling, correla ng the.
OR 59 Annual Conference Loughborough
The sciences of a n d
Geoff Royston
the skills of the
14 September 2017
Two sorts of sciences • Explanatory sciences e.g. physics, sociologyaim at developing knowledge to understand the world • Improvement sciences e.g. medicine and engineering - aim at developing knowledge to change the world
So, O.R. is an improvement science
3
As an improvement science O.R. has to address all 5 areas of the D4E prac.cal problem solving cycle Discovery
Design
understanding and diagnosing problems; defining goals
Circus performers have both technical and more creaAve skills Some required competences of circus performers • “The artist must demonstrate an exceptional level of technical ability” • “Yet this technical ability should be transcended by creativity”. • “The artist must be capable of disregarding anything he or she has previously learnt in order to focus on the collective creation.” Source: P Jacob, The Circus Ar,st of Today; Analysis of Key competences , European FederaKon of Professional Circus Schools, 2008
Similarly, experAse in analysis is necessary but not sufficient for O.R. pracAce Improving systems requires: • problem analysis and • soluAon search and synthesis
Search and synthesis
are key tasks of design.
So design is a key part of the pracAcal problem solving cycle in O.R Discovery
Design
understanding and diagnosing problems; defining goals
Designing is a key part of the work of change agents “ Everyone designs who devises courses of ac,on aimed at changing exis,ng situa,ons into preferred ones.” Herbert Simon .
Herbert Simon and The Sciences of the ArAficial In his seminal book, which included many of the then new methods of operaKonal research and arKficial intelligence, the decision scienKst and Nobel laureate called for “a science of design” focusing on topics such as the representaKon of design problems and the search for alternaKves.
Ackoff and Idealised Design
In the late 1970s the O.R. pioneer Russ Ackoff challenged O.R. professionals “to improve our methods of design and invenKon”.
“Design thinking” is penetraAng business management
Interest in “design thinking” has been trending upwards as fast as in “business analyAcs”
Source: Google Trends July 2017
There has been a push on O.R. and Public Policy Design Public Policy Design Special Interest Group
Back to the 5 rings of the O.R. problem solving cycle Discovery
Design
understanding and diagnosing problems; defining goals
O.R pracAAoners need to learn from the implementaAon and evaluaAon sciences
Source: Google Trends July 2017
There are journals on evaluaAon
And on implementaAon
Déjà vu? O.R. and circuses have history! “BlackeZ’s Circus”
The AnK-aircraY Command Research Group 1940
Patrick Blacke[
BlackeZ and BeckeZ - double blue plaquers! Samuel Becke[ and Patrick Blacke[ (both Nobel Prize winners) occupied (at different Kmes) the same house in Paultons Square, Chelsea. These rare twin blue plaques were unveiled in April 2016.
BlackeZ’s circus – a mulAdisciplinary group
P. M. S. Blacke[ B. Schonland D. K. Hill A. F. Huxley L. E. Bayliss A. Porter F. R. N. Nabarro H. E. Butler I. Evans G. W. Raybould A. J. Skinner Miss. M. Keast
Strategic and tacAcal lessons from the circus Strategically, O.R. needs to be[er equip itself with skills for working across all 5 rings of the pracKcal problem solving cycle But circus skills have some tac.cal lessons for us as well
Taking a joke seriously
The word juggler comes from the LaKn joculari meaning to jest
People have been juggling for 4000 years….. EgypAan mural 1781 BC
….and mathemaAcans have been studying it for 40 years
Shannon’s juggling equaAon In the early 1980s, Claude Shannon, informaKon theorist,
unicyclist and expert juggler, published the first formal mathemaKcal theorem of juggling, correlaKng the length of Kme balls are in the air with how long each ball stays in the juggler’s hand.
(F + D) H = (V + D) N F = how long a ball stays in the air D = how long a ball is held in a hand H = number of hands V = how long a hand is empty N = number of balls being juggled
Simple and sophisAcated juggling simulators are available
Gunswap.co
Juggling in the workplace “BT's ball-juggling rouAne can only go on so long” The Register February 2017
Most organisaAons have to live hand to mouth, juggling short-term funding and perpetual minor crises. Geoff Mulgan
“Osborne juggling jobs is just what women have always done” The Guardian April 2017
We take each week as it comes; we're juggling just like everybody else. It's all about spinning plates. Katherine Kelly
Juggling lessons for work
Buzan - Mind Mapping
Tips on learning to juggle also apply to O.R. pracAce! • Calm down and breathe • Break the task into simpler steps • See both the parts and the whole • Focus on the throw and not the catch (=don’t grasp prematurely for results) • If you are not dropping the ball, you are not making progress
In both juggling and O.R. we improve by stretching ourselves beyond our current level of competence • Studying our mistakes carefully
• Gejng feedback on our performance • Keeping at it!
My juggling learning curve
To conclude
The sciences of improvement and the skills of the circus both support the pracAce of O.R.
‘5-ring circus’ O.R. as the science of system improvement?
