the very first principle of Systems-design is a negative one: DO IT WITHOUT A NEW SYSTEM IF YOU CAN The scholar will recognize this as Occam’s Razor in modern form: AVOID UNNECESSARY SYSTEMS (SYSTEMS SHOULD NOT BE MULTIPLIED UNNECESSARILY) Two immediate Corollaries, with significant implications for Management, are as follows: (I) DO IT WITH AN

We shall begin by noting that Mankind, in its long history of grappling with Problems, has until recently failed to take sufficient time out to work on the larger problem—the meta-problem—of How To Solve Problems.

A great deal of nonsense is talked these days about positive feedback. When the term is used merely as an inflated way of referring to praise given a person for a job well done, no particular harm results. But positive feedback in electronic systems leads to a loud squeal and loss of function. The entire energy of the System suddenly goes down the

Readers who appreciate the importance of Communication Theory are sometimes puzzled to run across references to Information Theory. Information Theory is a mathematical treatment of what is left after the meanings have been removed from a Communication.[c.]

The Creative Tack is not passive, it does not wait until an impasse is reached. It is, rather, the active fitting together of the right problem with the right resources and the right timing. It is the choosing of problems in such a way as to increase the percentage of problems successfully attacked. The student proficient in the Creative Tack asks

The universe is not actually malignant, it onlyseemsso.

Nipping disasters in the bud, limiting their effects, or, better yet, preventing them, is the mark of a truly competent Manager. A Manager who can do this is worth his/her salt, even if nothing else appears to have gotten done.

Trillium is happy as a Botanist, and never so happy as when he is elucidating the Life Cycle of an Angiosperm. But now his Chief is demanding Goals and Objectives. This is both disturbing and threatening. Trillium doesn’t want to think about his real goals and objectives; indeed, they are unknown to his conscious mind. He only knows he likes

the particular attributes that a given System fosters can only rarely be correctly inferred in advance; the actual situation is likely to contain surprises. And such attributes are not necessarily the attributes required for successful operation of the System itself;