According to the speech that Dr Ackoff made, systems thinking involves organisations or certain

systems working together as a whole to achieve the same desired goal. No one part can work
independently without the others (Ackoff, 2015). His car example clearly points out that if a car is
disassembled then those parts will not be able to work on their own no matter how good they may
be. He brings out the fact that the performance of the car is dependent on the interaction of its other
parts and not on the performance of the parts taken separately. According to Dr Ackoff. The
principle is, “A system is not the sum of its parts, it is the product of their interactions”. The reason
for this is that when parts of a certain system have been removed from each other then the end goal
which is to make a working vehicle will not be met. The performance of the car will not improve
rather it will get worse. Dr Ackoff therefore agrees with the Webster Dictionary who defined a
system as, “a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole”.

The car example made by Dr Ackoff clearly highlight that it is not the intergration of different
good parts that fit but the joining together of the right parts. He gives an example of Mercedes
Benz and Volks Wagon in that their best components do not form the best car. Another scholar
Weinberg (1975) states that a biological system is like a chain in that its efficacy depends on its
weakest link meaning, if one vital part of a human system i.e. heart , lungs stop functioning then
the human being will not survive. The car example also brings a sense of team work in an
organization or in life in that if we work together then we can achieve a common goal as a team
not as an independent entity thus highlighting the fact that no system works separately. This idea
works the same whether it’s an organization or running a country.
References
1. Ackoff, R (2015) ‘Systems Thinking Speech by Dr. Russell Ackoff, YouTube, Awal Street
Journal, 1 November 2015. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbLh7rZ3rh
[Accessed: 21 June 2020).
2. Weinberg, G. M. (1975). An introduction to general systems thinking. New York: Wiley.
3. Hapa haole (2013) In Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary [online] Retrieved from
http://www.merriam-webster.com [21 June 2020].