"Gentlemen,
the telephone system of the
Idealized design is
a way of thinking about change that is deceptively simple to state: In solving
problems of virtually any kind, the way to get the best outcome is to imagine
what the ideal solution would be and then work backward to where you are today.
This ensures that you do not erect imaginary obstacles before you even know
what the ideal is.
Nothing better illustrates
the power of this idea in action than the experience that one of the authors,
Russell L. Ackoff, had many years ago. The experience both enlightened him and
proved to him that the idea could facilitate profound change in a major
corporation. To relate the experience, this author "steps forward:"
In every life,
there are seminal experiences that exert their influence on a great deal of
experience that follows. The one that is responsible for this book took place
in 1951. I was then a member of the faculty of Case Institute of Technology in
It so happened that
on the day of my visit he and other managers had been summoned to an
important—but last-minute—conference by the vice president of Bell Labs. After some hesitation, Peter Meyers said, "Why don't you
come with me?" I pointed out it was a meeting for section heads and I was
not even an employee of the labs. He said that no one would know the
difference.
We arrived at a
typical classroom that held about forty people and was almost full. The vice
president was not there yet. Nor did he appear on time. This was very unusual.
He was a big man, extroverted, and voluble. He could not get near someone
without punching, pinching, pushing, hugging, or pounding them on the back.
About ten minutes
after the hour, the door to the room squeaked open. All eyes turned to it, and
there he was. He was obviously very upset. He was a pasty gray and bent over as
he slowly shuffled down the aisle without a word to anyone. He mounted the platform,
stood behind the podium, put his elbows on it, and held his head in his two
hands, looking down.
The room was dead
silent. Finally, he looked up and in an uncharacteristically meek voice said,
"Gentlemen, the telephone system of the
The room broke out
in a hubbub of whispered conversations saying that his statement was not true.
Many in the room had used a phone that morning. The vice president looked up
and said, "You don't believe the system was destroyed last night, do you?
Some of you probably used the phone this morning, didn't you?" Most of the
heads in the room shook with assent.
The vice president
began to tremble with rage. He shouted, "The telephone system was
destroyed last night and you had better believe it. If you don't by
He then looked down
again. "What was wrong with the VP?" everyone was asking each other.
But because discretion is the better part of valor where one's boss is
involved, the whispers stopped as all waited for further word from him and an
explanation of his erratic behavior.
The vice president
looked up and glowered at the group. Then he suddenly straightened up, his
normal color seemed to return, and he broke out in a great big belly laugh. All
those in the room also began to laugh. They did not know why they were
laughing, but it released the tension that his unusual behavior had created. It
began to dawn on all of us that his behavior had been a trick.
After the laughter
died down, he said in his normal voice with his normal demeanor, "What was
that all about? Well, in the last issue of the Scientific
American," he said, "there was an article that said that these
laboratories are the best industrially based R&D laboratories in the world.
I agreed, but it got me thinking."
He reached into the
inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew a piece of paper and said, "I've
made a list of those contributions to the development of telephonic
communications that I believe have earned us this reputation. Before I share my
list with you, I'd like your opinions. What do you think are the most important
contributions we have ever made to this development?"
Almost every hand
in the room went up. He called on one of those with a raised hand. He said,
"The dial." "Right," said
the vice president. "This is certainly one of the most important. Do any
of you know when we introduced the dial?" One in the room volunteered a
date in the 1930s. The vice president agreed. He then asked, "When was it
developed?" No one knew.
He said he had not
known either but had looked it up before he came to the meeting. He said,
"It was before 1900." We were surprised to say the least. He pressed
on, asking for another candidate. The next one offered was multiplexing, a way of transmitting multiple
conversations simultaneously over one wire. This yielded an enormous increase
in the capacity of AT&T's network. "Right," the vice president
repeated. He once again asked when it has been introduced. Someone knew it had
been between the two world wars. The vice president confirmed this and asked,
"When was it invented?" No one knew. Again he revealed that it was
before 1900.
He asked for one
more suggestion. The person he called on said, "The coaxial cable that connected the
"Doesn't it
strike you as odd," he said, "that the three most important
contributions this laboratory has ever made to telephonic communications were
made before any of you were born? What have you been doing?" he asked.
"I'll tell you," he said. "You have been improving the parts of
the system taken separately, but you have not significantly improved the system
as a whole. The deficiency," he said, "is not yours but mine. We've
had the wrong research-and-development strategy. We have been focusing on
improving parts of the system rather than focusing on the system as a whole. As
a result, we have been improving the parts but not the whole. We have got to restart
by focusing on designing the whole and then designing parts that fit it rather
than vice versa. Therefore, gentlemen, we are going to begin by designing the
system with which we would replace the existing system right now if we were
free to replace it with whatever system we wanted, subject to only two
not-very-restrictive constraints."
"First,"
he continued, "let me explain why we will focus on what we want right now,
not out five or ten years. Why? Because we know that where we say today we
would like to be five years from now is not where we will want to be when we
get there. Things will happen between now and then that will affect our goals
and objectives. By focusing on what we want right now, we can eliminate that
potential source of error."
"Second, why
remove practically all constraints? Because if we don't know what we would do
now if we could do whatever we wanted, how can we know what to do when we can't
do everything we want? If we knew what we would do with virtually no
constraints, we could modify it, if necessary, to become feasible and adapt it
to changing internal and external conditions as time goes on."
"Now, here are
the two constraints. First, technological
feasibility. This means we cannot use any but currently available
knowledge. No science fiction. We can't replace the phone with mental
telepathy. The second constraint," he said, was that "the system we
design must be operationally viable. What does
that mean? Because we are not changing the environment, it means that the
system must be able to function and survive in the current environment. For
example, it will have to obey current laws and regulations."
The vice president
then said, "This group is too large to operate as a single group.
Therefore, I am going to divide you into six subgroups of about six each, each
with responsibility for a subsystem. Each group will select a representative to
meet with other representatives at least once a week to discuss interactions.
Let me explain.
"Each group
will be able to design whatever it wants as long as it does not affect any
other group's design. If what a group wants to do does affect one or more other
groups' designs, it must get their agreement before it can be included in their
design. I can tell you in advance," he said, "that the groups will do
little that does not affect other groups. At the end of the year," he
said, "I want to see one completely integrated system design, not six
subsystem designs. I don't even want to know what the individual teams came up
with. Is that clear?" he asked.
He created a
"long lines" (inter-city communication) team, a "short
lines" (within city communication) team, a switching stations team, two
other teams, and finally the telephone set team, on which I found myself with
my friend Peter Meyers.
When the meeting
was adjourned, the teams immediately gathered so that their members got to know
each other. When Peter introduced me to the other members of our team, they
thought it very funny that an "outsider" had successfully invaded
their meeting. But, they said, the vice president had not precluded their use
of "outsiders." Therefore, they invited me to participate in the
effort. As a result, I spent a great deal of time in the next year with that
team. What a learning experience it was!
The first meeting
took place after lunch that day. The seven of us, six from the labs and I, met
in a small breakout room. After the amenities, we discussed where we should
begin. We decided to list the properties we wanted a telephone to have. We
noted suggestions on a pad mounted on an easel. The first few were as follows:
·
Every call I receive is intended for me—no wrong numbers.
·
I want to know who is calling before I answer the phone so I need
not answer it if I don't want to speak to the caller.
·
A phone I can use with no hands.
·
A phone that comes with me wherever I am, not one I have to go to
in a fixed location.
We continued to add
to this list for several weeks, ending with just more than ninety properties we
wanted a phone to have. These properties became very complicated near the end.
For example, we wanted to be able to talk simultaneously to groups in multiple
locations, see all of them, and be able to transmit documents or charts
instantaneously.
But we ran dry. We
noted, however, that we had designed nothing yet, so decided to try our hands
at it. We decided to select the first property on our list—no wrong numbers—and
see if we could design a phone that met this requirement.
At this point, I
almost destroyed my credibility in the group by pointing out that there were
two kinds of wrong numbers. One consisted of having the right number in one's
head but dialing it incorrectly. The other consisted of having the wrong number
in one's head and dialing it correctly. One member of the group immediately
pointed out that if one had the wrong number in one's head and dialed it
incorrectly, one might get the right number. Fortunately, the group decided
this was too rare to be of concern but that the percentage of wrong numbers of
each type was of concern.
Here I was able to
save my credibility a bit because I knew the head of the psychology department
at the labs. I called him using the phone in the room. After the amenities, I
asked him if he had ever done any work on wrong numbers. He exploded on the
other end of the line. It was minutes before I could understand him. It turned
out that he had been doing work on wrong numbers for a number of years, and I
was the first one to ask him about it. He wanted to unload all his results on
me. I had to convince him otherwise. After he calmed down, I learned that four
out of five wrong numbers were the result of incorrectly dialing the right
number in one's head. We decided to go to work on this.
An amazing thing
happened; in less than an hour, we found a way, conceptually, to reduce, if not
eliminate, such errors. We replaced the dial by—what did not exist at that
time—a small handheld calculator. There were ten keys, one for each digit, a
register, and a red key in the lower-right corner. The phone was to be used as
follows. Leaving the phone "on the hook," one would put into the
phone the number one wanted to call by pressing the appropriate buttons. These
numbers would appear on the register. If these numbers, on examination, appear
to be correct, one would lift the receiver and the whole number would go
through at once. If the number on the register was wrong, one would press the
red button in the corner. This would clear the phone, and one would start over.
We were very
pleased with ourselves, but nevertheless we recognized that we did not know
whether such a phone was technologically feasible. (The handheld calculator was
not yet available.) Therefore, we called a department of the lab that worked on
miniaturization and asked for technical help. They sent two young men down to our
meeting. They appeared to be fresh out of school, still wearing their
intellectual diapers.
As we described
what we were trying to do, they began to whisper to each other and were soon
more absorbed in their private conversation than in what we were saying. This
bothered us, but such behavior was not entirely unexpected in an R&D
laboratory. However, they suddenly got up and hurried out of the room with no
explanation. We were furious but decided to let it pass for the time being. We
went on to another property.
Several weeks
later, the two young men appeared at one of our sessions looking sheepish and
apologetic. They said, "You probably wondered why we ran out on you when
we were here last." We told them this was an understatement. They
explained, "We were very excited by what you were doing but not for the
reasons you were. We did not want to take the time to explain. That
wrong-number stuff was not as interesting as the buttons."
They went on,
"We went back and built a push-button telephone and tested it on a very
large number of people. It turns out to take about twelve seconds less to put
in seven digits by pushing buttons than turning a dial, and additional time is
saved by not occupying a line until after the number is put in and the receiver
is picked up. The combined saving in time is worth millions to AT&T,"
they said, "so we have started a project to
develop that telephone. We have given it a code name that is being kept secret
for now." They looked around the room to be sure no one was listening and
then told us, "Touch tone."
Before the year was
over, the groups had established the technological feasibility of each of our
many design features. The group of design teams continued to work after I was
no longer a participant, and they anticipated every change in the telephone
system, except two, that has appeared since then. Among these are touch-tone
phones, consumer ownership of phones, call waiting, call forwarding, voice
mail, caller ID, conference calls, speaker phones, speed dialing of numbers in
memory, and mobile phones. They did not anticipate photography by the phone or
an Internet connection.
The impact of the
design we produced was greater than the impact of any other effort to change a
system that I had ever seen. As a result, I began to adapt and modify the
procedure to fit such other applications that we describe in this book. As you
will see, its use has been extensive and is still growing.
This experience is
a convincing example of how idealized design can
literally move mountains of change. However, applying the process involves not
only discarding old mindsets that inhibit creative thinking but knowing the
steps that we have learned work best in applying it. The book is intended to
take you through the process with many examples of different organizations in
different industries.