By Mario deSantis, February 21, 1999

Our politicians, bureaucrats, and business leaders are unable to conceptualize the interconnectedness of our social system and their respective legislative actions, programs and business decisions fall short in finding solutions to our problems. We are addressing problems as they surface from specific events and we immediately find short term solutions only to realize later that we have compounded the problems. For example, in Saskatchewan, we have a critical dimensional and professional problem with the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations(1) (2) and yet our government is making this organization ever bigger and more powerful(3). In the mid 90's, the Nursing Education Program of Saskatchewan replaced the two year diploma to a four year bachelor degree, enrollments into the program were cut in half and today 64 acute beds are being closed in Regina for lack of nurses(4). The new 1999 federal budget will be injecting $11.5-billion over five years in health care, and while our Premier Roy Romanow states that all the money received from Ottawa will be spent to provide needed care at the bedside(5), we know that most of this additional money for 1999 will be spent on the questionable fixing of the Y2K problem of our district health boards(6) (7) (8).

As mentioned above, the main shortcoming in finding viable solutions to our social problems is our determination to find immediate solutions to problematic events, that is we look for simple  "cause effect" relationships of events. Instead of acting immediately on events, we must reflect on the events causing the problem, find their looping relationships, in time and space, with other events, determine the systemic origin of these events and then find solutions based not on the isolation of events but on their systemic origin. This mental model to look for immediate solutions to social or business problems is wrong, is shortsighted, is speculative, and it is so ubiquitous that the same Nobel Prize organization reinforced this way of thinking granting the 1997 prize for economics to Robert Merton and Myron Scholes(9) for their work on the highly speculative "derivatives". We don't understand yet that our social systems are complex, that the causes of our difficulties or problems are related in time and space to many different reasons or parts of the system, and that for such problems there are not simple "cause effect" relationships(10). We must change the way we presently think in isolating problems and finding immediate solutions.

This obsolete mental model to behave is reinforced every day, as we buy and sell goods, as we invest in the stock market, as we communicate at work, at home or in our communities. Donella Medows(11) has learned a lot about our perceptions and paradigms which are at the roots of our societal shortcoming, and she shares the belief that we require a new way of thinking, systems thinking, founded on the mental model that we relate to each other and that all of our actions are interconnected in time and space. Jay Forrester(12) initiated the study of complex social systems through computer modelling, and he called this approach appropriately, System Dynamics. Donella Medows realizes the difficulties of communicating messages of complexity, of systems thinking, of inclusiveness, and notwithstanding the popularity of her books(13) she reiterates the universal need to persevere in the relentless effort to break the conventional fragmentary paradigm of "cause effect" relationships. She states that "...challenging a paradigm is not a part-time job. It is not sufficient to make your point once and then blame the world for not getting it. The world has a vested interest in, a commitment to, not getting it. The point has to be made patiently and repeatedly, day after day after day..."(14)

Endnotes

1. NEED OF TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGES IN SASKATCHEWAN: Healthcare Reform and New Economic Policies, Part 6. Public interest and the need for restructuring the operations of the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations. By Mario deSantis, April 30, 1997. Published in the North Central Internet News on November 29, 1998

2. An ominous suspicion: has SAHO corrupted the pension fund? By Mario deSantis, February 16, 1999. Published in the North Central Internet News

3. Letter dated April 28, 1997 from Mario deSantis directed to all Chairpersons and Chief Executive Officers of Saskatchewan District Health Boards. Re: Computerization of Health Care Payroll and Economic Policies. http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/desam/paper-letterToChairsCEOs-Apr28-97.htm

4. Nursing mess unbelievable, by Murray Mandryk, The StarPhoenix, page FORUM, February 4, 1999, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

5. Federal money provides relief for Saskatchewan, by Mark Wyatt, The StarPhoenix, page A1, February 17, 1999, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

6. The culprit of the Y2K Nightmare in Health Care is plain Corruption! By Mario deSantis, January 20, 1999. Published in the North Central Internet News

7. Y2K menu downloads cash crisis: Saskatchewan health districts face $100-million computer upgrade, by Jason Warick, The StarPhoenix, January 16, 1999, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

8. Y2K bid bytes city firms: Computer companies shut out of health district's hefty Year 2000 contract, by Joanne Paulson, The StarPhoenix, page A1, February 19, 1999, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

9. A Tarnished Prize? http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/nobel_economics981014.html

10. THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, by Peter Senge, Currency Doubleday, paperback edition, 1994.

11. SYSTEM DYNAMICS MEETS THE PRESS, an excerpt from The Global Citizen, by Donella H. Meadows, 1991 pp. 1-12, Washington, DC, Island Press. ftp://sysdyn.mit.edu/ftp/sdep/Roadmaps/RM1/D-4143-1.pdf

12. Jay W. Forrester is Germeshausen Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology http://sysdyn.mit.edu/people/jay-forrester.html

13. The Limits to Growth book (Meadows, et al., 1972), showing interplay among population, industrialization, hunger, and pollution, has been translated into some 30 languages and has sold over three million copies. Such wide-spread readership of books based on computer modeling testifies to a public longing to understand how present actions influence the future. Limits to Growth has been recently updated as Beyond the Limits. (Meadows, et al., 1992)

14. SYSTEM DYNAMICS MEETS THE PRESS, an excerpt from The Global Citizen by Donella H. Meadows, 1991 pp. 7-8, Washington, DC, Island Press. ftp://sysdyn.mit.edu/ftp/sdep/Roadmaps/RM1/D-4143-1.pdf