Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. – Tim O’Brien
I’ve been thinking about activity systems recently and trying to work out what I think they could be.
That’s a little complicated, so let’s back up.
Peter Checkland writes about human activity systems in “Systems Thinking, Systems Practice”. What does he mean by this term?
Let’s start at the end, first there’s the idea of a “system”.
We all use the word system but sometimes mean different things. For instance, a computer system is something you can point to that has components and connections. The transport system is something you can point to with planes, trains, automobiles and so on. The judicial system is something you can point to, with judges and police and jails. The education system is something you can point to, with students and buildings and teachers. All these uses of the word “system” have some kind of connection to a thing out there that you can point to, with parts and interconnections and emergent behaviour.
Checkland uses the word system to refer to something that might exist only in your mind – a description of a thing from a particular point of view.
This is a little abstract and not everyone agrees that it makes sense.
His argument is that the other words matter.
What we’ve got is the existence of humans and so the “system” we’re talking about doesn’t really exist out there because it can only exist inside someone’s head.
You can’t point to the “system”, you can only suggest that it’s made up of certain parts.
And if you group those parts and call them by a name that doesn’t really make sense to anyone who doesn’t already know the parts.
This is a big bit of Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance as well.
So, from this point of view a system is simply something that makes sense to people.
Some systems exist – like the ecosystem.
But we humans also take action in these systems – purposeful action – we want to do something for a reason.
And so we have human activity systems that are “sets of purposeful human activities”.
Or in simpler language it’s a list of things we do connected so they have some kind of order to them.
And we can show that with nodes and links, things to do and the connections between them.
It’s possible that everything can be represented in this way.
Now, why does this matter?
And if you’re honest with yourself and you’ve managed to read this far, you’re probably asking yourself why anyone cares.
But let me carry on.
If you want to do something you often make a list of things to do.
Sometimes, if you’ve had some training you’ll set out a process, steps to do in order.
Both these things can be checked off and stepped through.
An activity model is sort of the same thing but instead of being a “time” based thing it’s a “doing” based thing.
It’s a plain English description of what needs to be done.
And the keen eyed among you will have noticed I’ve switched terms here.
The “human activity system” has a lot of baggage – it requires an understanding of systems theory, an acceptance of multiple points of view and an agreement that a model is simply a particular representation of what humans do.
An activity model, in my mind, is what needs to be done.
That seems simpler.
Now, I’m going to try and work this into some kind of argument that has a place in a thesis.
I am not feeling particularly confident…
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 