The Purpose of Purposeful Entities in Purposive Systems:

In today’s post, I am looking at the idea of “purposeful” versus “purposive” in Systems Thinking. The two words are based on “purpose”. “Purposeful” means that the entity is autonomous and has freedom of choice. The entity is free to make their own rules, as the term “auto-nomous” means. “Purposive” on the other hand implies that the entity’s purpose is chosen by somebody else, and they do not have the freedom to make choices. I am very interested in the differences between purposeful and purposive, and very fascinated by the implication of purposeful entities in a “system”. If the purposeful entities are able to be autonomous, then the traditional viewpoints of systems thinking must be reevaluated. By “traditional systems thinking”, I am referring to the hard systems approach. This is the notion that there are real systems out there in the world that can be objectively modeled or designed where a specific purpose for the system can be achieved. Moreover, if the system is not functioning as expected, it can easily be changed or fixed. This would be the notion that the entities in the “system” are purposive, where they all work together for a common purpose, one that is prescribed by the designer or the leader of the “system”. A typical example is an organization where the leader has prescribed what everybody shall be doing. In this case, purposive entities are viewed as merely tools or a means to an end or cogs in the machine.

My take on purposefulness is based on the ideas of the great Immanuel Kant. Kant believed that we are rational beings, and we should treat each other with respect. He stated this as a categorical imperative and had different versions of the categorical imperative, of which I am looking at the second one:

Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

He called this a categorical imperative because this imperative was applicable in all circumstances. Kant is not saying that we should not use others as a means. For example, if I am going to the store, I am using the storekeeper as a means (to get the things I want). Kant is okay with this. His point is that I should not treat the storekeeper simply as a means. This would be the case, if I go into the store, and take whatever I want and then leave without paying or trick the storekeeper to give me whatever I want for free. Kant emphasized that each one of us are autonomous beings. The storekeeper and I can choose to do certain things, and come into an agreement (as a social contract) on how we will treat each other as means. I will get the things I want, in return for money that I will give to the storekeeper. We have both entered into this voluntarily, and we both still have the freedom to make choices. I can leave the store without buying anything, and the storekeeper can choose to stop being a storekeeper.

From the Kantian viewpoint, treating others as “purposive” is immoral. Kant goes one step further and says that we are duty-bound to not treat others simply as a means. For example, if I have the intent to trick the storekeeper, but I am not doing it because I am afraid that I would get caught, Kant would say that I am being immoral even if I abide by the social contracts. For Kant, it is the intent of my behavior that matters the most. Kant believed that the reason to do good is for the sake of the goodwill. He believed this to be an objective truth. He viewed goodwill as that which will shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself. As a constructivist, I differ from Kant at this point. I do not assume that there is an objective truth outside of us. I will discuss this further later on.

Kant viewed freedom to choose as the opposite of necessity. If I drop an apple, it has to fall to the ground. The apple has no choice but to do that. This is a necessity. On other hand, if I drop a bird, it may or may not fall to the ground. It is able to make choices. There is no necessity here. Similarly, in organizations, people are purposeful rather than purposive. Even though, people may come and work at an organization, it does not mean that they are cogs in the machine, where they will do exactly as told. Trying to coerce them or force them is immoral. There is a tendency for a leader to expect the employees to behave exactly as told. This will be viewing them as mere robots, used only for their hands. This is a hard systems approach. From the soft systems approach, the employees are seen as purposeful, where they are autonomous and have the freedom to choose. They are not seen merely as a means to an end. This goes both ways – it would be immoral for the employee to come to work just for a paycheck. Unfortunately, sometimes when the leader treats the employees as a means to an end, the employees in return will treat the employer as a means to an end too.

From the soft systems standpoint, we should try to view the “system” through the others’ eyes. This would mean that we will try to understand what all purposes are being prescribed to the “system”. In addition, we should also look at ways to expand the capabilities of people to make choices for themselves. From this standpoint, we will not be able to value the whole as being more important than the part. The reason is because the “system” is a construction of an observer. Therefore, the prescribed whole is also a construction of the observer. Moreover, assuming what is the whole, what is the purpose, and what is “good” for the whole are also dependent on the observer. It would be immoral to view that the whole is indeed greater than the parts. The value of the part is as important as the value of the whole. This view goes against the hard systems thinking. We need to start looking at “systems” differently. All “systems” are human “systems” because they are constructed by us humans, as an as-if representation of reality. This is to make sense of what is going on around us. This systems thinking is observer based and ethics based.

From a constructivist viewpoint, I do not believe that objective truths are valid. Instead, as entities in a social realm, we come to certain stable states where some viewpoints are assigned a value in the social realm. This is ongoing and requires interactions in the social realm. There is a reflexive nature to this. If we look at all cultures, we would see similarities in how they were structured, and what value systems were common to all. These are the stable states that result from ongoing interactions. If we say that the value of an individual is as important as the value of the entire community they are a part of, then this introduces reflexivity in the equation. The individual is part of the community, and the value of the community is being viewed as the same as the individual who is also part of the community. This is a second order approach. I have written about this a lot. A seemingly “objective” value system can arise in the social realm due to the ongoing subjective interactions of the individuals.

From this viewpoint, we should realize that there are no objective “systems” out there waiting to be fixed or changed or manipulated. As Kant would say, we should do the right things for the right reasons. And in this case, it would be to try to first understand one another, and to respect the humanity in us. We should try to increase the capacity for others to act autonomously and increase their freedom to make choices. The stability of value systems should not come from high above, but from the ongoing interactions with each other. In other words, the purposes of purposeful entities should not be given via commandments, but viewed as being emergent from the ongoing interactions with each other in the social realm, and this also requires continuous self-reflection and openness for error-correction.

Stay safe and always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was HvF’s Ethical Imperative:

Notes on The Good Regulator Theorem:

In today’s post, I am looking at the Conant-Ashby theorem, “The Good Regulator Theorem”, named after Roger C. Conant and W. Ross Ashby. Ashby is one of the pioneers of the Cybernetics movement. This theorem states that:

Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system.

A really good version of this theorem comes from Daniel L. Scholten, who says – Every good key must be a model of the lock it opens. The key must match the lock in order for it to open it. As Conant and Ashby put it:

Any regulator that is maximally both successful and simple must be isomorphic with the system being regulated… Making a model is thus necessary. The theorem has the interesting corollary that the living brain, so far as it is to be successful and efficient as a regulator for survival, must proceed, in learning, by the formation of a model (or models) of its environment.

The one to one relationship (isomorphism) is between the desired states of the system being controlled and the states that can be achieved by the regulator controlling the system. If we are to successfully manage a situation, we should have a model of the situation in our mind. The need to create a model is to identify the essential variables that we have to manipulate in order to get the desired results. Let’s consider an agent (person of interest who is doing the regulation) in an environment. In Cybernetics terms, the agent has less variety than the environment. In order to stay viable in the environment, the agent has to have a model of the environment so that the variety of the environment can be successfully met with.

One of Ashby’s examples is that of a swordsman (agent). The swordsman has to counter every attack that the opponent is making. For that to happen, the swordsman has to anticipate the opponent’s move. In other words, the swordsman has to have a model of the opponent – the moves they might make, their strengths and weaknesses etc. Some points to consider here is that the swordsman does not need an exact model of the opponent since that will be too much variety to handle. Thus, the swordsman only cares about certain states of the opponent and ignores the rest of the states that are not useful for his survival. In Cybernetics terms, this is termed as attenuating or filtering unwanted variety. When the swordsman is able to match the selected variables or states of the opponent, he is able to survive. What the opponent does next is the information that the swordsman really wants. The uncertainty is best reduced when the internal model matches the opponent. This is also how Conant and Ashby set out to prove their theory out. They identified that the entropy is reduced maximally when there is a one-to-one relationship between the possible states of the regulator and the selected states of the system.

An important point to keep in mind here is that the ability to generate a successful model depends entirely on the swordsman or the agent or the observer. If the swordsman is not able to distinguish the key states of the opponent, then the model will not have the required variety to aid the swordsman to survive the attack. This is also another theorem or law that Ashby is famous for called, “the law of requisite variety”. This says that only variety can absorb variety.

This also leads to one more important point to keep in mind – the agent has to consider himself or herself in the model. This is an important aspect for the agent to keep learning. This self-reflexivity is very well addressed in the second order cybernetics or the study of observing systems, as the great Heinz von Foerster put it. The notion of self-reference is generally frowned upon in logic. But the notion of self-reference/circularity is the backbone of second order cybernetics. Second order cybernetics points out that an objective access to the external world is not possible. What we have access to is the world as perceived by our perceptual network. We construct a world based on this and we react to it. This idea is very much like the great philosopher Immanuel Kant’s idea of Noumena and Phenomena. Kant said that we do not have access to the real world out there, which he called as the Noumena. What we have access to is the perceived world. Kant called this the Phenomena. Kant also said that we have categories of mind that influence the Phenomena. This idea has been referred to as Kant’s spectacles. To loosely put it, we are all born with a pair of spectacles that we cannot take off. We see the world through the spectacles, and thus what we see is influenced by the spectacles. In some regards, we can say that the structure of what we perceive has the structure of the perception network or the spectacles. This is very much like the isomorphism idea of Conant-Ashby theorem. The structure of model has to match the structure of the system being regulated in order to be successfully regulated. We can go further with Kant’s idea and state that the structure of our knowledge (what we have learned) has the structure of our learning framework. More on this on a future post.

All this brings me to my corollary to the Good Regulator theorem:

We do not manage the situation. We can only manage the model of the situation.

I make this statement based on the ideas noted above. What we are reacting to is the world that we have constructed internally. Cybernetically speaking, how good we can construct the model of the system to be regulated is determined more by the limitations of our perception or learning framework. If we have to update our internal model, we have to be aligned with the environment, and be perceptive to the changes happening around us. We need to be mindful of Kant’s spectacles and that we don’t have access to the objective reality. We will never have the same amount of variety as the external world, however, all we have to do is to have requisite variety. And for that we need to have a model of the situation. As another great cybernetician Stafford Beer put it:

If the law of requisite variety is to be handled intelligently, and not just by leaving nature to find the variety balance (which of course can be nasty for us humans), then it follows that the regulative forces must not only dispose requisite variety—which is a number of possible states; they must also know the pattern by which variety in the system is deployed. On the journey to work we need to have enough options open; we also need to know the pattern of the highways—where they run, what the control points are like, what other drivers habitually do. In the process of putting the children to bed we need several variety amplifiers at our command; but we also need to know (as we do, but let’s make it explicit) the likely behavior pattern of the children. Without these known patterns, proliferating variety looks even more threatening than it really is, which is bad enough.

What I have been calling a pattern is what a scientist calls a model. A model is not a load of mathematics, as some people think; nor is it some unrealizable ideal, as others believe. It is simply an account—expressed as you will—of the actual organization of a real system. Without a model of the system to be regulated, you cannot have a regulator.

Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was Pluralism and Systems Thinking:

The Conundrum of Autonomy in Systems:

In my previous post, I talked about the idea of the Copernican revolution in philosophy by Immanuel Kant. In today’s post, I am expanding upon the ideas originated by Kant, especially autonomy and how it poses challenges in how we view human systems. I am also heavily relying on the ideas of Ralph Stacey. Kant had a lot to say about human autonomy. Autonomy stands for the ability to set laws for oneself or the ability to perform actions that are not directed by someone else. Kant viewed humanity as an end in itself and not a means to an end. Humans should not be used simply as a means to get something done. Humans, Kant noted, have the power to act according to their own conception of laws.

Kant was one of the pioneers of systems thinking. He understood the idea of circular causality and self-organization. Kant proposed that all living beings can be viewed as self-organizing systems rather than mechanisms such as a clock. The idea of a self-organizing system meant that the idea of feedback is important. However, Kant made an important distinction when it came to human beings. He proposed that humans cannot be understood as merely being a part of the “system” of nature. For this he used some ideas from Aristotle. Kant noted that all other living beings follow a formative causality, where the structure determines the unfolding of the living being itself. For example, a tree follows the unfolding of their lifecycle from a seed. The same formative causality is applicable to the human body; however, this is not applicable to the human being as a whole who has autonomy. This is beautifully explained by Ralph Stacey:

Humans are part of nature but if nature is governed by fixed mechanistic and systemic laws, then they cannot have any freedom to make their own choices… the body is subject to the fixed laws of nature but the mind is governed by the laws of reason, rationalist causality, and it is reason that makes us free. Kant was here formulating the theory of autonomous, rational individual who chooses goals and actions required to achieve them on the basis of reason. Kant then stressed that autonomous individuals could not be understood as parts of a whole because then they would be subject to the whole and so lose their autonomy. The notion of a system could, therefore, not be applied to reasoning individuals and it would not be valid to regard society as a system whose parts were individuals.

The idea of structure determining the outcome is a prevalent theme in many schools of Organizational Management. However, the idea of humans as being rule-following parts of the “system” should be challenged. In the light of the understanding that we are autonomous individuals with many self-imposed purposes and needs, the mechanistic view of an organization system based on structure falls apart. The “human body” may be viewed as a system, however a human being cannot be viewed as a system or being a part of a system.

The notion of Systems Thinking as being a study of real systems that can be observed objectively is still prevalent. This view suggests ideas such as learning organization or complex adaptive systems. Stacey again provides wisdom in this aspect:

For me, the claim that organizations learn amounts to both reification and anthropomorphism. I argue that organizations are not things because no one can point to where an organization is –all one can point to is the artefacts used by members of organizations in their work together. In our experience, the organization qua organization arises as the patterning of our interactions with each other… Since an organization is neither inanimate thing nor living body, in anything other than rather fanciful metaphorical terms, it follows that an organization can neither think nor learn.

The conundrum of autonomy also brings the important point that objective reality is not possible. The idea that a manager can objectively view the organization by being outside the organization must be reevaluated. This notion implies that the manager can use scientific thinking and identify rules to implement to optimize the organization. But this again utilize the idea that humans can be viewed as mere parts of a system. Stacey cautions us against this:

Management science equates the manager with the scientist and the organization with the mechanistic phenomenon that the scientist is concerned with. The manager’s main concern is with getting the right “if-then” causal rules. There is a quite explicit assumption that there is some set of rules that are optimal, that is, that produce the most efficient global outcome of the actions of the parts, or members, of the organization. There is an important difference between the scientist concerned with nature and the analogous manager concerned with an organization. The scientist discovers the laws of nature while the manager, in the theory of management science, chooses rules driving the behavior of organization’s members. In this way, there is rationalist causality, but it applies only to the manager who exercises the freedom of autonomous choice in the act of choosing the goals and designing the rules that the members of the organization are to follow in order to achieve the goals. Those members are assumed to be rule-following entities. The organizational reality, of course, is that members of an organization are not rule-following entities and they all do choose their own goals and actions to some extent.

Final Words:

Edgar Morin wonderfully noted that the autonomy of a system is less than the sum of autonomies of all the individual parts of a system. The idea that humans should not be viewed as being parts of a system should challenge your current view points on systems thinking. Kant proposed that we are using an as-if metaphor to construct reality since we do not have access to the external reality. From this standpoint, we can notate that systems are not real entities in the real world. Humans are autonomous and this means that we cannot stipulate purposes for other people. The freedom of the employee puts a constraint on the organization, and the freedom of the organization puts a constraint on the employee. This requires an ongoing reinterpretation and adjustment of intentions and values at all levels of recursions in an organization. This is not a conundrum to be solved. It is a creative tension that should be reinterpreted as often as possible.

I will finish with a Zen story:

A man is riding on top of a horse that is galloping by frantically, as if he has to be somewhere important, as soon as possible. A bystander sees this and asks the man, “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” the rider replies, “ask the horse!”

Wear a mask, stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was Copernican Revolution – Systems Thinking:

Copernican Revolution – Systems Thinking:

In today’s post, I am looking at “Copernican Revolution”, a phrase used by the great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant is one of the greatest names in philosophy. I am an Engineer by profession, and I started learning philosophy after I left school. As an Engineer, I am trained to think about causality in nature – if I do this, then that happens. This is often viewed as the mechanistic view of nature and it is reliant on empiricism. Empiricism is the idea that knowledge comes from experience. In contrast, at the other end of knowledge spectrum lies rationalism. Rationalism is the idea that knowledge comes from reason (internal). An empiricist can quickly fall into the trap of induction, where you believe that there is uniformity in nature. For example, if I clapped my hand twenty times, and the light flickered each time, I can then (falsely) conclude that the next time I clap my hand the light will flicker. My mind created a causal connection to my hand clapping and the light flickering.

David Hume, another great philosopher, challenged this and identified this approach as the problem of induction. He suggested that we, humans, are creatures of habit that we assign causality to things based on repeat experience. His view was that causality is assigned by us simply by habit. His famous example of challenging whether the sun will rise tomorrow exemplifies this:

That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.

Hume came up with two main categories for human reason, often called Hume’s fork:

1. Matters of fact – this represents knowledge that we gain from experience (synthetic), and this happens after the fact of experience (denoted by posteriori). An example is – the ball is heavy. Thinking cannot provide the knowledge that the ball is heavy. One has to interact with the ball to learn that the ball is heavy.
2. Relation of ideas – this represents knowledge that does not rely on experience. This knowledge can be obtained simply through reason (analytic). This was identified as a priori or from before. For example – all bachelors are unmarried. No experience is needed for this knowledge. The meaning of unmarried is predicated in the term “bachelor”.

All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, relations of ideas, and matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic … [which are] discoverable by the mere operation of thought … Matters of fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing.

Hume’s fork stipulates that all necessary truths are analytical, the meaning is predicated in the statement. Similarly, knowledge regarding matters of fact indicate that the knowledge is contingent on the experience gotten from the interaction. This leads to further ideas such as – there is a separation between the external world and the knowledge about the world. The knowledge about the world would come only from the world through empiricism. One can view this as the human mind revolving around the world.

Immanuel Kant challenged the idea of Hume’s fork and came up with the idea of a priori synthetic knowledge. Kant proposed that we, humans, are bestowed with a framework for reasoning that is a priori and yet synthetic. Kant synthesized ideas from rationalism and empiricism, and added a third tine to Hume’s fork. Kant famously stated – That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. Kant clarified that it does not follow that knowledge arises out of experience. What we come to know is based on our mental faculty. The mind plays an important role in our knowledge of the world. The synthetic a priori propositions say something about the world, and yet at the same time they say something about our mind.

How the world is to us depends on how we experience it, and thus the knowledge of the external world is dependent on the structure of our mind. This idea is often described as a pair of spectacles that we are born with. We see the world through this pair of spectacles that we cannot take off. What we see forms our knowledge of the world, but it is dependent on the pair of spectacles that is a part of us. Kant’s great idea is that our knowledge of the world does not conform to the world. Our knowledge of the world conforms not to the nature of the world, but to the nature of our internal faculties. To paraphrase Heinz von Foerster, we do not see the world as is, it is as we see it.

Nicholas Copernicus, the Polish astronomer, came up with a heliocentric view of the world. The prevalent idea at the time was that the celestial bodies, including the sun, revolved around the earth. Copernicus challenged this, and showed that the earth actually revolves around the sun. Kant, in a similar fashion, suggested that the human minds do not revolve around the world with the meanings coming into our minds. Instead, the world revolves around our minds, and we assign meanings to the objects in the world. This is explained wonderfully by Julie. E. Maybee:

Naïve science assumes that our knowledge revolves around what the world is like, but, Hume’s criticism argued, this view entails that we cannot then have knowledge of scientific causes through reason. We can reestablish a connection between reason and knowledge, however, Kant suggested, if we say—not that knowledge revolves around what the world is like—but that knowledge revolves around what we are like. For the purposes of our knowledge, Kant said, we do not revolve around the world—the world revolves around us. Because we are rational creatures, we share a cognitive structure with one another that regularizes our experiences of the world. This intersubjectively shared structure of rationality—and not the world itself—grounds our knowledge.

Systems:

We have assumed that the knowledge of the world, our cognition, conforms to the world. Kant proposes that all we have access to is the phenomena, and not the actual world. What we are learning is dependent on us. We use an as-if model to generate meaning based on our interaction with the external world. In this viewpoint, the systems are not real things in the world. The systems are concepts that we construct, and they are as-if models that we use to make sense of the phenomena. What we view as systems are the constructions we make and depends on our need for understanding.  

Alan Stewart uses a similar idea to explain his views on constructivism:

The fundamental premise of constructivism is that we humans are self-regulating organisms who live from the inside out. As a philosophical counterpoint to naive realism, constructivism suggests that we are proactive co-creators of the reality to which we respond. Underlying this concept is that perception is an active process in which we ‘bring forth distinctions’. It is our idiosyncratic distinctions which form the structure of the world(s) which each of us inhabits.”

I will finish with a great lesson from Alan Watts:

“Everything in the world is gloriously meaningless.”

To further elaborate, I will add that all meaning comes from us. From a Hume-ian sense, we are creatures of habit in that we cannot stop assigning meaning. From a Kant-ian sense we are law-makers, not law-discoverers.

From a Systems Thinking perspective, we have unique perspectives and we assign meanings based on this. We construct “systems” “as-if” the different parts work together in a way to have a purpose and a meaning, both of which are assigned by us. The meaning comes inside out, not the other way around. To further this idea, as a human collective, we cocreate an emergent phenomenal world. In this aspect, “reality” is multidimensional, and each one of us has a version that is unique to us.  

Stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was Hegel, Dialectics and POSIWID:

Karakuri Kaizen:

As the readers of my blog know, I am an ardent student of Toyota Production System (TPS). One of the core philosophies of TPS is kaizen, often translated from Japanese as continuous improvement. It is the idea that one should continuously find ways to eliminate non-value adding activities, and in the process develop oneself and others to get better at kaizen. The idea of kaizen begetting more kaizen. Kaizen is a human capital enrichment philosophy. As Eiji Toyoda, Toyota Motor Corporation President from 1967 to 1982, said – “It is people that make things, and so people must be developed before work can start.”

One of the ways Toyota inspire their employees to nurture their creativity is Karakuri Kaizen. It is said that in the early seventeenth century, during the Edo period, European clocks were introduced in Japan. This sparked a wide curiosity amongst the Japanese craftsmen. The idea of developing motion mechanisms with elaborate sets of springs and gears was new to them. This led to the development of karakuri ningyō, or mechanized dolls. These were dolls that moved around and did several tasks such as bring tea to a guest and then bring it back to the owner, or climb a set of stairs. There was even a magician doll that performed a cups and balls routine.

What set the karakuri dolls of Japan separate from the European clockwork mechanism was the humanization of the dolls. The dolls were created with high importance to its physical features such as face, movement of head and limbs; in an effort to the make the doll life-like. Aesthetics was of utmost importance. All the mechanisms were cleverly hidden beneath clothing such that no mechanism was visible from outside. The doll moved around as if it is alive. The karakuri dolls brought fascinated delight to its spectators.

All the motion was achieved using simple springs, gravity and gears. No external power source was used. How does this all relate to the manufacturing floor? One of the challenges that is often posed to an organization is to increase its production. This is often tackled by either hiring more employees or by using automation. Automation is highly attractive even though it is sometimes cost prohibitive. It might make sense that the nonvalue added activities such as transportation and repeated motions could be replaced with a robot. Most modern manufacturing operations are riddled with automation. However, this comes with its own problems. The main one is that the automation becomes the focus of manufacturing rather than the employees. The high cost, large equipment becomes a monument that everything has to work around the monument. It is an expensive way to ensure that the status quo is maintained. To get the most out of the high expense, the new machine is run around the clock increasing the unwanted inventory and it raises the cost of the operation.

This is where karakuri kaizen comes in. Karakuri, as explained before, is a low-cost automation that does not utilize external power resources. It is comparatively small and works solely based on gravity, counterweights, springs, gears etc. The key point of karakuri kaizen is that it should inspire more kaizen. Generally, a challenge is posed to the operators to come up with a means to remove unwanted strain and motion, and to eliminate waste. Normally, this would be task where a heavy part(s) is lifted and moved to another location or where a part is turned around and operated on. The first impulse is to automate the process. This would require an expensive piece of equipment. Karakuri kaizen focuses on solving the problem on hand with what is readily available and using minimal resources. This might be construed as pushing to minimize capital expenditure. However, the most important part is that the operators are being challenge to use their wit and brains. As Fujio Cho, Toyota Motor Corporation President from 1999 to 2005, said – “Human ingenuity has no bounds.” The karakuri mechanism does not become the center of focus. Instead, the operator does. The mechanism generally is such that it can easily be modified if needed, and even replaced with another karakuri. Unlike, a heavy piece of machinery, a karakuri does not become a monument. It is built specifically to achieve a purpose, and thus it is highly customized. It is also designed in-house. The “challenge” portion is a core ingredient for kaizen.

When Toyota started car manufacturing, it did not have a lot of capital or resources. They modified existing machinery to achieve its needs. They first used what they had in-house before going outside for solutions. They relied on their employees to come up with ingenious solutions to their problems. This meant that the solutions were made specifically for their problems. Generally, when an equipment or a software is purchased, it is not always made specific to the need of the customer. The customer often has to work with what was offered. Toyota had to come up with ingenious solutions to solve their problems without spending much capital. The only capital they would come up with was human capital. Even after Toyota became successful, this mindset was maintained.

As Toyota veteran Kazuhiko Furui explained:

Toyota has tried to use as little external power as possible in its car manufacturing since its foundation. Karakuri kaizen is one of the Toyota Way values. Karakuri is a mechanism that uses gravity, springs and gears instead of external power sources to manipulate objects. A karakuri does not always work well on the first try. If something breaks, we rebuild it, trying continuously to make it better, always reforming the mechanism. For us, when we succeed, there is a great sense of achievement: “we did it!” And that brings a drive to try making yet another mechanism. Developing karakuri is also about developing people. 

Final Words:

What is the point of kaizen? The simple answer is often to make things better. If kaizen does not beget more kaizen and if it does not improve the thinking of the persons involved, then it is missing the meaning of kaizen. Kaizen should lead the employees to develop their abilities to see and identify waste, and come up with ways to eliminate waste. It should lead them to second order thinking where they don’t just what is my goal, but also ask what is the purpose of my goal. This means that the employee becomes part of the meta-system rather than just doing what they are told.

I will finish with some fine words from the great philosopher, Immanuel Kant:

The human being can either be merely trained, broken in, mechanically instructed, or really enlightened. One trains dogs and horses, and one can also train human beings. Training, however, does little; what matters above all is that they learn to think. The aim should be the principles from which all actions spring.

In case you missed it, my last post was Weber’s Law at the Gemba:

 

Kant and Respect for Humanity:

In today’s post, I will be looking at the concept of Respect of Humanity from a “Kantian philosophy standpoint”. “Respect for Humanity” is one of the two pillars of the “Toyota Way”. Yoshio Ishizaka defined Toyota Way as – Toyota’s implicit knowledge put in statutory form in 2001 ^[1]. I have written about Respect for People many times in this blog before ^[2].

Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) is a giant in modern philosophy. Kant wrote about the Categorical Imperative in his 1785 book, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ^[3]. Kant defined the Categorical Imperative as a universal moral law or principle that must be followed at all times, no matter what the circumstance or what our natural inclinations or desires are. Our focus is on Kant’s second formulation of the Categorical Imperative;

“Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.’’

Kant viewed humans as rational beings and accordingly rational beings cannot be treated merely (solely) as a means to ends, but as ends themselves.  A rational person will not subject himself to be treated as a mere means to an end, thus it is only rational to treat others the same way, in a universal manner. This thinking is applicable to oneself as well. One of the examples that Kant gave to explain this concept, is of a man who does not try to develop his natural talent. The man in the example is content with where he is, and in Kant’s eyes this means that the man is not respecting himself. Kant said, “it is not enough that the action does not conflict with humanity in our person as end in itself; it must also harmonize with it (humanity).”

Kant used the term “menschlichkeit”, a German word to explain his ideas regarding humanity. He viewed humanity as possessing a “rational nature” ^[3]. Humanity, through which we have the rational capacities to set ends, use means to them, and organize them into a whole. And as a rational being, at the heart of this is the capacity for autonomy or the ability to self-govern. The word “autonomy” from Greek means autos = self, nomos = law. This ability for self-governing, morally forces us to view each other with respect.

The concept of Respect for People does not begin or end with “being nice” to others. From a Kantian standpoint, respect is about morality. Morality is not about consequences – what others would think about me, but about intentions – it is rational to be respectful to others. Kant does not have a problem with using a person as a means to an end. For example, when an operator comes to work, he is being used to produce a product (means to an end). Kant’s problem is when a person is used as a “mere means” to an end. If the operator is seen only as a pair of hands, and if his or her input is not valued, then he or she is being used as a “mere means”. This adds a dimensionality to the relationship with the operator. It goes both ways, from the manager to the operator and the operator to the manager. The operator in turn should not view the job as a mere paycheck.

From a Kantian perspective, Respect for People means to ensure that everybody is capable of being valuable. There are opportunities for development of talent, and in Kant’s words, a chance to harmonize with humanity. How does one increase the worth of an employee? You can increase their worth by developing the employee to understand the value in his work. You can increase their worth by training him to look for gaps between the ideal state and the current state. By understanding this gap, you can further develop him to take countermeasures and corrective actions to move closer to the ideal state. Ideally, the employee would now be able to train the employees underneath him. The employee is now at a stage to be making decisions and implementing improvements on his own. In other words, he is empowered.

Final Words:

Kant was ahead of his time with his thinking. Kant spent his entire life in his hometown (Königsberg, the then capital of Prussia), and is said to have never set his foot outside a 100 mile radius from his house. Most of his famous works came later in his life. He famously said that David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher, woke him up from his dogmatic slumber.  As I was reading upon Kant as part of my personal journey through philosophy, I came upon his Categorical Imperative and it struck me how much the second formulation aligned itself well with the Respect of Humanity theme of the Toyota Way.

There are many play-on-words with Kant’s name. One of my favorite memes is below:

I will finish with an anecdote about Kant.

Kant was a firm believer in rules. He had set a rule for himself to not smoke more than one pipe a day. Smoking was Kant’s time to think and reflect. As time went on, Kant wanted to spend more time smoking. However, he did not want to break his own rule. His way out was to get a larger pipe. It is said that as time went on, the size of the bowls of his pipes grew in size considerably.

Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was Process Validation and the Problem of Induction:

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Sales-Marketing/dp/1926537084/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494183905&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Toyota+Way+in+Sales+and+Marketing

[2] https://harishsnotebook.wordpress.com/?s=respect+for+people

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Groundwork-Metaphysics-Morals-Immanuel-Kant/dp/0300094868