A Whole: More Than The Sum Of The Parts

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Russ Ackoff, architect and management consultant, explains the tendency of managers to view property in isolation to the rest of the business by the general fact that complex systems (including organisations) are usually managed in a contradictory way, where the emphasis is on improving the constituent parts instead of the whole. [6] However, dividing any system into separate parts affects its connectedness, and hence the properties of the system itself.  This is why improving the property function without reference to the rest of the business is unlikely to yield better results for either property or the business.  In fact, such an approach can reduce overall performance: a system should be studied as a whole

Systems thinking is a way of viewing and interpreting the world as a set of inter-related elements; it focuses on the links between the parts of a system instead of reducing the system to its constituent parts for analysis.  This approach can be applied to all systems: biological, mechanical or social; and lessons learned in one type of system can often be applied to others, [7] so that this approach is very suited to property and business.  For example, a systems approach can explain why problems, which might initially appear to require a property solution, can sometimes be resolved by interventions in different areas of the business.  Understanding how parts of the system are linked can explain why changes in one part of the enterprise can have unexpected or delayed effects in another, or why planned consequences of some changes never occur.  [8]

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