John Gall Quotes

SYSTEMS TEND TO MALFUNCTION CONSPICUOUSLY JUST AFTER THEIR GREATEST TRIUMPH.

The Aswan Dam, built at enormous expense to improve the lot of the Egyptian peasant, has caused the Nile to deposit its fertilizing sediment in Lake Nasser, where it is unavailable. Egyptian fields must now be artificially fertilized. Gigantic fertilizer plants have been built to meet the new need. The plants require enormous amounts of electricity. The dam must operate at capacity merely to supply the increased need for electricity which was created by the building of the dam

The system always kicks back. — Systems get in the way— or, in slightly more elegant language: Systems tend to oppose their own proper functions. Systems tend to malfunction conspicuously just after their greatest triumph.

Inaccessibility Theorem: THE INFORMATION YOU HAVE IS NOT THE INFORMATION YOU WANT. THE INFORMATION YOU WANT IS NOT THE INFORMATION YOU NEED. THE INFORMATION YOU NEED IS NOT THE INFORMATION YOU CAN OBTAIN.

Reviewing the 6 meltdowns that had occurred in the 54 trials that had been conducted to date, that source estimated the risk to be one in a hundred million.

A question frequently asked is: does not the persistent occurrence of Horrible Examples of Systems-function (or Malfunction) prove something about human nature? If humans were rational, wouldn’t they act otherwise than they do? We reply: Systems-functions are not the result of human intransigeance. We take it as given that people are generally doing the very best they know how. Our point, repeatedly stressed in this text, is that Systems operate according to Laws of Nature, and that Laws of Nature are not suspended to accommodate our human shortcomings. There is no alternative to learning How Systems Work, unless one is willing to continue to run afoul of those Laws. Whoever does not study the Laws of Systemantics and learn them that way, is destined to learn them the hard way, by direct encounter in the world of Experience. That such runnning-afoul continues to occur is simply a reflection of the fact that knowledge of those laws is not yet sufficiently widespread. The problem is one of Education, and this book represents an effort in that direction.

IN SETTING UP A NEW SYSTEM, TREAD SOFTLY. YOU MAY BE DISTURBING ANOTHER SYSTEM THAT IS ACTUALLY WORKING

The field of Architecture has given rise to a second major principle relating to the Life Cycle of Systems. This principle has emerged from the observation that temporary buildings erected to house Navy personnel in World War I continued to see yeoman service in World War II as well as in subsequent ventures, and are now a permanent, if fading, feature of Constitution Avenue in Washington... We conclude: A temporary patch will very likely be permanent.

People, through finding something ‘beautiful,’ think something else ‘unbeautiful

A complex system can fail in an infinite number of ways

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

success is largely a matter of Avoiding the Most Likely Ways to Fail[d. ], and since every Bug advances us significantly along that path, we may hearken back to the advice given in the Preface and urge the following Policy: CHERISH YOUR BUGS. STUDY THEM But

Loose systems last longer and function better.

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work.

anyone who identifies him/herself publicly as a “change agent” is self-convicted of incompetence. Changes will certainly occur as a result, but they are not likely to be the changes desired.