Idealized Design

Russell Ackoff, Univ. of Pennsylvania, has written a book called Idealized Design based on his experiences at AT&T in the 1970’s and several decades of consulting work with industry. In this case “design” does not mean the early phases of a product creation. Instead, he is talking about strategic transformation of a company or business unit. Rather than looking at where the business is now and designing forward to a future goal, Ackoff teaches his clients to imagine that the organization is right now in the ideal state they are looking to attain. Once that state is defined clearly, he has them work backward from there to where they are now. He claims that the advantage is that this prevents them from (1) being stumped by current organizational problems they are facing, (2) following dead end branches that traditional forward chaining methods would lead them down. It also retains their enthusiasm for the possible future throughout the exercise and execution because people are not immediately disarmed by the current state of the organization.

The concept, minus the process, is captured in: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1540