A Quote by Russell L. Ackoff

Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are extracted from messes by analysis. Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.
Most people will solve the problems they know how to solve. Roughly speaking they will solve B+ problems instead of A+ problems. A+ problems are high impact problems for your company but they're difficult problems.
Teaching and writing, really, they support and nourish each other, and they foster good thinking. Because when you show up in the classroom, you may have on the mantle of authority, but in fact, you're just a writer helping other writers think through their problems. Your experience with the problems you've tried to solve comes into play in how you try to teach them to solve their problems.
Women are running companies, serving as the human resource director of companies, and helping employees solve problems. Women are doctors, lawyers, teachers, sales managers, marketers. They handle problems in the workplace by day and manage their families by night.
I'm concerned that we don't address the water pollution problems in other countries. If we move forward and don't clean up the messes of the past, they'll just get swept under the rug.
[Facebook and Twitter] aren't the real problems in the office. The real problems are what I like to call the M&Ms, the Managers and the Meetings.
It is much easier to make intellectual messes than it is to clarify complicated issues, especially when real solutions would challenge the status quo and require much careful thought across many fields of knowledge. Problems of climatic change, biotic impoverishment, population growth, and the choices to be made by various technologies and the transition to a sustainable and decent society with an economy that works over the long-term are difficult, complex, and intertwined problems with many possible answers.
There are no negro problems, or Polish problems, or Jewish problems, or Greek problems, or women's problems, there are HUMAN PROBLEMS”.
When neighbours interact with each other, it is only natural that sometimes they will run into problems of some kind or another. As long as they respect each other, properly manage differences, and pursue mutual benefits, there will be harmonious sound instead of jarring noises.
A Christian marriage is [not] one with no problems or even a marriage with fewer problems. (It may well mean more problems.) But it does mean a life in which two people are able to accept each other and love each other in the midst of problems and fears. It means a marriage in which selfish people can accept selfish people without constantly trying to change them -- and even accept themselves, because they realize personally that they have been accepted by Christ.
We have no problems, only situations. Not all problems have solutions, but all situations have outcomes.
Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems. I choose to call such a system a mess.
No scientist is admired for failing in the attempt to solve problems that lie beyond his competence. ... Good scientists study the most important problems they think they can solve. It is, after all, their professional business to solve problems, not merely to grapple with them.
I tended to write poems about both social and spiritual problems, and some problems one doesn't really want to solve, and so the problems themselves are solved. You certainly don't want to solve problems in poems that haven't been solved in the world.
When things go wrong in our life and we encounter difficult situations, we tend to regard the situation itself as our problem, but in reality whatever problems we experience come from the side of the mind. If we were to respond to difficult situations with a positive or peaceful mind they would not be problems for us; indeed, we may even come to regard them as challenges or opportunities for growth and development. Problems arise only if we respond to difficulties with a negative state of mind. Therefore, if we want to be free from problems, we must transform our mind.
Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.
A small-state world would not only solve the problems of social brutality and war; it would solve the problems of oppression and tyranny. It would solve all problems arising from power.
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