Here are the top three reasons why organizational theorist Russell Ackoff is ninja:
-He is 90 years old
-In spite of being 90 years old, he is still relevant as a theorist
-Most importantly, he understands the nature of ultimate truth…that it is fundamentally resistant to being owned
If Ackoff was Buddhist, he would understand why all Buddhists must ultimately kill Buddha:
A guru produces disciples, and a discipline, and a doctrine,” he says. “If you are a follower of a guru, you don’t go beyond his thoughts, you accept his thoughts. He gives you the questions and the answers – it’s an end to thought. An educator is exactly the opposite,” he says. “You take off where he sets you up for the next set of questions. One is open-ended, the other is closed.
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We don’t call it consulting,” he states firmly. “We make a distinction between consulting and being an educator. A consultant goes in with a solution. He tries to impose it on a situation. An educator tries to train the people responsible for the work to work it out for themselves. We don’t pretend to know the way to get the answer.
If Bruce Lee was a b-school prof, he would look like Ackoff.
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Here’s a really interesting keynote Ackoff gave a while back on the difference between transformation and reformation and systems thinking…good stuff.
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