Warfield Interprets the RRM Problematique to the participants on last day of the Rapid Response Manufacturing (RRM) Workshop at Ford Motor Company, explaining the how and why of knowledge helpful to facilitators and participants when trying to complete very difficult systems planning and then make the plans acceptable to top management. This is a copy of one of the cassettes from the RRM workshop. I found it at home on 8 March 2007, and can't recall how we happen to have it here. Maybe Ben Broome or Scott Staley made a copy and gave it to me. Or maybe I reviewed the workshop tapes myself, in the nineties, saw this segment and decided to make an extra copy of this excellent discussion by Warfield of how the whole ISM process works and is applied to a real situation. The complete workshop held 19-21 May 1993 took 18 hours of filming is now on 9 VHS cassettes which were donated to GMU Library. This title (Warfield Interprets the RRM Problematique) is actually a COPY of one of those cassettes at GMU library IN Box 85.  However  I am not sure WHICH of the 9 RRM cassettes is the one with John's talk.  I believe it might be the last one, before the end of the workshop.  

The tape shows Scott Staley opening the meeting, then asking Warfield to talk about the finished RRM problematique displayed on the wall of the room. Warfield explains the results of the ISM exercise as shown by a display of problem elements linked by arrows. He covers the topics of spread think, transparency, cultural issues, the significance of the numerical activity score, and influence score. He discusses the concept of "Linguistic Domain" defining the term and how it came to be identified as important in top level planning in a corporation.

Staley then asks Warfield to talk about the mathematics of the modeling process, which Warfield does, but first going back to historical beginnings of the syllogism, the contributions of Leibniz and De Morgan to Theory of Relationships, and finally C.S. Peirce who Warfield says "created the modern version of the logic of relations", then how an understanding of transitivity coming down from Abelard, De Morgan and Peirce is the underpinning of Harary's book Structural Modeling, Theory of Directed Graphs, which in turn was starting point for creation of the ISM algorithms (by Warfield, but he doesn't say so in the talk he is giving to the workshop participants). Warfield explains how the computer mechanically sorts and displays input from the participants using mathematical inference.

He mentions the Fujitsu Corp algorithm for computer generated displays and the Societal Systems book which described the mathematics used, and finally he discusses the contribution of Burch at Texas A&M Philosophy department, who is the one well, what did Burch do? Something important. Warfield also puts in a plug for the 30 volume set of Peirce's work being produced at U of Indiana.

In a followup question period someone asks about how the triggering question is decided on, and Warfield gives lengthy explanation of processes needed to arrive at a usable triggering question, discussing roles of Broker and the information that participants should receive and understand long before they ever arrive to do the ISM. Put it all together it is a very helpful talk for someone trying to learn how to do Interactive Management. Scott Staley, Ben Broome and David Keever who were facilitators at this workshop, were all shown on camera in this taped segment of Ford RRM. Since the original RRM workshop tapes have been misplaced at GMU, we sure better hang on to this tape, since it might possibly be the only part of the filming that we will ever have. (R.w. 8 March 2007.)

This is one of several sets of videotapes which we asked GMU to copy and send to Ben Broome and to Roxana Cardenas. I don't KNOW whether the copying was ever done. (2/24/2006, r.w.)

Follow up and Important note – Hurrah, those original 1993 VHS tape cassettes, once misplaced, are now found again! They are in the latest issue of Finding Aid of Warfield Collection at Fenwick Library. All 9 of them are listed, they are in Box 85. (r.w. May 27, 2016).