Linkage Map

See Linkage Mapping

Associates in Process Improvement (API ) have elaborated on J. Edwards Deming’s 1951 sketch of Business as a System. It includes three distinct levels that API refers to as the Driver Level, the Mainstay Level, and the Support Level. They also add Purpose, Metrics, Customers and Suppliers to the process oriented levels.

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Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM), might locate the Support Level in VSM Systems 2, 3* and 3. The Mainstay Level includes all the units that produce goods and services used by direct external customers. The Driver Level would be represented in Beer’s System 3, 4, and 5.

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Sofi has 12 functions or domains of responsibility 66 process link types in which to locate all the processes in any enterprise.

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Linkage maps created in Jönköping County, Sweden during 2002 had a profound effect on me. I saw that a co-created mapping of the parts and their connections could lead to a 300 fold increase in improvements in a county medical system. API, a Deming inspired small US consulting group had adapted J. Edward Deming's 1951 diagram of a business as a system and turned it into a powerful method to improve whole systems.

No one had ever tried to use it at the scale of a whole health system. Göran Henriks and Sven Olaf Karlsen had that kind of courage, competence and partnership. After about one year of experience two people from each Pursuing Perfection site in the US, England, and the Netherlands were invited to Sweden. I have never forgotten the talk that Sven and Göran gave. It was titled Mapping Chaos.

At the end of the presentation one US healthcare executive said, "Yes, yes Sven. But can you just tell us the three things that we need to do." With no hesitation and some emotion, Sven replied, "No. No. We are doing it all!"

# Now there is a system thinker and leader--not a bureaucrat.