Aperture Book of the Month - June 2024

In our book of the month for June, economist, former investment banker, and journalist Dan Davies examines what he calls ‘the accountability sink’, the phenomenon of a human-centred system where rules and process prevent conditional judgement. More specifically, human intervention is blocked by an impenetrable and inflexible structure. Responsibility become impersonal and issues are distanced from leadership accountability.   

Davies offers two main drivers for ‘The Unaccountability Machine’: society’s increasing complexity and the single-minded quest for optimising profit and ‘shareholder value’. To counter this, he draws on the field of management cybernetics and Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model. Davies focuses on balancing the flow of information around the system, particularly with regard to identifying indicators and warnings that come from outside the preconceived model, worldview, or system design. One is reminded of the fallacious use of GDP as a measure of societal ‘good’.

Davies’ polemic about private equity and orthodox economic theory risks diluting his core message but the thesis remains well argued, elegant, and intriguing. It clearly highlights the critical need for the management community to increase its systems awareness, engagement, and oversight. It also reinforces the principle of focusing on the interaction and connections between components to interact, influence, and intervene rather than the alternative – and more frequent – preoccupation with the components themselves. That’s systems thinking!