Introduction
Hello, SD-cast listeners. My name is Christine Tang. In this podcast, I will interview someone in the System Dynamics or Systems Thinking community.
This is Episode 8. Titled: “What is your SDory, Ken Cooper?”
Biography
Kenneth “Ken” Cooper has led hundreds of applications of System Dynamics modeling efforts for over 50 years with a total value of a quarter of a trillion dollars. He was President of Pugh-Roberts Associates, Managing Partner of PA Consulting and the founder of Cooper Human Systems. Ken is a two-time Edelman Laureate and a System Dynamics Society Applications Award winner. He is currently retired but works on select consulting projects. He earned his bachelors at MIT, studying under Jay Forrester, and his masters at Boston University.
Thank you for joining us today, Ken.
Ken Cooper: My pleasure.
Interview
Christine: The first question is “When and how did you ‘discover’ System Dynamics?”
Ken Cooper: Well, I think, as with perhaps a lot of people, I was in college. I was a sophomore at MIT and a friend of mine said, “Hey, Cooper. I think there's a course at Sloan that you would really like.” Now, at that back then the course was Industrial Dynamics, not System Dynamics as it became later, Industrial Dynamics I and the instructor was a fellow by the name of Carl Swanson. And in addition to the basics, he focused a lot on applications, describing applications of industrial system dynamics and I don't think it took more than two classes for me to be hooked and that was that.
Christine: Did Jay Forrester ever teach you?
Ken Cooper: Yes, I took Principles of Systems from Jay. He was quite the demanding instructor. And I also took...what was then the...I think it was the official applications course from Ed Roberts who was the co-founder of Pugh-Roberts. And I don't know how familiar everyone will be with those names...but certainly at the time Pugh-Roberts was really, I think, by far the leading consulting firm in the area of System Dynamics. So that was my introduction to Ed Roberts and then Pugh-Roberts which I joined a few years later.
Christine: I feel like we should mention who Jack Pugh is.
Ken Cooper: Yeah. Jack was the original author of the DYNAMO simulation language and an active leader in Pugh-Roberts.
Christine: Hence the name Pugh-Robers. [laughs]
Ken Cooper: Exactly.
Christine: Thank you.
Ken Cooper: Sure.
Christine: What was the first model that you encountered?
Ken Cooper: The first one I encountered was in that very first course that I mentioned and as I said, he liked to talk about applications. The very first one (at least that I remember) was this model that had been put together for a client who was a manufacturer and seller of washing machines and the clever code name that they gave the company was Vortex...not too hard to figure out who that was. But that was the first model that I encountered. Professionally, the first model that I worked on at Pugh-Roberts which was for [a] client in the insurance industry, Aetna Insurance.
Christine: And what was the first model that you built?
Ken Cooper: Well, I helped in building a model of the US automobile industry for the Department of Transportation. I did a lot on that model but the first and I guess the footnote to that is that the outcome from that work, which is now over 40 years ago, was the CAFE standards, the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards, back in the days when there was a shortage of gasoline actually. The issue was approving car fuel efficiency. That became the standards, the legislative standards, over 40 years ago and I think they're still in effect.
The first model that I really had the lead role in building was the original Litton model that John Sterman talks about in his Business Dynamics book (maybe some people have heard about). Really [it] is the first major project dynamics model that I'm aware of...that existed. And we put that together for the company that was doing a major Navy shipbuilding...actually a couple of major Navy shipbuilding programs. [Litton] got into a big dispute. The overriding issue in getting the dispute resolved was who owed whom how much money as a result of the cost impacts from different things that had happened. And it was [a] very successful result for our client in achieving a...what at that time was an extreme, an unprecedentedly large financial settlement from the government.
Christine: Yes, I watch videos of your talking about the Litton Industries case on the System Dynamics Society's Youtube channel. Can you tell us more about that and your other award-winning cases?
Ken Cooper: Uh sure. Well...let's see. There is a lot of (hopefully) references that people could take a look at for more of the details of that work. [Christine is nodding]
It was quite an experience. It went on for a couple of years. It was, as I said, the first project in which I had the lead role. I was going to save this story for later on but I'll toss it in right now. It was a very intense...because it was such a large piece of litigation, the pressure was not only high because we all wanted to do well but it was just a large amount of money directly at stake. And so, the wonderful client that we had, the individual who was a senior vice president of Litton. His name was Rich Goldbach. We remain friends to this day. And Rich needed some work done on a weekend, not an unreasonable request. But at the time, I had a two-year-old son and my wife was working weekends and I explained this to Rich. Now, Rich was living in Alabama. So I explained this to Rich that I wasn't going to be able to do much very efficiently because I had to look after my baby son and he said, “I'll take care of it.” And he flew to Boston and stayed at my home during the weekend and took care of my two year old and I like to chuckle over the fact that I had this senior vice president changing diapers for my son [Christine laughs]. But anyway, so we ended up...as I said getting a very good result for the client and that really led to a lot more work for us, for Pugh-Roberts in that same area and really was the beginning of...it was the launching of the whole area of project modeling as well as the smaller area within that of dispute resolution. [It] was really the first of its kind and that, as you alluded to, that I was named an Edelman Laureate for that work a long long time ago.
At the other end of the span of work I did in the realm of project management was the work for Fluor Corporation just several years ago. The interesting...to me anyway...the interesting point about that is that while my first work was analysis of this giant dispute, the more recent Fluor work was a multi-year effort dedicated to avoiding project disputes. And for that work I was again named an Edelman Laureate. But the work itself was wonderful in that we got to go around to many different Fluor offices around the world and essentially teach them project dynamics and also what to do with the tool that we developed for them to help avoid the impacts [of disputes].
Those are a couple of the more notable projects and squeezed in between there was those two...bookends (if you will [call them that]) was about two or three hundred different project models that I worked on...so [it] covers a lot of years.
Christine: Do you want to talk about the Mastercard [project?]. I saw it was in your notes...
Ken Cooper: Sure! The Mastercard is an interesting case. I think it's one of the more iconic and successful strategy analysis pieces of work. That started (like some of the other bits of work that we will talk about) that started with something equivalent to a napkin, a cocktail napkin as well.
We were working for this relatively small division of Mastercard. Our client on that work told us about a problem that the company as a whole was having, which was a multi-year decline in its market share. So that got us to thinking and even though it was a smaller scope that we started with, we showed them some ideas, [“them” being] our immediate client and they took it to their boss and their boss's boss and we got hired to build a model of Mastercard and its competitors. That work led us to identify a few very specific conditions that they could implement different policies in order to reverse their market share turnaround. So we had these ideas all set up. We talked with our immediate client. And one day...I happened to be working at that moment in London, and I got a call from our immediate client and he said, “I've got you a space in the board meeting, the meeting of the board of directors for Mastercard to talk about your work and the conclusions that we found.” And I said, “Great! (You know) when is the meeting?” and he says, “Tomorrow morning.” I said, “Well, I'm in London.” He says, “I don't care whatever you have to do. Get here. Get to New York for the board meeting tomorrow morning.” So just to put a date on this. This is back in the time when the Concorde supersonic transatlantic flights were running. So I went over to Heathrow and bought a ticket on the Concorde, took off from London early in the mid-morning, landed two hours before I took off, walked into the Manhattan office building for the board of directors meeting and described the model and the analyses we had done and what we had come up with as a suggestion. I learned later on that they absolutely loved it. And what we had come up with was a strategy to implement what's now referred to or then was referred to as co-branded cards so like the Shell
Mastercard or the Target Mastercard (or whatever it might be), which had never been done before, so that consumers--card holders--Mastercard holders who were say customers of General Motors would get some kind of discount on their car purchase as a result of using a Mastercard or at the gas pump or at the service station or airline miles or whatever and that became the source of a major uh market share turnaround very much as we had predicted of...I believe the number was five full percentage points over the course of the next year or two which was stunning for them. That had to be one of the more satisfying bits of strategy work that I was involved in.
Christine: The evidence of it is everywhere. I have a JetBlue Mastercard actually and when I see it, I think of you now.
Ken Cooper: [Laughs] Well, it certainly has spread throughout the industry. A little footnote to that I ran into my client at Mastercard years later and he said, “You know...the other companies in the industry were just amazed that Mastercard had come up with this clever and effective new idea. So that was a good little extra pat on the back.
Christine: Mm and to clarify for those who aren't aware because I think your story about your flight was a little confusing...so you left London in mid-morning London time and then arrived in New York also mid-morning because of the time difference but you arrived earlier...
Ken Cooper: Yeah it was three-hour flight to cover five hours. It's a five-hour time difference. It's a three-hour flight so I actually arrived in New York before I took off...in terms of the clock on the wall.
Christine: Mmhmm.
Ken Cooper: Doesn't exist anymore...although I know that there is talk of bringing a supersonic transport back.
Christine: Okay. Thank you.
Ken Cooper: Sure! I...you know, I will...I can't promise I won't lapse into more old stories of that very same sort.
Christine: It's okay. It's good to re-hear things. We need to repeat things in order to learn it and people who want to know more can watch your videos on YouTube.
Ken Cooper: Have to provide a link or something to those.
Christine: Yes, I will provide a link in the description of the podcast.
Ken Cooper: Great!
Christine: Yes, next question. Would you please tell us more about your transition from modeling project dynamics and business dynamics to human biological dynamics?
Ken Cooper: Yeah, that's a fairly short story. I'll be glad to tell it. I had been thinking about how good an idea it would be to apply System Dynamics to the systems of the human body and the disorders and those symptoms. I've been thinking about that for an embarrassingly long time before I did anything about it...probably over 15 years.
I got to a point where I had just finished the contract with Fluor and a friend of mine said, “Well...so what's next?” and I paused and he said, “You know you've been talking about doing the human biology modeling for a long time since I've known you. When are you ever going to get a better chance?” And he was right. And so the transition basically happened at that moment. And I put together a company that was dedicated to doing that. We raised some money and worked on several diseases centered around the human immune system. Modeled HIV and type 1 diabetes and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) involving brain damage concussive hits that afflicts many who have been in severe contact sports as well as in the military. So that was the transition that happened very quickly.
Christine: Okay...and I see in your notes you plan to talk a little more about the NFL later?
Ken Cooper: Yeah, I can tell this story any time but I was going to rela[y] that to you when you ask me about memorable moments. [Laughs]
So I have another airline flight story that goes with that and on this time I had been doing a lot of modeling and consulting in the defense industry and a lot of those defense contractors are and were at the time based in southern California. So I was flying back and forth to Los Angeles quite a lot. Now, I accumulated a lot of miles so occasionally I would treat myself to a first class seat and such was the case on one particular flight back east from Los Angeles. As I was sitting...I think I was in the first row...as I was sitting there, there was this great hubbub that started around the front of the plane. And there was...I could tell that somebody that they cared about was getting on the plane and he sat down next to me and we chatted over the course of the flight and I introduced myself and he introduced himself. I said, “So why are you heading back east?” and he said, “Well, I am on my way to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine.” And so I said, “So well, what is that lifelong dream?” He says, “I'm on my way to purchase an NFL team.” So my ears perked up. I happen to like football but I also was thinking that this might be a really interesting modeling opportunity. So I proceeded to tell him that it seemed to me that a lot of teams, a lot of football teams exhibit a cyclical performance over the course of several years. And that one of the things that the work that I was engaged in was focused on doing was helping to understand what causes such cyclical behavior and how to improve that behavior. And I got out...literally got out a cocktail napkin and sketched out a little diagram of what I thought were some of the dynamics going on over the years for a team. As we continued to chat, toward the end of the flight, he said, “Well, Ken, if you can prove to me that teams show cyclical performance. I'll hire you to help us out.” A few days later, I collected and graphed the winning percentage of several different football teams over the years and sure enough most of them had some cyclical performance over the years. Some of them were cycled at a high level, some at a low. Some of them had wild fluctuations over the years. I remember the most perfect sinusoidal behavior was by the New York Giants. I haven't looked at their record the last couple years but anyway, that was the case then.
And he hired us. We worked on building with him and his team and his coaches and a few other people around the NFL a model of actually several different teams including his own with the idea of understanding what different policies and practices the successful teams were using and how best to implement them with that team. So we got the fun of doing that work. We got the opportunity to...a couple of us went down to sit in the what I think they still call the war room on college draft day when each of the teams--NFL teams--takes turns choosing people--graduates from college who have done well in college football to draft them into that team of the NFL. And that was just a lot of fun because we were banging away on a couple of different computers evaluating different college football prospects to see how they might effect the performance of the team in the longer term. That was one of the more pure fun projects that I've been involved in.
Christine: So I want to comment on something that you said. You said that they are college graduates but from what I understand they don't have to graduate. They can leave early too. Right?
Ken Cooper: They can. Yes. Yes well there are all sorts of exceptions made when it's real-it's really good football talent so...they'll find a way. There are people maybe not graduating but they are leaving college. Yes.
Christine: I'm just somewhat curious so did this also consider trades? Because there's draft day trades too. Right?
Ken Cooper: Sure. We used the model for a lot of different things but one of them was yes to evaluate what assets what football talents needed would be most highly leveraged in improving the team's performance. So one specific case, it was on college draft day and another was on trades that can be done, not anytime, but over a much wider time frame.
Christine: I don't think that was in the YouTube videos though. I'm not sure. I don't recall exactly but thank you for answering that side question that I just threw in.
Ken Cooper: [Laughs] You bet! So I don't know if I answered your question after all of that rambling.
Christine: Yes, [you did]. I asked about the NFL because you mentioned CTE. I forgot the full name for it...because that
Ken Cooper: Yeah…
Christine: became famous because of NFL players.
Ken Cooper: Yeah...uh it is...and you know having that chance to meet the...not really get to know but to meet several of the players sort of put an extra point (if you will [call it that]) on the work that I ended up doing several years later in understanding or at least attempting to understand better what the causes of CTE are and what the dynamics of CTE are. Because for a long time, perhaps still, the prevailing belief was that CTE was caused by concussions. And so there's a lot of emphasis, even today, on the concussion protocol that players have to go through if they had a head injury. But what I came to believe based on the modeling that we did is that CTE is actually caused by a modest misbehavior of the immune system in the brain that's brought on by a series of small sub-concussive hits that when you put them all together and over the course of time, that they trigger a response of the immune system in the brain that overreacts and causes a little bit of collateral damage when the immune cells are cleaning up from these little bits of damage that these hits cause in the brain. And that doesn't happen to everyone but we could identify how if a couple of factors overreact that it could trigger a long-term sequence of events, a snowballing that occurs over many years that would eventually show up as visible or detectable behavior and cognitive problems associated with CTE.
At least last time I checked, the only way CTE could be confirmed was post mortem, by examination after death. So that's the rather tenuous connection between the NFL work and the later biological modeling. Both were extremely interesting...although with very different subject matter.
Christine: Yes. Next question is what are you currently working on?
Ken Cooper: Well, still doing a bit of work in the biological modeling area working with Raafat Zaini on modeling the phenomenon of cytokine storms in COVID...although the death rates are dramatically lower these days. It turns out that the primary cause of death when it occurs with COVID is not damaged by the virus itself, so much as it is damage by the immune system's over response in the production of cytokines. Cytokines (for those who don't study the immune system) are very strong chemicals that the immune system releases in order to gear up a stronger and stronger response from multiple different kinds of immune cells. And the phenomenon of a cytokine storm is extremely--is very poorly understood. But again the damage to, in this case typically, the lungs is usually more significantly caused by this over response of cytokines than it is by the damage from the virus itself. And so, Raafat and I decided a little while ago to model that. It seemed to us that it was another control system problem and we think that's exactly what's behind it. Is that over response.
Happens mostly with people who are older, as you know. We're thinking that the reason for that is that the t [cells]--one of the immune cells that the cytokines are aiming to gear up are the very powerful t-cells. They're the cells that are most responsible for killing the virus infected cells. And the older that you get, the weaker your t-cell response. I mean it varies obviously by individual. But generally the older that you are, the weaker your t-cell response. And it's looking like that weak t-cell response ends up leading to cytokines being more and more activated (if you will), essentially attempting to enlist a greater t-cell response which some people aren't capable of doing. And so the snowballing effect continues with the cytokines more and more. And as I said, they're very powerful chemicals so they end up actually causing the bulk of the lung damage themselves.
At least that's the way it looks right now to us. Have [not] yet have a doctor confirm our suspicions but that's what it's looking like. So that's one thing I'm doing. I'm writing about that a little bit. And then as a little bit longer term effort, I'm also writing a book on the subject of project dynamics that will be mostly focused on applications--lessons for project management that we've come to identify from our modeling of all of those different projects for clients over the years in a lot of different industries and seen over the course of the...I think I added up to it's about a quarter trillion dollars of projects that I led the modeling for.
There are some, I think, some strong lessons to be gained from viewing those projects and the
different phenomena that we've seen through the lens of System Dynamics. So that's what I'm
aiming to do as well.
Christine: I look forward to the book and I also would like to thank you for presenting in one of the WPI System Dynamics Collective Learning Meetings on the cytokine storm.
Ken Cooper: You are very welcome. I was glad to do it.
I think it's important and as I said to you just before we started the recording that I think this is a really important service that you're leading here. You offer people a chance to learn about the things that have preceded the current work in the field but also to put out in a more effective way some of the things that deserve to be seen and heard on a wider scale. So [I’m] really happy to participate in that.
Christine: Thank you and this is fun. I think people like to tell stories, especially fun or funny stories.
Ken Cooper: Right. Exactly.
Christine: I actually have another side question. Did you ever modify your project dynamics models and study the rework cycle within your own consulting work, your own project dynamics? Is that what made you so successful?
Ken Cooper: I have yet to see a project consulting or software or defense or civil construction or much of anything that I don't get some lessons because of thinking about the rework cycle.
I don't know if I've ever talked about this before but one of the things for one client, that was a ship builder. This was again going to be a case that was going to court and they said, “Ken, we need you to be able to describe what's going on in the projects but it has to be simpler than going through this big complex shipbuilding project.” And so I put together a smaller project example that I called “Party Time” and the story...and we used it. We used this with [laughs] with the judge in the case.
And Party Time was a model that we actually built of how a husband and wife team are getting ready for a party that they're going to throw that that evening and things happen along the way that cause delays and disruptions and it slows them down and so they bring on their teenagers to help out but that results in skill dilution and lower productivity and more rework and that slows things down more and so on. And so we used that simple example as a way to get people who are not real familiar with projects and certainly not modeling as a way to think about how it would be helpful to look at complex projects and how they do get delayed and disrupted. And that worked very very effectively. So that's the Party Time story.
And once again I've forgotten the question that triggered [laughs] triggered that [laughs] that memory.
Christine: My question was…
Ken Cooper: Oh! More rework cycle. Yes.
Christine: Yes.
Ken Cooper: Yeah, rework cycle. Yes. Yeah. The rework cycle was not called the rework cycle for a long time. When...I remember that...I literally remember the first time I diagrammed what we now call the rework cycle (It was for that Litton project) and I showed my first shot at that diagram to the client. At that point, it did not include the undiscovered rework part and the client said, “Yeah, now understand, Ken, that (you know) a lot of times we don't even see what rework needs to be done until many months later when we're trying to build the thing.” And so that was the instigation for adding that very crucial concept of undiscovered rework. But anyway, that structure had the very unattractive name, for over a decade, of the work accomplishment structure. At one point, I was encouraged to write to publish something on it. And I needed something...I wanted something that had a little bit more jazz than the work accomplishment structure. And so I settled on the rework cycle. And that name caught on.
Christine: I want to say something. I forgot...oh! The Party Time story. That somewhat sounds like the opposite of what happened with Fluor. I remember reading about Fluor. You built training programs for those managers and other people in Fluor Corporation. Correct?
Ken Cooper: We did. Well, yes. Because Fluor themselves had been through a lot of very large disputes. We had worked with them on a couple of those disputes. And the senior VP who was our client said, “We, as a company, have decided that we just can't afford the cost and time and distraction of management effort to go through these very costly and time consuming big disputes. Can you come up with a way to help us avoid those?” And so what we came up with was the work that's reported in that paper that won the applications award and I think it was 2010 [or] 2009 which was an easy to use version of the model that that we ended up applying to...gee a couple of hundred Fluor projects. Maybe not quite that many but it was between 150 and 200 projects all around the world and trained hundreds of managers in its use. And that was a very successful case that (you know) had, as I said earlier, had as its objective the avoidance of disputes and turned out to be very effective.
Christine: Fantastic and I also like the example of not just building a model and giving it [the results] to your client then walking away. You trained them how to use this.
Ken Cooper: We did. Fluor had a system where they did course evaluations and I think that series of courses ended up having the highest ratings of any courses in the company. It was received very very well.
But let me say this now that we're on that topic. It's not just a really good job of modeling that matters. To do something like what I just described for Fluor and several of the other clients requires a very special kind of individual client, an individual who is able to see the value of this relatively unorthodox approach and even more importantly has the courage to stand up for it and to advocate its use when a lot of people are not predisposed to using models of this sort.
And so (you know) I'm thinking as I say this of four or five extraordinary individual clients that I've had who have stood up for doing the work and sustaining it and growing it. So you really need that very special kind of individual to advocate and support.
Christine: Champion. That's what I hear people say.
Ken Cooper: Champion. Exactly.
Christine: Thank you for that wiSDom. Would you please tell us other wiSDom that you have for students or those new to System Dynamics?
Ken Cooper: Sure. Well, especially for those who are new, I guess I would say that it's extremely important to work with a strong team. I've yet to find that individual practitioner who could cover all the bases, who could do it all well enough to sustain a good practice for a long period of time. And so it's important to get on a good team and work with the people who have slightly different areas of skill and strength and I guess a second bit (or third I've lost track) aim to work on the important stuff. There are all kinds of things available that are appropriate for the use of System Dynamics. You might as well work on the things that are important to the world to a business to society. The models aren't any harder but I think it's important to aim high. System Dynamics has tools that if applied well and diligently can make a huge amount of difference. And I guess that's the other piece. Just be persistent in working on the important stuff with a strong team.
Christine: Yeah. In your notes, I see that you've been told that “That cannot be done” on every good thing you've done.
Ken Cooper: Yeah. Thank you for reminding me of that. I literally think there is not a single important, first-of-a-kind project that I've ever worked on where I wasn't told that it couldn't be done. The Litton work couldn't be done. The Fluor work couldn't be done. The biology work couldn't be done. The Mastercard work couldn't be done. And not just once. I'm reminded of a time when I was presenting the biological modeling to the dean and several faculty--several professors at a well-known medical school and describing what we had started but we had not finished--that immune system modeling work. And there were, I think, about 20 faculty members in the room and the dean and I explicitly remembered that a grand total of one person thought that this was a good idea and we were told by 18 or 19 others that it simply could not be done.
And that was just in one particular meeting but it happens I think it's just...again, I go back to the one bit of advice I mentioned earlier to just be persistent. If it's something that you believe in, be persistent. Keep at it.
Christine: Thank you. Switching to a more fun note...what is your most memorable consulting project and why was it memorable? And would you please elaborate more on the Jim Lyneis Rambo story and the rework cycle napkin story that the Jims told in their SD-cast episode?
Ken Cooper: Sure. Well, those are a few different topics. I'll try to cover each one of them probably briefly. The Rambo story...Jim got that pretty right. Well, I mean he got it exactly right.
Christine: [laughs]
Ken Cooper: He had been working on projects in Paris, which was under a lot of strife at the time, Northern Ireland, Chile. He happened to be the one who was involved in these projects that were in sort of international hotspots. And for everyone who knows Jim and I think pretty much everybody really admires and likes Jim a lot. He is...I think it would be fair to describe him as sort of the Clark Kent of modeling, a very mild-mannered person. You know he's this fantastic modeler going to all these exotic places and so somewhere along the way we decided that we needed to photoshop (or whatever the technology was at the time) a picture of him with these--this double strapping of ammunition belts and a machine gun and everything to give it to him as a little commemoration of his more exotic adventures. That was that we, I mean, we just enjoyed (you know) kidding him a little bit about that. You know he’s...he's such a good guy.
Let's see...rework cycle. Well, I think I've already touched on the napkins or part of the napkin story. That one it wasn't exactly--happened exactly that way. There was a napkin involved but it was not the rework cycle. The napkin was at a little bar. I think it was the first night that we had traveled to Litton and heard them talk about what the issues were down there. We had a drink or two at a little bar in Pascagoula, Mississippi. And there was actually a third person but...that was Henry Weil and me and a third person, who was not a modeler. And after hearing what the Litton clients had said, the third person said, “Well, there's no way that you guys can model it.” And Henry, who is extraordinary, took one of the cocktail napkins and started sketching a couple of feedback loops to describe some of the things that were going on in the project that probably ended their way up into the model as well.
But that was the subject of that particular napkin and like the NFL project started on a napkin. The Mastercard model started not quite a napkin but a scrap--little yellow scrap of paper. You never know but they're certainly fun stories. What did I miss in your list there?
Christine: Let's see...what is the most memorable consulting project and why was it [memorable]?
Ken Cooper: Well, I've already mentioned a few of them: the Mastercard strategy modeling, NFL, while it was not the most important thing ever done, it was certainly memorable in terms of being fun. The whole Hughes Aircraft relationship was amazing. That work followed the Litton work. It also started with the claim but then we ended up working with Hughes and Raytheon for 20 years after that. But I'll offer one more little story to go along with that.
We got a call one day from people from Hughes Aircraft. They were at a conference in Washington and they had just heard a presentation from an attorney from Litton about what we had done at Litton. And they wanted us to come down and talk with them. Well, (you know) we said, “Well, that sounds like a good opportunity.” And so I went down there...and I just honestly can't remember who...if anyone or who went with me but I went down there and it was such a spur of the moment meeting that...while they were saying at this hotel in Washington, nobody had arranged any sort of meeting room or conference room or anything. So I had a stack of transparency slides to show them but there was no projector.
Christine: [laughs]
Ken Cooper: No projector. No meeting room and there were I think three people from Hughes Aircraft. And so we ended up...I like to say the Hughes Aircraft relationship started in a hotel bedroom but it's not as...
Christine: [laughs]
Ken Cooper: It's not as seedy as that sounds because what I did...the only way I could show the stuff was we all sat literally around the edge of the bed. Or maybe I stood and put a piece of paper behind each one of the slides that I was going to talk with, so that (you know) so you could read what was on the slide and went through the first presentation to Hughes on that hotel bed.
Christine: [laughs]
Ken Cooper: And as I said, we ended up working with them for over 20 years. I've got more stories with Hughes whenever we have time to get into them. Do we have a couple extra minutes?
Christine: Yes.
Ken Cooper: So now you know how that work started we ended up working on dozens of Hughes programs in all parts of the company. But the, I think, the second project we ever worked on there (or program as they call it) was their largest program at the time. It was a program to develop a missile. It was viewed as being in an immense amount of trouble by the time we got introduced to it. The most vivid memory I have from that work is that I was asked to brief the CEO of the company on this. And I went into a meeting. I think there were just three of us there--the program manager of the missile program, me and the CEO. Maybe there was another person. I'm not sure. But I got in there and (We had already started some modeling of that program and so I pretty much knew what was going on.) and they had a white board there in this very small conference room, a little meeting room with the CEO of the company there and I started sketching what we now know as the rework cycle to explain a part of what was going on. As I drew up there the piece of the structure that's undiscovered rework, the CEO of Hughes Aircraft (He was sitting in a chair with wheels at the small table.) stood up so fast that he slammed the chair. It went rolling back behind him into the wall that was behind the table. [He] stood up and jabbed his finger pointing at me or the board (or whatever I couldn't tell at that moment) and said, “That! That's what's wrong!” I...you know like you know my...my heart was in my throat at that point, not knowing where he was going with this. But he said, “That's what's wrong. The undiscovered rework is our problem on this program.” He was right. That's the point I was trying to make to him. I'm convinced that partly based on that moment we got a lot more chances to work there but the reason undiscovered rework in that case was so critical to what was going on is that they all thought that the program was careening out of control but what really was happening was that they had this very aggressive test program--flight test program for the missiles, far more aggressive than they had been used to having. And the test program was actually identifying more rework earlier than would have otherwise--that would typically be the case. And so they felt as though they kept falling one step behind but what in fact was going on was that they were clearing out all this undiscovered rework faster, which was much much better for the program. But before we understood all this, the program manager had said to me that “I have 1500 people working on this program and we looked at our progress status recently and it's the same as it was a year ago. I've lost a whole year on this program.” And of course everybody was panicking. So when I was writing about that in one of the papers that I did, I called it “The Lost Year” because that's what he thought it was. That was another stressful encounter at Hughes that turned out okay.
It's important to appreciate the chances to work with really great people. I've had that chance in particular with tremendous colleagues at Pugh-Roberts and, as I said, very courageous clients over the course of the years that were insightful enough and courageous enough to support the work.
Christine: Thank you for telling us those stories. Do you have any other funny or fun stories that you want to share?
Ken Cooper: Well, I will probably think of some as soon as we sign off but those are some that stand out for me. Anyways, thank you for the chance to pass them along. I'm really glad to do that and let other people get some ideas about how they can work on important things and fun things. Not only by themselves but on a really strong team.
Christine: Speaking of teams, I have another side question about NFL work actually. This was before Moneyball but it didn't become famous like Moneyball. Is that due to the client saying you can't talk about this, or is it due to not writing about it, not writing a popular book or movie?
Ken Cooper: Well, I guess it is all of the above. It is true that it did not become famous like Moneyball and I did promise the owner that I would never disclose who and the specifics of what we did. But I don't know. Who's to say what would have happened if we had been able to write a story about it. But it certainly predated Moneyball which was much more well known.
Christine: I also have some ideas about Moneyball--baseball versus American football but I think it's much easier to replace people in baseball. You don't need a lot of chemistry with players but in other sports (e.g., football. Both American football and what is more popular internationally) that dynamic is very important. Chemistry.
Ken Cooper: Right. The interaction. Yeah. It's good point, Christine, because the whole premise of the football model was the importance of the interaction among the different elements of the team. So that model, which was really a good technical piece of modeling (I think), was simulating the performance of each of the different segments of the team. In American football, the offensive line and the quarterback and the running backs and the receivers and the defensive line and the safeties and secondary defense players and how all those interact with one another to influence not a specific game so much but the performance of the team over the course of a season. And we simulated with that model the performance of several different teams over the course of about a decade in part to calibrate the model and in part to learn from the comparison of different approaches that the different teams took to building their athlete assets.
It was extremely interesting, especially for a football fan.
Ending
Ken and I continued chatting about my research interests so I cut that part out. If you would like to meet and talk to Ken and other SD practitioners, please sign up for the System Dynamics Society’s 2021 Fundraising Event for the Student Chapter! See the link below:
https://systemdynamics.org/product/fundraising-event-donations/
Ken is also considering teaching a few micro-courses at WPI. We hope he can.
The first WPI System Dynamics micro-course, System Dynamics Fundamentals is now available. See the link below: https://wpi.catalog.instructure.com/browse/system-dynamics/courses/system-dynamics-foundation
You can read more of Ken’s bio in the document linked below:
https://bit.ly/Ken-Cooper-2021-Bio
Ken allowed us to share the following document “Finding Better Treatments Faster: How System Modeling Can Help Advance Human Disease Research”
https://bit.ly/Ken-Cooper-on-Disease-Modeling
Below are links to more videos and articles of Ken’s work with Mastercard, Litton, Fluor, Hughes Aircraft, and the NFL:
Ken Cooper Interview Series (on YouTube)
https://systemdynamics.org/mastercard/
https://systemdynamics.org/litton/
https://systemdynamics.org/fluor/
https://systemdynamics.org/hughes-aircraft/
Now, here is a poem I wrote about Ken Cooper:
Ken Cooper
Is really super-duper
He and his team's work at Pugh-
Roberts are one of the few
Finalists and winners of multiple awards
Their wiSDom and going the extra yard
Can help teams improve their records
So learn from their work with MasterCard,
the NFL, Litton, Hughes Aircraft and Fluor
About litigation and mitigation (dispute no more!)
Because lawsuits can leave one destitute
So we must be ready to be able to execute
A plan to ensure a project's survival
(And recognize the rework cycle)
Ken now models the dynamics in a human body
(Cells, neurons, glucose, insulin and antibody)
To succeed one must persevere
Do not fall prey to doubt and fear
To make modeling problems easier than they seem
Find a champion client and join a strong team
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Music:
Intro and End
“Limelight” by Podington Bear is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License. I cut and moved the music track to fit the intro and ending.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Podington_Bear/Haplessly_Happy/Limelight
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/