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Subject:
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Re:
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Bridge to a New Way of Working Begins with Study
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noted. I find that few people are using the business practices they
There is a significant gap in what they "know" to the discipline of
they "perform". Is the problem knowledge, or discipline? How many
have been trained in good program practices, in process and task
told about numerous BKMs, but never really use them. I have
to this as the problem of "feel good" management.
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..
The question remains. Do people need better tools, or just start using the
hammers they already have?
The decades of service oriented matrix organization has left us with a
situation where the program manager is often little more than a reporting
arm of a complex work environment. If one person is in charge, then they
can keep the record, and have an "impact" on peoples lives. Otherwise they
simply become someone outside of the department we can ignore. After all,
they don't write the performance reviews. I support your opinion in this.
..
These problem are not solved by SDS, but by organizational structuring, and
accountability standards. Often a service organization is not measured on
project performance, but on internal metrics. The service group leader will
maximize these internal metrics at the expense of external programs.
(That's how he gets measured and paid).
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SDS can help an individual stay organized "IF" he develops the discipline to
use it. It will not fix any endemic organizational issues.
Morris
-----Original Message-----
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From:
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Garold (Gary) L. Johnson [mailto:dynalt@dynalt.com]
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Tuesday, September 24, 2002 11:28 AM
Jones, Morris; Rod Welch
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Re:
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Bridge to a New Way of Working Begins with Study
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R Morris,
I agree. No matter what tools are used, they will be used by people to
support their approach to whatever is under discussion.
Whatever the tool, some will use it to attempt to control the judgments of
others and to attempt to become ascendant at the center of things. Nearly
everybody falls into this category.
..
A really good tool allows an individual who wishes to do so to pursue the
facts rather than merely to support his own opinions.
This is one of the reasons that I am not optimistic of the benefits of
allowing millions of people to "collaborate" in arriving at decisions. More
than 10 people in a room can't agree on when and where to go for lunch.
..
This goes beyond the "if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail," to something more like "if the objective is to drive
nails, then any tool becomes a hammer."
As to 5h3 "25 words or less," I confess to an inability to do that in my own
work, but I do try to write in such a way that the issues, my proposal, and
the reasons for it are all clear. I do try to provide an introduction that
is as close as I can come to the "25 words or less," following the classic
formula of "tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then
tell them what you told them."
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Having said that, there has to be *some* change in the way people work if
there is to be any change in the results they achieve. If we continue to do
what we have always done, we will continue to get what we have always
gotten. Unfortunately, the changes needed are more fundamental than any
tool, though better tools can help.
..
One of the major flaws in work practices that I see is that, at *all*
levels, *nobody* ever defines what the desired outcome is before setting out
to achieve them. There is always an assumption that *everybody knows* what
we are trying to do, so let's just get on with it. There are no defined
results, not plans based on those results, and no ways defined to determine
if we are actually accomplishing what we are supposed to be accomplishing.
Since "it all pays the same," and "that is the way we have always done it,"
this seems perfectly normal, so nobody ever notices that there is anything
wrong with this approach.
..
Thanks,
Garold (Gary) L. Johnson
-----Original Message-----
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From:
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Jones, Morris [mailto:morris.jones@intel.com]
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Tuesday, September 24, 2002 9:23 AM
'Garold (Gary) L. Johnson'; Rod Welch; Jones, Morris
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Re:
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Bridge to a New Way of Working Begins with Study
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1 Agreed,
Rod tends to put trite sayings and slogans in his paragraphs, and the real
meat is somewhere else. I'm looking for a document with an executive
summary, and the meat in 25 words or less. The links should be as
unobtrusive as footnotes in a regular document. To simply list a long
bibliography (Links) with a few marketing slogans is not a letter I
understand or get much from. I pay about as much attention to it as an
insurance ad on TV. (Which all have small print and "links")
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If we turn all correspondence into research papers, then people will have to
change the way they work. This is another thing to be overcome. Many
times, people don't have much to link to. If you are doing a job centered
around a "contract". It is a good reference point, and serves as an
absolute definition of what is to be done, and the impact of non
performance. Many people are working to get to a contract, and starting
with a "blank" sheet. You can build the "links" as you build common
understanding, but the record is not an absolute in that case. Common
understanding changes as the program progresses in the development phase.
In a company setting, "contracts" are often not made between groups. This
is a result of studies made in the 30s that showed there is a benefit of
having a company over a certain size. The costs of administrating the
"contracts" for services go away. (They may be replaced with lowered
efficiencies). For this reason, legal, finance, engineering, and other
"professions" were brought into a corporation, and ask to work together to
achieve some common goal. This replaced the myriad of contracts that these
professionals held with the company in the past. Without the "contracts",
you have different points of view on the team. Rod has never resolved the
issue of a program having 50 conflicting records. He just assumes his is
the correct one. My experience is different. Each service organization
will create an adversarial record that will show his department performing
flawlessly, and the other departments failing to deliver for the program.
Rod has used the record to support a clients position during contract
disputes and claims management. If everyone does the same, the records all
become just more biased talking points. The analysis is nothing more than
justification of ones position in the end unless a very mature person
performs careful and thoughtful analysis.
..
Morris
-----Original Message-----
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From:
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Garold (Gary) L. Johnson [mailto:dynalt@dynalt.com]
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Tuesday, September 24, 2002 8:37 AM
Rod Welch; Jones, Morris
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Re:
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Bridge to a New Way of Working Begins with Study
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Z Morris,
I don't think that the problem is links in themselves, but in using links as
the *only* path to information.
It should be possible to read and understand any document without following
the links it contains. Deeper understanding should come from following the
links. A document with no links leaves me in a position of either having to
accept what is said or to do extensive research on my own.
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When a document of any sort is readable on its own but provides easy access
to source material, I think we get the best of both worlds. This is what is
done with footnotes, references, and bibliography I formal documents.
The use of some mechanism such as "Purple Numbers" in published documents
allows links in electronic media, and human readable forms in hard copy.
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When a document provides enough of the content of the referenced material so
that it can be read without recourse to the links, the links can then
provide a route to further information, not to content that is necessary to
read the document.
Note also that part of the problem has to do with the presentation system.
For email to work for everyone, it must be readable in plain text. Links in
plain text are long and ugly. In a document which can support links
properly, they can be quite unobtrusive and yet available and useful.
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In short, I don't think that the question of links is an "or" question. I
think that we need both readable content *and* links. I definitely believe
that in a task oriented environment, communication should be constructed
with access to the source information in order to provide for far better
alignment with objectives and history than that provided by human memory
alone.
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Note that unless the original material is exceptionally well structured,
transclusion doesn't always do what you want. In most cases some paraphrase
that brings different parts of the original into juxtaposition is what will
communicate best. I still remember the disaster of writing a term paper
directly from my not cards instead of using them as a basis for my writing.
..
Thanks,
Garold (Gary) L. Johnson
-----Original Message-----
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From:
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Jones, Morris [mailto:morris.jones@intel.com]
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Tuesday, September 24, 2002 8:10 AM
'Rod Welch'; Jones, Morris
'Jack Park'; Johnson, Garold (Gary) L.; DeHart, Bill; Benkavitch, Bill;
Ross; Armstrong, Eric
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Re:
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Bridge to a New Way of Working Begins with Study
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7 See my comments below.
Morris
-----Original Message-----
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From:
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Rod Welch [mailto:rodwelch@pacbell.net]
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Monday, September 23, 2002 12:24 PM
Jones, Morris
'Jack Park'; Johnson, Garold (Gary) L.; DeHart, Bill; Benkavitch,
Armstrong-IBM, Ross; Armstrong, Eric
Bridge to a New Way of Working Begins with Study
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Morris,
Thanks for standing up and being counted today on the value of
information technology. More people with the courage to speak out,
along with more study and experience will build a bridge to a new way
of working that adds "intelligence" to information for creating
knowledge, per your question on 960227...
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http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/96/02/27/161832.HTM#KQ95
Glad to see agreement in your comments showing consensus forming among
a wide range of top people who want information. Jack Park made the
same point on 010908. Today, your input helps nail down the issue,
adding clarity to the target of transformation toward knowledge
management. For awhile, over the past several years, the target was
murky, with people calling for KM from every quarter, but not actually
making any effort, reflecting the fact that performing KM using IT
methods is awfully hard work, reported on 000307. Now that people
have made this discovery through painful experience, as you point out,
perhaps progress can be made.
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>> Rod, I don't understand this paragraph. You want to change the way
people work. Not enhance it. This doesn't sound like you read my paragraph
earlier.
We need to work in the period ahead on helping people want what they
need to get what they want: higher productivity, earnings and stock
prices. This requires providing opportunity to experience a new way
of working. Of course everyone doesn't learn at the same rate. Some
of us take a little longer to finally get it, as you pointed out on
920215.
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I agree with you that people want to get higher productivity, earnings
and stock prices by relying on traditional information technology, but
growing evidence shows that new realities require support for
knowledge to supplement traditional methods, with the result that,
providing only the information people want, proposed in your letter
today, does not yield the results people hope to gain. It's a
dilemma, that is solved, in the first instance, by engaging the issue,
as you do in your letter today, and then by studying, as Andy Grove
urges in his book "Only the Paranoid Survive," reviewed on 980307...
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http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/98/03/07/161449.HTM#5794
If Andy is right, then the question becomes how to study quickly and
effectively, given that everybody is so busy in meetings, calls and
email, as you noted in our call on 890809. Links help in two ways.
(1) Links, properly applied, bring far reaching resources to bear in a
coordinated way that disclose correlations, implications and nuance
that enlighten beyond the reach of conventional methods; and (2) links
enable traceability to original sources so that work performed aligns
with new insights yielded through study. Getting the work lined up is
helpful at Intel, as Craig pointed out on 000822, at Enron reported by
Powers on 020204, and at the CIA, reported by Reuters, Time, CNN, and
others on 010911. It takes a little time and persistence for this to
sink in, so the interregnum period can seem exasperating.
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>>Links do not help in getting to information quickly. They hide it. You
don't say anything, you just put trite sayings in a memo, and then hope
people are in "research" mode.
I have never been attracted to the title Andy chose for his book.
Somehow the notion that only the "paranoid" survive does not seem very
fun. Of course Andy is a lot older and wiser, so maybe his experience
helping people improve is telling. He says it is not easy and is not
fun, but is necessary to move ahead.
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>>Andy has nothing to do with this discussion. He doesn't send emails with
links.
Thanks for continuing to contribute on this issue.
Rod.
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"Jones, Morris" wrote:
>
> Rod,
>
> I agree with Jack. Stop telling people what they want, and start giving
> them what they want. A nice concise email with the data presented in one
> paragraph is great. The user can follow links much like footnotes if he
has
> a desire for more detail. Otherwise, you have enough trouble getting
people
> to read a document, let alone "researching" the topic by following
multiple
> links to multiple levels.
>
> Morris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jack Park [mailto:jackpark@thinkalong.com]
> Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 4:58 PM
> To: Rod Welch
> Cc: Jones, Morris E.; Johnson, Garold (Gary) L.; DeHart, Bill;
> Benkavitch, Bill; Armstrong-IBM, Ross; Armstrong, Eric
> Subject: Re: Bridge to a New Way of Working Begins with Study
>
> At 01:50 PM 9/20/2002 -0700, Rod Welch wrote:
> >For example, notice that Dave, who has a KM job of some kind at IBM,
> >wants to learn KM by printing a report and reading it, and he wants to
> >be shielded from the core process of knowledge that makes
> >"connections." How can anyone learn about the power of connections,
> >if everyone is shielded from links? Congress the past few days has
> >been calling on the Intelligence community to "connect the dots" in
> >order to avoid another failure in national security. The desire to be
> >shielded from links presents a KM dilemma: How can people in the CIA,
> >the FBI, at Westinghouse, Yale, IBM, health care, education or
> >anywhere else, connect the dots, without connecting the dots?
>
> Rod, I really hate to hammer at this because, as I have said before, I
> think you have some terrific ideas. But, what I get from the paragraph I
> included above is that you want to sit in judgement of Dave because he
> doesn't want your damned links in his email. I told you that my opinion
of
> the right way to deal with this is to just copy and paste the information
> you want him to read into the email itself so he can print it out and read
> it at his leisure, which is the way I would prefer it as well. But, you
> seem to refuse to acknowledge that world view and continue hammering away
> at your own world view, which, as Dave points out, is simply untenable.
>
> Rod, from my perspective, it's NOT about shielding from links; rather it
is
> about how those links are presented. Dave was pretty darned clear about
> how he would prefer them, and you just ignore that and keep showering him
> with them as you WANT them to be presented. If that world view continues,
> I just don't see how SDS will ever be sold or accepted.
>
> Frankly, I smell a major enhancement to SDS coming.
>
> Jack
>
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