THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700


Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 15:25:18 -0800

03 00050 61 02011801



Mr. Morris E. Jones
Business Unit Manager
morris.jones@intel.com
Cable Network Operation
Intel Corporation
350 East Plumeria; Mail Stop CHP3-105
San Jose, CA 95124

Subject:   SDS Requirements for Com Metrics
Life-style Transition Enabled by Scope of Services

Dear Morris,

Thanks very much for demonstrating in our call on January 10, 2002 the Netmeeting program, and for showing how collaboration is strengthened using Microsoft Word and Outlook.

A couple of thoughts occurred from that call which shed light on how SDS may add value to other methods that justifies investing time for preparing the requirements we discussed on January 10.

When time permits, glance through the eight (8) steps using SDS day-to-day, which are set out in the record on December 19, 2000. These steps accomplish "good management" practices that people strive to accomplish, as noted by Wayne Wetzel at DNRC in his letter on July 25, 2001, and earlier by Dave Vannier at Intel on June 3, 1997. You made a related point in our call on September 24, 2001, which aligns with Bill DeHart's comments a few years ago on July 9, 2000 explaining advantages using SDS for implementing good management practices that are missing from other methods.

Good management practices are ubiquitous in the literature. Industry standards like PMBOK and ISO call out requirements for better memory, which you asked about on January 10, 2002, that enables continual learning and alignment, which, in turn, enable effective intelligence and accountability, reviewed on July 21, 1995. As well, prominent authors, like Peter Drucker and Stephen Covey, along with many others, identify attitudes and tasks of daily management, which strive toward excellence and effectiveness by overcoming the powerful allure of laziness cited by Jack Park on September 8, 2001. Recall that you similarly recognized the overwhelming tendency of people and systems to degrade toward feel good management in our call on November 23, 1991, which causes CEOs to fail, as reported by Fortune magazine, reviewed on June 25, 1999.

Using good management practices consistently is, therefore, a change in life-style, as you have pointed out from time-to-time (see for example our discussion on August 9, 1989 and later our telecon on February 23, 1995), particularly in relation to feel good management, commonly used for daily affairs, which causes failure, as noted above, and evidenced by events on September 11, 2001.

In the same way that developing a software program, repairing an automobile, doing an audit, or a heart operation require a change in life-style that concentrates time for study and repetition to grow expertise and knowledge from a lot of experience, so, too, using SDS for applying good management practices consistently is, also, a change in life-style, very much like literacy enabled civilization to advance from orality to the alphabetic mind, reviewed on November 11, 1999.

Literacy is an explosive change in life-style that makes people superhuman, as reported on June 22, 2001. Of course, because the change from orality to an alphabetic mind occurs early in life through formal education, adults do not feel the burden of learning a complex new way of working that is enabled by SDS, as you have described from time-to-time....

  1. Change in lifestyle cited on August 9, 1989
  2. Welch management method cited on November 23, 1991
  3. Utopia everything in right place at right time, April 25, 2001
  4. Improves management cited on September 24, 2001
  5. Better access to links cited on December 11, 2001
  6. Memory of chronology imparts causation on January 10, 2002

Since the change from orality to literacy is an explosive advance that makes people superhuman using information technology, e.g., the alphabet, then the advance from information to a culture of knowledge enabled by SDS should be shared more widely by improving the technology and by expanding the curriculum for education, so that a life-style of better personal and organizational memory can lift performance in business, government, education, health, science, i.e., civilization.

For example, SDS makes it fast and easy to perform the eight (8) steps for improving personal and organizational memory, and then adding "intelligence" that converts information into knowledge, but these steps must be learned, and this requires more than 20 minutes, which is a burden in the lives of adults, as you pointed out on August 9, 1989, and is evidenced by statistics you reported 13 years later on January 10, 2002 that show people only use about 5% of the features in Microsoft programs.

When people see SDS work product in printed form, or on the Internet, this builds faith that investing more than 20 minutes for learning SDS will bring better results. When people experience improved results for a few months, faith in working intelligently grows into demand for SDS, as seen from reports by DNRC, PG&E and by USACE listed in the record on September 9, 2001.

Additionally, there is a "video game" dimension to using SDS from enjoying the power and effectance of discovering critical details and creating alignment that avoids mistakes to save time and money. For some people, the speed and ease of creating a useful record, connecting it up to understand cause and effect, and creating controllable action items to manage tasks that are linked to original sources for context that expedites getting things done correctly, on time and within budget is fun, even though it is not fun getting started, because improving management with a new life-style to save time and money takes more than 20 minutes to learn.

The way to get useful things done that take more than 20 minutes to learn is to hire someone who can perform a scope of services so that people do not have to change their life-style in order to save time and money. The scope of services for Communication Metrics fleshes out requirements for the eight (8) steps a Com Manager performs that largely isolates others from having to undergo a painful change in life-style in order to improve everyone's work, as reported by USACE.

The demonstration you gave using Netmeeting a few weeks ago on January 10 showed that it might be possible to provide these services with Microsoft programs. However, in the same way that people drive to the meeting in a Cadillac and use trucks and backhoes for doing the work, good practice is to use wordprocessing for style, and use SDS to save time and money.

The scope of services for using SDS to support Communication Metrics follows your suggestion of marketing to folks who contract for services. Note, there is some overlap with traditional program management. Specifying Com Metrics in contracts for PM services was suggested by USACE on January 5, 1996, but never implemented, because the overall deliverable of "intelligence" is not a traditional scope of services, as explained in POIMS.

As frustrations from bumbling and losses grow, which you reported on November 27, 1992, people may become more receptive to working intelligently, as a life-style aided by a scope of services that improves personal and organizational memory without the burden of immediate change in life-style. This record augurs for developing the requirements we discussed on January 10, 2002. It should be an enjoyable exercise for you to express in your native language of "technology" the powerful insights you have learned from 20 years in executive management.

Let me know what you think.

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY



Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net