THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 11:41:41 -0700
03 00050 61 02090601
Mr. Stuart Harrow
Manufacturing & Production Field Service Representative
sharrow@dcmde.dcma.mil
Contract Operations
Defense Contract Management Agency
Long Island
Mid-Atlantic Sector
605 Stewart Avenue
Garden City, NY 11530
..
Subject:
Transformation from IT to Culture of Knowledge
Dear Stuart,
Stuart,
.. This confirms our telecon yesterday. I appreciate your patience and
courtesy in continuing to consider SDS. We set two action items for
you to invest a little time advancing transformation within DOD,
called out by
Don Rumsfeld
in remarks to the War College on January 31, 2001.
..
You will review three or four paragraphs in POIMS that explain
transformation from information technology to a culture of knowledge
that enables good management practices called out in the Federal
Acquisition Regulations (FAR), which align with practices recommended
by
experts
like Covey and Drucker, and are specified in industry
standards like PMBOK, and ISO, also, cited in POIMS.
..
As we discussed, FAR requires Contracting Officers, and
other managers delegated to implement FAR requirements, to capture
organizational memory and show alignment using an audit trail to
original sources in the
history
of the work,
commonly called "documentation"
as set out in the record on May 4, 2002.
.. However, as further shown, a long history of work at DOD shows
there isn't enough time
to perform the
requirement for documentation using information technology that everybody
likes in attending meetings, making calls, sending a fax, email and using
powerful wordprocessing programs like Microsoft Word.
..
DOD and contractors waste billions of dollars performing rework, as
management control degrades to entropy because nobody has time to
align the work using IT. You mentioned in our call that DOD is now
striving to reduce costs, so adding alignment is a direct solution to
save time and money by working "intelligently" to avoid mistakes,
noted by
General Hatch
in the report issued by USACE on March 28, 1997.
.. Since USACE later reported on October 7, 1997 that
using SDS for Com Metrics saves money at
the rate of 10:1 by reducing mistakes,
DOD's current objective to save money,
in order to invest resources for homeland security, can be accomplished by
using SDS to align daily work with objectives, requirements and commitments.
..
The first action item is to comment on this opportunity spelled out in
POIMS for using
good management to save time and money.
If there is no need to save money using good management
called out by FAR, then let's modify FAR by eliminating the
requirement. If there is money to be saved, then let's get started
saving it for other needs.
..
The second action item is to test the proposition that aligning daily
work takes only a few seconds using SDS explicit links, and so SDS
makes it fast and easy to accomplish DOD's objective to save time and
money by working intelligently.
.. During our discussion yesterday, we noted conflicts between calling for
good management to save time and money, and
failure to make any effort to perform, as related in a
recent letter on August 20, 2002. Another example occurred a few days later
on August 22, where people call for "rigorous analysis" but
provide no analysis. The disjunction between advocacy, policy and
requirements for good management that saves time and money, and actual
performance, called
strategic dissonnence by Andy Grove at Intel, reviewed on
March 7, 1998, is the central challenge for contract managers. How then to
bridge the gap between FAR requirements for good management to align the work
for saving time and money, and failure to perform because there isn't enough
time?
.. The first step is to find someone willing to invest a few seconds to
study,
called out by Grove as the solution for improvement, in order to
discover that working intelligently only takes a few seconds using SDS, and to
begin spreading the word, so that others can learn about this opportunity.
Spreading the word is fast and easy using email and the Internet.
..
During our call we went through an
exercise using the steps
in the record on July 26, 2002,
to create a few links in email. You discovered that this takes
only a few seconds, using explicit links in SDS, so it is only a matter of
volition, rather than a task that requires a lot of time and
expertise, to create connections called out by management standards
and by FAR for traceability to original sources. You also saw that
FAR is on the Internet with explicit links created by SDS that empower
DOD personnel to
document contract performance
with an audit trail that shows
traceability to orginal sources,
as shown in the record on May 4, 2002.
..
You agreed to lead by sending email to colleagues who are trying to implement
goals for saving money by transforming DOD to comply with FAR requirements for
good management. Sending email with links to SDS records demonstrate that
working intelligently by adding connections that align daily work with
objectives, requirements and commitments is fast and easy to learn and to
perform. This leadership takes 5 - 10 minutes to accomplish.
..
In our call yesterday, we discovered, as shown by your test letter
below, that Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), which is a popular IT
program, doesn't work very well for copying links into email using the
Microsoft Outlook program. A simple work around is to click on an
explicit link, rather than copy it directly. This places the URL
address in the Location Bar where it can be then copied and
transferred to an email. You found that
linking to create an audit trail that
complies with FAR requirements
only takes 1 or 2 seconds,
still within the period of volition that makes adding connections fast
and easy for saving time and money, as related to Tom Munnecke on
July 26.
.. Notice the record on July 26 shows that investing a few seconds generates
cost savings of about 900%, which is pretty close to the savings reported by
USACE on 971007....
You can verify that working intelligently only takes a few seconds, by
notifying colleagues of this opportunity using explicit links into FAR
and to other sources provided by SDS.
.. Savings are only a "click" away because savings come from improving
human memory that is wired to rely on remembering the gist of
information, which is only about 5% - 10%. Adding links to email, as
shown by this letter, enables people to rely on the actual record of
organizational memory, including contracts, regulations and
correspondence, rather than make mistakes remembering only 5% - 10%,
as explained in POIMS...
.. http://www.welchco.com/03/00050/01/09/01/02/00030.HTM#KH8J
People can ignore opportunity to save money when they are busy
attending a lot of meetings, making calls and sending email to fix a
mountain of mistakes caused by work that is not aligned with
requirements. But, when they get email with links to the exact
information they need to solve their problems, this demonstrates
self-evident benefits that are harder to ignore. When people see a
fast, easy way to save time and money, when they see that "savings are
just a click away," some will want to invest a second or two to save
time and money.
.. This may advance DOD goals to save money by transformation that
empowers people to follow the regulations on using good management,
since now it only takes a few seconds to work accurately and
creatively.