| January 27, 1995 | 03 00050 95012701 |
Mr. Jeffery S. Ghilardi
Vice President
Seawest Company
1455 Frazee Road, Ninth Floor
San Diego, CA 92108-4310
| Subject: | Testimonials on SDS & POIMS |
Dear Jeff,
This follows up our discussions in Feb 1993 about a letter on your use of SDS relative to Stephen Covey's ideas on personal effectiveness. Our meeting at Seawest on Dec 1, 1994 indicated you have given further consideration to SDS for improving management. As you know, SDS improves personal effectiveness and integrates work by individuals with organizational objectives, which I call POIMS. A recent report by Bill DeHart reports that SDS was successful at PG&E. I had the chance to use the full force of SDS on a daily basis for supporting Bill's role of project manager for several PG&E projects, similar to the experience on the Broadwater Dam project, using SDS to support your role as project engineer.
Marketing SDS over the past number of years has shown that without actual experience, people cannot perceive, i.e., "know" what SDS does simply by me saying that it implements sound management practices. Unlike a backhoe which is a technology that does something people can visibly measure, SDS improves "management," which is a complex array of mental tasks that cannot be directly measured nor visibly observed, as in seeing a big machine excavate much faster than the operator can accomplish using a hand shovel.
The SDS core methodology of thinking through writing is counterintuitive, conflicting with human nature shaped by 2000 years of managing in a manual world. SDS only works because it's design lets people carry out many tasks faster and in concert through the power of automated integration. But people don't have a way of knowing this without experiencing it, and so resist trying SDS because in their personal experience and the experience of people they know and believe, they feel SDS will not improve productivity because it seems like it takes more time. To overcome this inertia, people need faith to sustain them through the task of learning that investing intellectual capital (i.e., their own knowledge and ideas) is cost effective. Your comments can help build that faith.
THE WELCH COMPANY
Rod Welch