Glad to hear you are back on-line. Recently, I wrote up some meetings with HQUSACE held on Dec 2. The analysis, organization, linking and so on, revealed a stark divergence (lack of alignment) that was not evident at the time of the events due to focus on other issues. Organization policy and industry standards expressly "stress" managerial accountability, yet management practice fears accountability. Fear of accountability, reduces management to a daily exercise of "guess and gossip," that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy leading to the "information entropy" cited by a U.S. Air Force study, and eventually to the implosion of management, cited in the New World Order... paper.

The PMBOK, PMI training, examinations and professional development seminars need to take up this disconnect, what Andy Grove, Chairman of Intel, calls "strategic dissonance." Another expressin of the same problem is in the New World Order... book that explains how people, organizations and nations gradually drift off course. The alignment process in Communication Metrics provides a means to maintain course, but it requires leadership to ensure the tools and science are used.

When time permits you might take another look at the New World Order... book. Quite a bit of editing has been done to clarify the ideas. Links have been added to illustrate concepts and provide "case study" material, e.g., the US Army Corps of Engineer's report, which you reviewed last year.

Possibly a publisher would want to get out in front of this method, since it significantly enhances utlity for the reader. A lot of effort is going into development of a revenue stream for this type of publication. Microsoft's Slate magazine, Time, and others are working on it. Maybe we can be pioneers on this.

Another example of Grove's "strategic dissonance" is his insistence that good management requires taking copious notes and asking questions, while his people adamately maintain they do not have enough time and fear accountability. How does Andy have enough time, but his people and others at Bechtal, U.S. Steel, Harvard, the AMA, PMI, PG&E, etc., do not have enough time for good management practice.

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY

Rod Welch