The Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111 2496


July 14, 1996
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Subject:   Project Management Institute Northern California Chapter
Asilomar Conference, Monterey, California


Executive Mindset Obstacle to Leadership

New Needs, New Roles, New Skills for a New Milleneum

By Rod Welch
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"Obstacles to Leadership" has three dimensions within the meaning of the Asilomar Conference theme:

Leadership and Technology,
Partnership for the Future

The key obstacle technology poses for leaders has long been recognized as increasing the risk of error due to the compression of time and distance. "Haste makes waste" encapsules the problem leaders face when information flows too fast for the human mind to recognize correlations and implications essential for accurate understanding and effective decisions. The popular notion that people typically use only a small portion of mental capacity can be seen, for example, in results from phone calls, meetings and even professional events like this year's Asilomar Conference, where people are overwhelmed by the blur of continual information. The solution is new tools, skills and roles that reengineer the practice of management so that leaders can keep up on the Information Highway.
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Recent articles in PMI's publications suggest a new science of Communication Metrics for using technology to align people, as called out in management standards like ISO and PMBOK. This method makes it faster and easier to understand information and follow up so that things get done quickly and accurately. Yet, ultimately only the courage and vision of leadership can empower people and institutions to meet the challenge of a faster paced world in the 21st century.
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The Asilomar Conference begins with defining what leaders do. The role, tasks, and opportunities are reflected in the recently released Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (hereafter PMBOK), which defines leadership in section 2.4.1, as:
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From this definition a matrix shows the correlation of tasks and obstacles that comprise the leadership/technology equation:



|-----------------+------------------------------------------------------------|
|                 |                                                            |
|                 |                    L  E  A  D  R  S  H  I  P               |
|   OBSTACLES     |                                                            |
|      and        +---------------------+----------------------+---------------|
|   SOLUTIONS     |     Establishing    |    Align People      |               |
|                 |     Direction       |    Communication     |   Motivating  |
|-----------------+---------------------+----------------------+---------------|
|                 |                     |                      |               |
|Obstacles Caused |   Technology Hype   | Data Pollution Means |Constant Change|
|by Technology    |  Obscures Direction |  Miss-communication  |  Erodes Will  |
|                 |                     |                      |   and Focus   |
|-----------------+---------------------+----------------------+---------------|
|                 |                     |                      |               |
|Obstacles Solved |  Access to History  |  Integration Aligns  |  Technology   |
|by Technology    |Illuminates Direction|  People & Objectives | Moves the Team|
|                 |                     |                      |               |
|-----------------+---------------------+----------------------+---------------|
|                 |                     |                      |               |
|Leadership to    |                     |  Educate to Overcome |    Support    |
|Deploy Technology|   Lead by Doing     | Fear Ignorance Denial|   Initiative  |
|                 |                     |                      | Demand Results|
|-----------------+---------------------+----------------------+---------------|


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The PMBOK defines "communication" in section 2.4.2, as involving the exchange of information. The sender is responsible for making information clear, and complete so it is received correctly. The PMBOK further states "The receiver is responsible for making sure that information is received in its entirety and understood correctly." This idea is restated in section 10.2.2.1.
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Since leadership is responsible to "align people through communication," the interest in achieving a successful result places responsibility for ensuring that information is fully received and correctly understood squarely on the leader. Such is the essence of "influencing" people called out in PMBOK section 2.4.5. Indeed a key leadership attribute is communicating in a way that cannot be misunderstood and ensuring correct understanding through timely follow up.
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This offers a clear target consistent with the Asilomar theme to seek a better partnership between leadership and technology. It follows from a recent field study published in the December 1995 issue of PMnetwork, p. 5: "The Role of Risk in Determining Project Approach." The author reports that key factors of success on high risk projects are: communication, understanding and problem handling. An earlier study done in 1988 by Seattle based A/E management consultants, Martin-Simond, Inc., found that the "...most salient link to overall job satisfaction and low turnover is communication in the firm." Of course common sense tells us that effective leadership requires good communication. If the boss does not get accurate, timely information, then it is difficult to chart a proper course, i.e., to set objectives and strategy. If the boss does not explain the direction and strategy well, then the team will have a hard time reaching its destination.
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The PMBOK Chapter 3 calls for the use of "integrated processes." This is supported by growing awareness of International Standards Organization (ISO) criteria. So, another way to view "communication" is as a continuous process to achieve common goals. The "New World Order Needs Old Time Religion" article on Communication Metrics (published in PMnetwork May 1996 p. 36), describes projects and organizations as a "community" of skills and interests which "communication" focuses on common objectives to build and maintain shared meaning over time, so people can work together effectively, i.e., cooperate. It cites three integrated processes for effective communication:
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leadership
understanding
follow up

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Communication is Leadership

The leadership component of communication is in PMBOK section 2.4.1 on setting objectives and motivating performance. Clearly, when people speak there is always an intent to lead the listener toward some understanding that is usually aimed at achieving specific follow up action. Accordingly, communities need strong leadership as an element of communication. How can technology help the process by which leadership does its part of the communication process in setting objectives and motivating action.
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Most of us associate the notion of leadership with someone who can talk people into doing things. This is regarded as a personal trait beyond the reach of technology, except to widen the audience subject to leadership, as with politicians making a speech on television. Such people are described as "good communicators." Deciding what to talk people into doing, however, requires setting objectives and deciding which path to take. So today we demand that the leader have the "vision thing."
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One dimension of setting objectives is recognizing organic structure. All of existence is comprised of components or building blocks of nature: atoms, molecules, cells, and so on. Human objectives have a corollary structure: life, air, food, water, shelter, etc. Every organization has a mission ultimately aimed at satisfying some aspect of the basic human objective to live: vision, strategy, tactics, tasks, and many other forms of structure that comprise a complex array by which modern people organize themselves. Those who understand this complexity well enough to select the right objective from among the multiplicity of choices are said to posses "vision." Computers can aid this selection process by enabling the leader to capture and maintain the organic structure of the many possible objectives. It can also capture the record of performance in pursuing objectives, so that at any moment a vision of the future can be tested based on understanding the past. The TQM movement has spurred awareness of the challenge to set the correct vision.
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What though does the understanding part of communication mean and how is it impacted by technology?
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Commnication is Understanding
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People try to achieve "understanding" through meetings, calls and documents. There remains a sense of unease, however, that understanding is missing, so people try harder with endless meetings, more calls and today email, resulting in an avalanche of information. The electronic component of this effort is hailed as the "Information Highway." Many are beginning to question whether this works. Intel's presentation at Asilomar on "Information at your Fingertips, Myth or Reality," cites the Information Highway as resulting in "data pollution."
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In simplest terms "understanding" means getting desired results. If desired action is taken, the leader assumes people got the message, i.e., "understood" what was intended. Such assumptions sometimes turn out to be mistaken. Near term action can align with leadership direction for reasons other than those put forward by the leader, and those other reasons can later lead the team off course. This suggests a deeper sense of what "understanding" means. It seems related to the underlying reasons for action and the connections or linkages to desired results, i.e., objectives. The legal profession refers to "causation" to describe the connections between events, chronology, reasons and objectives that comprise "understanding."
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Similarly construction people recognize the importance of connections that support a structure. "Understanding" is so critical in construction that specialists are used, called "architects," to figure out the right connections, and they inspect the actual work against original objectives set out in a data base, called "plans and specifications," to ensure those connections are correct so that the building will stand up under the loads it will encounter. Similarly, lawyers inspect to see if testimony will stand up under what they call "scrutiny." They also use the term "discovery." The legal presentation at Asilomar describes "discovery" as resulting in a data base of management details analogous to the architect's data base of construction details. These forms of inspection reflect the popular TQM notion of "metrics" to see how management is measuring up.
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So "understanding" can be meaningfully grasped from its root words that suggest the connection between something that "stands under" or supports something else. In a building, a column supports a beam. In management, "understanding" is a set of facts and objectives that supports a decision for action. Without adequate support, i.e., understanding, eventually a structure of concrete and steel, or of decisions taken by managers, will fail. Thus, leadership that convinces the team to take action where there is no understanding of the key connections between cause and effect will NOT achieve the aims of communication to build a better community, but rather will lead people down the wrong path.
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"Understanding" in management is bi-directional with respect to time. It looks forward and backward from the present. The leader must grasp the correct connections between objectives and the record of prior performance as support for setting direction. The team must be helped to see the connections between the direction set to reach specific goals in the future, and their skills and awareness of constraints and opportunities. This often requires conveying information about some of the reasons for setting direction, i.e., sharing understanding, in order to form shared meaning that can sustain conflicting influences that arise over time.
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What are conflicting influences? When people leave the leadership arena, e.g., a meeting, they continue to be influenced by subsequent events and information. So "understanding" requires aligning action to be taken in a manner that either supersedes subsequent influences, or is seen to be consistent with them, including personal goals. This means associating desired action with goals commonly recognized to be highly desirable, e.g., survival, promotion, higher earnings. Leadership that fails to make this alignment will fail.
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In today's environment, managers go from meeting to meeting and receive a constant barrage of calls, documents and email throughout the day. All of these "influences" impact conduct. How does what the leader said in meeting "A" align with what is in our contract, or with what a different leader said in meeting "B," "C," telephone call "K" and email "D." Clearly, the more we communicate about a wide range of issues the greater the web of connections becomes that requires alignment for effective leadership. This increases the chance of making a miss-connection. So leadership must not only "align people through communication" as called for by the PMBOK, it must also have in place a continuous process to maintain shared meaning over time as people are subjected to a constant stream of other influences. Otherwise, initial alignment will drift away.
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This point seems to follow from work by Dr. Thomas K. Landauer in his paper on cognitive science entitled "A Solution to Plato's Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge." Dr. Landauer describes a study showing human mental "understanding" changes as a function of new information. Initially, this does not seem very insightful. We all hope to become more "knowledgeable" by getting more information. That is why we go to school, read books, newspapers, watch television and attend meetings at work and seminars like the Asilomar Conference. Dr. Landauer's point, however, is that this change in knowledge state occurs often without the volition or awareness which normally accompanies our thirst for more knowledge.
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Another way to see the crucial insight of Dr. Landauer's point is to consider "Murphy's Law" (see also discussion in New World Order... paper) This is the famous worry about mysterious errors that seem to crop up unexpectedly and cause havoc. It was considered at the 1994 Asilomar Conference under the aegis of TQM.
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An obstacle to leadership then is that having motivated the team, common understanding of the vision, strategy and tactics at time "now," will later, at time "now + t1," (a day, week, month, year), drift off course, absent directed effort to maintain shared meaning. Since it occurs slowly and incrementally, people are unaware of this drift. Executives are particularly burdened because they are less subject to being questioned about what they know by the people they encounter in daily work. The absence of a daily "metric" to link communication back to original sources, reinforces belief that our knowledge is consistent when in fact it is drifting off course under Landauer's finding of induced meaning from the constant flow of information. Thus, leaders and followers alike gradually float in circles, like a ship without a compass, as the human mind drifts in a sea of information.
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Because meaning drift occurs slowly it is hidden from the conscious mind. Leaders are therefore drawn to the common sense conclusion that others have not told the truth, or are less dedicated to working hard than they are. Only rarely do executives get the chance to discover their "knowledge" is mistaken, as when being examined by a lawyer who shows documentation that conflicts with testimony. Those occasions are often dismissed as "blowing things out of proportion," rather than a recognition that business practice needs to be adjusted to avoid the malady of false knowledge due to the mind's bent to drift off course.
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Communication is Follow Up
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How can technology help leaders make the adjustments needed to avoid drifting off course?
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This leads to the third key ingredient in communication: a system of "follow up" linked to original understandings that ensures desired action is taken, because if needed action is not taken, leadership fails. How is "follow up" accomplished?
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Turner has explained at the Conference how the construction industry uses a system of inspection to ensure the actual work conforms to the original details. Thousands of years of cultural evolution in the construction industry shows that without an inspection process calamity will often occur because the web of connections in constructing a building is so complex that even people of good will can make a mistake. So the architect periodically shows up on site and compares the actual work with the construction details in the plans. This is a feedback "metric" process to measure results against intentions and requirements, and then plan and schedule adjustments.
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In the computer industry we use a different form of "follow up" called "debugging." Many end users have experienced the frustration of using software that was not adequately debugged. In the middle of doing an important task, the computer or the software fails, also called "crashes" -- failed "metrics."
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How do leaders debug or inspect to follow up on their decisions? There are two basic methods: accounting which reports earnings and impacts the stock price, and lawsuits which create a data base of "management details" that led to harmful conduct, and impose adjustments to conform to community standards, called "law." Two intermediate forms of "follow up" have emerged called cost and schedule control. There is actually a third form that has long been a staple of daily leadership called "meetings" or more simply "dialog." The manager or leader can ask the team how they are doing and assess, like a judge, whether the understandings conveyed comport with original objectives. Indeed, this form of follow up makes up the bulk of most leadership time: talking and listening.
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The challenge of the Information Highway is that all of this talking and listening impacts understanding in ways that cause the team to drift off course under Landauer's theory of knowledge acquisition that says more information causes meaning drift. What is the missing ingredient that can make more information useful instead of harmful?
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Let us turn back to the model of the architect inspecting the work. Recall this is done from a data base called plans and specifications that reflect original understandings about the construction details needed to achieve the end result. This data base is not static. During the course of the project changes will be needed that are reviewed and approved to meet unforeseen conditions or to accomplish various needs that become apparent as work progresses. The job of the architect is to integrate new details in a way that does not adversely impact the functioning of the original details, so that the overall objective can still be accomplished.
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It is not too difficult to see that the leader of a business has an analogous role in guiding the team toward a common objective and accommodating needed change that becomes apparent along the journey. The key difference is that the architect has a data base from which to inspect and link on-going activity to measure performance. The business leader lacks this ingredient. This is becoming a growing obstacle to effective leadership in the age of the Information Highway that causes "data pollution" cited by Intel in its presentation at Asilomar.
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The architect can measure a door to see if it is located as planned. But, when a leader hears a report in a meeting about progress and plans for future action, how can the leader measure whether this communication aligns with the data base of management details for the initiative being reported? The leader can look at notes from the last meeting, or ask a manager to check the file for letters and contract provisions related to the report received, but this is so time consuming that the effort is only made if a catastrophe occurs such as an industrial accident or a lawsuit is filed. In those rare instances when the record is checked, leaders find that they cannot read their notes and everyone has a different recollection.
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Of course there is no "process" at the present time to create a "data base" of "management details" to effectively trace new information against original understandings, as the architect does with his data base of construction details to inspect a building for conformance with the plans and specs. There is a lot of "management information" and many data base reports, but they do not address the heart of leadership work which is deciding which path to take on the Information Highway of the 21st century. Those decisions are predicated on dialog and there is no tradition or practice to capture understandings from conversation that comprise the majority of "management details." Leaders are in fact cut off from the details of most of the decisions they make each day. The Information Highway compounds this disconnect by increasing the number of details that impact performance and the rate at which errors are distributed.
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Technology can redress this growing disconnect by empowering leaders to capture the record of daily management details and connect it up to prior related events and organizational objectives. This new practice provides the understanding and follow up that is essential for effective leadership.
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While the architect works with a finite dimensional space, the manager deals with an amorphous "knowledge space" of information, time and objectives. All of us readily recognize dimensional space because we deal with it all the time by interacting with a world bound by gravity and distance. All of us use the terms "knowledge" "information" and "data" regularly, but interchangeably. Figuring out how to use technology to improve leadership requires, however, making some distinctions. Data can be considered as facts and figures, as in a cost report or personnel report on the number of vacation days we took last year. It is helpful to use "information" to mean the language that forms a narrative description to position "data" in a context relevant to immediate concerns. "Knowledge" is the web of connections between information from different sources over time and the various objectives it impacts. So information connects data, and knowledge connects information resulting in "understanding," which is our goal.
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Time magazine (Mar 25, 1996 p. 50) recently reported efforts in cognitive science to research human consciousness. This is the faculty that converts data into information and into knowledge, common sense, wisdom and vision which leaders seek. Like all organic structures in nature, it appears the mind has the capacity to assemble wider patterns of understanding as a function of time.
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A complete structure of consciousness can be represented as:




             +----  Vision        (seeing the future by knowing the past)
  Leaders    |      History       (specialists write and form judgements)
  do this? --+      Wisdom        (i.e., "uncommon sense")
             |      Common Sense  (culture, tradition, manners)
             +----  Knowledge     (web of connections cause/effect)
                    Information   -----+
               +--  Data               |- IT is struggling to bridge
 Computers do  |    Words/Numbers -----+    this gap for managers
  this --------+    Bytes
               |    Bits
               +--  0,1           (on off, yes no, right wrong, life death)


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Computers can quickly assess whether a switch is open or shut and report this as 0 or 1, reflecting innate dichotomies of existence: on off, right wrong, etc. From this simple clarity, computers create bits, bytes and words/numbers. This forms the foundation for computer wizardry in producing lots of "data." However, this is only useful to leadership after it has been "processed" into higher forms. Today, technology is struggling to convert "data" into "information," but leaders don't use information. Management Information Systems (MIS) are created for managers. Leaders use knowledge, common sense, wisdom, history and vision. How can technology help leaders convert information into these higher forms?
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The presentation at Asilomar on the law explains how the discovery process builds a chronological record of management details after-the-fact. Technology can help leaders build this data base concurrently with the work, so that it can be used like the architect's plans and specs to check, i.e., measure, understandings as work progresses. The New World Order... paper published in the May 1996 issue of PMnetwork calls this process "Communication Metrics." It explains how effective follow up, which is difficult for leaders to accomplish by conventional means, can be consistently accomplished by using technology that integrates time and information so that every task a leader, or anyone else, performs is automatically linked back to its predecessor as a first order check, or "inspection," to ensure that action is connected to the right details. This accomplishes traceability to original sources called out by ISO criteria and provides the alignment of people that the PMBOK says leaders should perform. These links to causation comprise the "understanding" that people hunger for today. Links to cause and effect in an automated knowledge space maintain the steady course of shared meaning that enable communities to withstand the meaning drift that otherwise debilitates even powerful and supple minds on the Information Highway.
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It has long been recognized that tools which empower people to accomplish needed tasks faster and more accurately, generally provide motivation from the realization that success is easier to accomplish. Therefore, technology that improves understanding and follow up, makes it easier to motivate people to accomplish difficult objectives.
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The challenge of applying these tools, however, remains complex. It is akin to efforts in earlier times to persuade people to send their children to school. When there is wood to chop, crops to harvest and water to fetch, "book learning" seems too remote a benefit compared with the immediate need for action.
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Similarly, when there are endless meetings to attend, calls to make and planes to catch, the prospect of investing time to capture the record in a way that creates a meaningful data base of "management details" seems too remote to justify the effort. As well, the cost of not capturing the record typically occurs weeks, months and years later, and this disconnect in time makes it difficult to recognize the added value of capturing the record at a time when it is well enough known to be meaningful at a much later time when prior understandings are needed.
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Recognizing the benefit of investing that provides a deferred reward is accomplished in the banking industry by providing regular near term benefits called "interest." Interest payments encourage people to avoid immediate consumption in favor of pooling resources that thereon permit allocating resources to larger efforts that eventually yield much larger rewards. In theory, the system would work better without paying out these short term interest payments, but it is a necessary element to overcome fear of the unknown, similar to adopting technology that promises future rewards by investing time to create a data base of management details.
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People are afraid to make the investment until there is a wide enough experience base that shows a strong likelihood of achieving a reward. That is why it took 5,000 years for the alphabet to become a universal standard for human knowledge. Like investing to pool resources, the alphabet is a powerful tool, but it takes many years of training to master the methodology, and even after having done so, there is no guarantee it will result in desired rewards. When rewards are deferred from immediate costs, the disconnect in time engenders ignorance, fear and denial of need and value added.
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Thousands of years has shown that investing time to learn reading and writing offers a much better opportunity to succeed. That is the most that technology can do to improve leadership, understanding and follow up that comprise effective communication through the connections that convert information into useful knowledge and ideas.
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A strategy to meet the resistance of deferred reward modalities is to use a specialist to create the data base of management details, similar to the way an architect creates and maintains the details needed to construct a building. For an executive this might be a leadership aide, as used in the military, or a para legal/associate attorney, used in the legal profession. An Assistant Project Manager might fill this role in the construction arena; a Communication Manager might be used in the corporate setting; a Process Analyst might be used in the high tech industry. What does this person do that is not being done now and which needs to be done in order for organizations to succeed?
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In a poetic sense this person "tends the garden of knowledge" as it grows each day within a particular business environment. This supports the "Continual Learning" function promulgated by emerging management standards such as ISO. It requires collaborating with those who carry out the work to capture and maintain the structure of objectives that evolve to ensure the work is linked to the vision and strategies formulated by leadership. The record of conversations, calls, meetings and correspondence must be captured and linked to create the web of understandings that comprise organizational knowledge.
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The record needs to be structured in a way that makes it useful to decision making relative to opportunities and constraints from commitments, contracts and community standards in laws, regulations, ordinances and company policies. The Communication Manager/Leadership Aide, must be proactive in "digging out of the system" the correlations and implications that reveal conflicts to adjust and Action Items to pursue that are not otherwise apparent in the heat of battle. This must all be done in a way that is timely, yet not intrusive nor threatening to the self-esteem of team members.
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The reason for creating this role is the same as for hiring an accountant. Most executives know accounting, and everyone is aware of budgets, but the volume of numbers to follow and the need for accuracy requires that a specialist do the work, again similar to hiring an architect to create the construction details for a building. People intrinsically feel the architect does something they cannot do, and so feel a Communication Manager is not needed because they can do that work. In fact most executives feel their strength is the ability to communicate. But, as seen, communication is more than convincing people to act, i.e., talking people into doing things, or simply giving orders. The Information Highway creates a new environment that makes it more difficult to figure out what orders to give and to maintain shared meaning and follow up on orders that are given. Accordingly, the increased volume of information and consequent need to ensure accurate understandings may in some cases warrant someone to perform this part of communication in order to make leadership effective.
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New tools, roles and skills are of no value without leadership to support initiative, demand results and provide the courage to overcome ignorance, fear and denial.
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Columbus' ships that sailed to a new world were of no better craftsmanship than those of his peers, yet they were energized by the courage and vision of a leader that other ships lacked. Ideas require a champion. In the modern era of constant change, organizations need an "Ambassador of Change" who can ferret out the choices, investigate the claims, test the theories and shepherd the good ideas through the treacherous waters of the status quo. This is evident from the frenzy to "reengineer" by eliminating managers to fit the vision, ideas and skills of leadership. Managers change where they work, who they work for and if they work, in a veritible game of "musical chairs," called downsizing, but there is no reengineering of how executives work to improve their productivity.
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Executives are hard working, smart people with sensitive egos and old world skills who fear change. They know they make a living by thinking, planning and communicating. They recognize computers should improve these skills, but worry that failed promises of the "paperless office" have actually increased their workload on the Information Highway; and, executives fear people skilled with "Communication Metrics" threaten their job and self-esteem. These obstacles of ego and fear require special support. Ambassadors of Change are therefore critical to reach the new reality of automated management practice.
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The challenge of changing in the right direction is described in George Gilder's book "Microcosm" quoting Lynn Conway on introducing new ideas, specifically educating management in the early years of the computer industry to adopt VLSI design:
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"How can you take methods that are new, methods that are
not in common use and therefore perhaps considered unsound
methods, and turn them into sound methods?" "I was very aware of the difficulty of bringing forth a new
system of knowledge by just publishing bits and pieces of
it among traditional work and then waiting until after it
has all evolved and someone writes a book about it."

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VLSI is one of the key breakthroughs that made possible the exponential growth of the personal computer and ushered in the Information Highway. Ms. Conway points out that the best and brightest of her day in the 1970s resisted VLSI as unsound, contrary to common practice.
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Now, 25 years later, many of those who resisted the hardest have become wealthy titans of industry, respected for vision and sought out for opinions on how to "reengineer." This year's Asilomar Conference shows we need another system of knowledge to form a better partnership between leadership and technology. All we need is the courage and the vision to set sail once again for a new frontier: applying the "Law of the Microcosm" to leverage the power of the mind can overcome the strongest resistance, the highest obstacle, and usher in a bountiful era progress.