| Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 05:09:45 -0700 | 04 00069 61 99071801 |
Mr. Morris E. Jones
Director of Architecture
Intel Corporation
350 East Plumeria; Mail Stop CHP02-1
San Jose, CA 95124
morris.jones@intel.com
| Subject: | NSF Proposal, Communication Metrics |
|
Example to Illustrate Meaning of "intelligence" |
Dear Morris,
Possibly the Project Summary for the NSF proposal offers a more down to earth explanation of where we are headed with Com Metrics.
Perhaps, as we discussed, an example of SDS work product can help your colleagues recognize that useful intelligence is not simply theoretical pondering, but rather is used everyday by a live person in the world to solve common problems, by, as you mentioned, using good practice consistently.
I think our only difference, is that you feel people can work this way, if they wanted to and would try with MS Word, filing cabinets and 3 x 5 cards. My sense is that this is not possible, and is becoming less so everyday. The closest example is legal work, and lawyers will only do this if someone pays $400+ per hour. They don't achieve this level of care in analysis, organization, alignment and summary. Legal briefs achieve some of this intelligence on a few narrow issues, long after-the-fact, when there is no opportunity to avoid harm. Only the SDS tool makes it possible to do detailed, proactive intelligence work all the time for a wider spectrum of activity.
Anyway, here is the conclusion of the car service problem you reviewed that began on 990507. It shows how to tie together an invoice, a warranty, letters issued, received and a bunch of meetings over many years, to achieve an intelligent result.
You seem to me to be making excessive use of summary that is disconnected from relevant details. This is endemic to reliance on conversation, understandably driven, in part, by limited time. It can, also, seem executive to summarize 4 or 5 issues into a single sound bite. We get used to working with colleagues, who rely on conversation, and are moved, by a seemingly invincible culture, to adopt similar practices. But, it does not enable the 4 or 5 issues to go away.
Fortune's article cited in the letter to S&C makes the same point. Details count - they don't go away, they just hide and gather energy that blows up on us at the least opportune time. The SDS, Welch stuff is not important to you, but the general point is crucial.
If little details blow up on the CEO of GM, IBM, AT&T, Westinghouse.... no one is immune. A big bank account buys things off for awhile, but relying on that only makes it more difficult to adjust when sunshine profits begin to fade. Working with details takes practice to acquire a measure of diligence, cited by Andy Grove in his book, Only the Paranoid Survive. "Diligence" means forcing ourselves to work against our support culture, and against our nature, because the human mind is wired to summarize details into the "big picture," and the surrounding culture is geared to work by conversation. That is a lot of force that encourages reliance on summary sound bites. If we don't practice on the little things, we get out of practice without realizing it, and then are left with only Murphy's Law to blame when overlooked details blow up. Just an observation.
Sincerely,
THE WELCH COMPANY
Rod Welch