Why Are Things the Way They Are?
Re Conversations with Dave
We are probably hurting ourselves with all this remembering.
However, to your point “…all that work which reached a peak of completeness and sophistication in the early 90s has yet to be implemented to any signficant extent.”
More and more I find myself asking why things are the way they are, looking, I think, for a deeper understanding and, when and if finding it, hopefully developing reasonable change strategies.
There is a cadre that includes you and me that has believed for some time that a disciplined look at how things work can reveal how the things can be made to work better. IE is an example of that. Why is it that it “…has yet to be implemented to any significant extent?” Another example of this is the brief discussion that Langley, you, and I were having regarding the take-up of SCM.
By the way, I attended a webinar sponsored by Supply Chain Digest called “The New Generation of Global Transportation Management.” I2 and Aberdeen Research participated. I was struck by how the “new generation” seems so much like the generation we espoused so many years ago. Why the lag? Were we and others, like da Vinci, too far ahead of our time? Were we focused on the wrong problem? Were the necessary incentives for change not in place? Has the economy been growing sufficiently well to hide the underlying problems? Do the pressures for short term results prevent the investment in strategic thinking?
Somewhere in all this, if we are correct in our beliefs, is the lever that needs to be pushed to cause the alignment of all that needs to be aligned that will enable the change. I’m beginning to think (and I have expressed this to you before) that it is somehow connected with management incentives.
James Drogan
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Reader Comments (1)
One preamble comment - to be followed up - after several of these experiences it comes to me that we have what we used to call 'model specification error'. In econometrics that was when a model was correct as far as it went but didn't include the relations and terms that captured the totality of the problem. One can error the other way of course and 'over-determine' a model, i.e. have to many terms and relations, and thereby exceed what the data will support.
In this case it seems to be one thing to take complete, 'disciplined look' at the problem per se and another to addon the terms to account for change costs/barriers and political resistances.
Dave