James Drogan

"Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses."

From Quotes of the Day.

This article comes from the CSCMP Supply Chain Quarterly and is dates October 20, 2010.

The United States is saddled with a high unemployment rate and many experienced people are seeking jobs right now. Even so, companies will confront a serious shortage of supply chain talent, warns the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Transportation and Logistics in a white paper titled "Are You Prepared for the Supply Chain Talent Crisis?"

The supply chain talent shortage will stem from a combination of layoffs and a changing skill set needed for the job. Companies that shed staff during the depth of the economic downturn may soon need to rehire practitioners, some of whom will have found work in other areas or at competing firms, analysts wrote.

There will always be opportunities for the right combination of knowledge, skills, experience, attitudes, and behavior. 

In other words, the world’s industries concentration on building a sustainable environment will decide the length of time high-level business operations can continue.

From a project paper in my MIS in Transportation course.  An elegant -- simple and strong -- statement of organizational responsibilities and the associated risk and reward.

In a 2003 presentation (Barriers and Catalysts in Global Transportation) I concluded that, "Culture is the most significant barrier or catalyst to success."  This was a statement following on from conclusions I was drawing late in my IBM career that, “Information systems are technology plus process plus tools plus skills plus culture” (Some Ideas on the Application of Information Technology to the Freight Railway).

The more deeply embedded I was becoming in the process of helping my clients improve the performance of their organizations, the more critical became the consideration of culture as made manifest by human behavior.  Indeed, in the nine years since moving from IBM to another career, my appreciation, if not understanding, of this "X factor" as being a critical factor in progress has only increased.

This then leads me to The X Factor in Economics from this morning's edition of The New York Times.  The following paragraph from the article lays out the dilemma.

“Pride is not in the model. Revenge is not in the model. Fear is not in the model. Even simple things like the disenchantment of people who are fired from their jobs — the model doesn’t account for how devastating that experience can be,” and what that sense of devastation will mean for the economy, he said.

Here, at the core of our quantitative and subjective models, lies this mysterious X factor.  Like mercury slipping through our fingers, human behavior slips through the neurons and synapses of the mind,  seeming to find those interstices where it lodges to the befuddlement of all.  Yes, human behavior can surprise (Death of a Fulton Fish Market Fixture, also in today's New York Times) in pleasant and evocative ways.  We can acknowledge that and hope that this sort of human behavior can find its way into the resolution of some of the significant issues of the day.

All this leads me to suggest that there is a need for study of the nature of human behavior by those who are affected by human behavior.  I suppose that's virtually all of us.  Perhaps a course in human behavior ought to be required at the graduate level.

I'm immodest enough to think that my students read this blog from time to time.  If so, perhaps they will be kind enough to give some consideration to the importance of human behavior in their careers and ask themselves whether additional insight on this topic may be of value.

I got caught up in Edge 322 — July 19, 2010 this morning and its examination of The Knowledge Web of Danny Hillis.  John Brockman, the editor and publisher of Edge, makes the following initial points regarding Hillis.

In retrospect the key idea in the "Aristotle" essay was this: if humans could contribute their knowledge to a database that could be read by computers, then the computers could present that knowledge to humans in the time, place and format that would be most useful to them.  The missing link to make the idea work was a universal database containing all human knowledge, represented in a form that could be accessed, filtered and interpreted by computers.

Brockman's reference to "Aristotle" points to the May 2004 Hillis essay, "Aristotle" (The Knowledge Web).

Then, in this morning's New York Times, comes Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic. 

 This, in turn, reminded me of the SIDAL loop of which I have previously blogged and written in my notes (see Lecture Notes and Other Information and Ideas).  What Hillis seems to call for, in sum, is a replacement, at least in part, of people by machine.

Hillis calls for a more sophisticated system for managing knowledge and its underlying information and data (see The Relevance of Data, Information, and Knowledge).  Hillis also hints at a sophistication in software that allows the role of human component in the five meta-processes of the SIDAL loop to be increasingly taken over, in whole or in part,  by machine.  In a sense, the phrase "People in Roles Accountable for Outcomes" is reduced in size in the graphic to the left and moved down to provide space for the phrase "Machines in Roles" larger in size and taking  more promoinent position in the loop.

The Google Car is a manifestation of the Hillis idea.  All this sets me to thinking which, of course, is what good articles should do, of alternatives outcomes from the starting point of the Knowledge Web.  Two items immediatly came to mind.

1. In The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, Ray Kurzweil asserts that by 2029 " Machines claim to be conscious. These claims are largely accepted."  A necessary prerequisite for this is something like the Knowledge Web.
   
   
2. In Dune: The Butlerian Jihad I encountered Omnius, an object also dependent upon something like the Knowledge Web.

Omnius, also known as the Evermind, was a collection of powerful artificially intelligent entities, which existed prior to and during the Butlerian Jihad, and after in the refounded Synchronized Worlds outside the Old Empire.

Though Omnius instances existed on many worlds, each one evolving subtle differences, all instances were bound by a synchronizing process that saw them share the collective experiences of their counterparts. Thus they were frequently referred to as a single being.

Omnius is often cited as the cause of the mankind's long-standing revulsion of technology, particularly computers. Though technically a gender-less being, speech refers to Omnius as a male.

(http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Omnius)

The issue, as I see it, is that all the implications of our dreams are not being given adequate consideration.  The global recession is a recent example of this.  We tend to continuously relearn the Law of Unintended Consequences because we seem to never really learn it.  Hillis has laid out what he considers positive consequences of the Knowledge Web, but there is, as our daughter so eloquently put it, three sides to every story  -- my side, your side, and the truth.

The great unkown in the equation of the Knowledge Web is the coefficient of capriciousness to be associated with human behavior (see Stuxnet). 

An article from the MIT Technology Review of the same name as the title of this post caused me to wonder about whether we need another operating system (OS).  In the battle of the OSs as in the battle of the browsers and, pehaps the battle of the smartphones, the use becomes confused and has his skills at adaptation, as well as his patience, sorely tried by the innovators.

Is it necessary?

In the graphic to the left left I have borrowed the notion of reach and range from Keene (Keene, P. (1991). Shaping the Future: Business Design Through Information Technology. Harvard Business School Press).  The notion of behavior emerged from a consulting engagement in which I paticipated in 1998.  Behavior is outline in greater detail in A Note on Business Drivers, Business Configuration, and Information Technology Strategy, pp 5-7.

What I have repesented here is the as-is scope of OS in comparison to the to-be scope.  There is no empirics behind this  graphic.  It is merely intended to describe a concept.

The boundaries draw through reach, range, and behavior are continually pushed outward primarily by the innovators in technology, and secondarily, by the users of technology.  My sense is that this sequence of drivers has changed over the 45 years I have been associated with technology (see Notes from the IT Frontline Post 2003 Addendum, slides 3-10).

The far extremes of reach, range, and behavior will likely never be fixed due to the curiosity of man and the innovative ways in which he satisfies that curiosity.  Man constantly redefines the "to-be."  Doubtless this is, in the long run, a good thing, but the continual change can also be frustration.

OS will continually change.  The IBM Basic Operating System of my youthful days in IBM would likely not be useful for even the kernel of a modern opeating system.  We simply didn't imagine today then.  We may one day say the same of Intel's MeeGo.

This brings me to the notion illustrated to the left.  The OS supports the middleware (MW) which in turn supports the applications (APS).  There ought to be an architecture, a set of standards, and a mindset that allows these three layers to change independently.  An example, in my mind, of a failure to do this lies in the tight coupling between browsers and websites (see Always on, always connected, always transacting. Is it possible?).

Open source appears not to be the answer.  Perhaps the industry needs to turn to open mind. 

I have previously blogged on the passing of Dave, The world is a bit less well off this week.  I have posted here, at the request of his family, the obituary.

The title of this post comes a from a provocative article by Clayton M. Christensen in the July-August 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Christensen notes:

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?

...

Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.

...

The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.

...

But once you’ve finished at Harvard Business School or any other top academic institution, the vast majority of people you’ll interact with on a day-to-day basis may not be smarter than you. And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. But if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited.

It's worth the effort to obtain and read the entire piece by Christensen.  It's eveny more worthwhile to have a good think about what he has to say and how it applies in your life. 

I knew him for 20 years.  In his broad sweeps of brilliance through a myriad of seemingly unrelated themes and historical eras he would connect the dots in unexpected ways that were, after a bit of thought, sometimes magical and mostly meaningful.  But he could also be maddening, frustrating, ambiguous, dogmatic, and fanatic.  Small price to pay, I think, for the riches he laid in front of you. 

He was never without an opinion, sometimes found on fact, sometimes found in his mind.  While he was good at analysis, a particular strength lay in his willingness to make an assertion and, in sort of King of the Hill kind of way, dare you to knock him off his perch.  I'm not too sure that many were successful.  Those who gallantly tried were doubtless better for the tussle.

He bought me books ("Here, read these."), introduced me to some very good wines and single malts, and in our most casual, but never by chance encounters, we both came equipped with a pen and a pad.  After all, you never knew when a gem would appear and you needed to be ready to snare it.

The Dave of Conversations with Dave is gone.

This came through on g-mail a couple of days ago.

I’m an instructor at the Madera Community Center in Madera, CA. I teach a one semester Maintenance Mechanic certificated program. Part of the grant requirements is to provide some level of Tier 4 Manufacturing & Logistics training. I have been struggling trying to find brief lectures that touch on these Tier 4 subjects. I came across your blog site and found your “Intro to Logistics & Supply Chain” paper. I have modified your paper to what I believe the caliber of students in my classes can understand.

This lecture will encompass at least two of the Tier 4 subjects. With your permission, I would like to implement the abbreviated version as a PowerPoint lecture during my Introduction to Manufacturing course (two weeks).

Thank you,

I have long maintained, as my students will tell you, that the greatest compliment one can be paid is to be invited back to fight the next battle.  Another great compliment is when someone thinks enough of your work to use it.

I also draw your attention to the request for permission.  Manners do count.