James Drogan

For the last 10 or so years "interaction costs" have been on my mind.  At first ("Business Intelligence: Potential Impact in Railway Freight Transportation," June 11, 1999) the phrase was confined to the interface between a railroad and its customer.  Subsequently, however, I see as the costs of interaction between all nodes in the context of interest.

My hypothesis is that as the complexity of a structure increases the complexity of the interactions, and hence the associated costs, also increases.  So much so, in fact, that growing interaction costs can cause the  structure to collapse.

In "Simplicity: The Next Big Thing," Rosabeth Moss Kanter seems to be on the same line of thinking.  She discusses the need for simplicity.    This brings to mind the question of what happens when you remove complexity from a structure.  Does it simply -- poof -- vanish?  Or, as I suspect, is it displaced somewhere else.  Much like the old practice in logistics of pushing inventory upstream, an illusion of progress.

Entropy is a measure of disorder in a system.  Few, I suspect, would dispute the assertion that the entropy in the system of the world (thank you, Neil Stephenson) continues to grow as the complexity of the system grows.

We may simplify in a local region of the system, but, like moving inventory upstream, we're not really improving the overall performance.

When we simplify we need to understand the knock-on effects.

The title of this post is taken from Ellet, William. The Case Study Handbook : How to Read, Discuss, and Write Persuasively About Cases. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2007, 978-1-4221-0158-2.

Cases have a particular meaning in the American education scheme; multiple page descriptions of situations that cause students to read, analyze, draw conclusions, and express the results of their efforts.

After reading the text, however, I believe it has applicability to much more than case work.  The suggestions made by Ellet are appropriate for reviewing and commenting on far less expansive source material such as classroom and online discussions.  Ellet's recommendations are very complementary to the fact-based hypothesis-driven thinking I discuss in Ethics, Critical Thinking, and Communications.

It matters little what one knows (as I have said before) if one cannot use that knowledge to think appropriately about situations requiring resolution, and to then express the results of that thinking a relevant and clear manner.

Ellet can help.

For some time (see Forces) I have been giving consideration to the matter of change as characterized in the title of this post.  In Managing the Business, a follow-on to Forces, I speculate a bit more on how one can safely ride the turbulence.

This morning, from The BNET Report, comes Constant Disruption: The New Reality?.

"In the past, economic stabilization has always followed periods of major upheaval like recessions, wars, energy crises, assassinations. But a few Harvard professors believe this time may be different."

The link leads one to a post on The View from Harvard Business titled "The Mother of All Disruptions." 

This post leads one to thinking on this matter by  John Hagel III, John Seely Brown (JSB), and Lang Davison, three well-respected observers and commentators on the world and its complexity.

Albert Einstein reminded us, "You cannot solve a problem with the same type of thinking that is creating it."

The argument being advanced here is for new thinking leading to new institutions and new ways of riding the wave of change.

For those of us in education that pursue the development of the new generation of wave riders it means that we need to also think in new ways.

"We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others."  Blaise Pascal via Quotes of the Day.

From Bob Sutton comes "Truth Takes Work."

''Truth takes work. If you are going to tell the truth, then you have to spend some time to get the facts right. I’ve worked with some very smart bosses who have bought into what I think is a leadership myth – that great leaders are always focused on the “big picture” future and don’t allow themselves to get sucked into day to day issues. You can’t tell the truth during “bad times” unless you are close to the ground and have shifted much of your focus to the here and now.'

The above quote comes from a CEO I know, and is striking to me. I've been talking to a number of executives lately about how much "transparency" is necessary to communicate to people during tough times like these and the best ways to do it. This CEO's comment as is a reminder that, just because someone is a senior executive, does not mean that he or she knows what is happening in the company. Some are so externally focused and so enamored with giving big speeches, meeting important people like themselves, doing giant deals without getting in the weeds, and serving on boards, that they really have no idea what is happening in their own companies. Times like these reveal these posers.'

Be sure you go to Bob's post and read the appended comments.

Re: Conversations with Dave

Early on in my second career as an academician I suggested to an ethics seminar that ethics were too important to be left to an ethics class. In March of 2007, as the Closing Speaker at the CUNY Conference on Academic Integrity, I reaffirmed my position. I've subsequently taken the same position on matters of critical thinking and communications.

I'm inclined to say the same of humanities.

There are certain themes (e.g., in addition to those mentioned above are culture and corporate social responsibility) that ought find their way through all of our instruction (e.g., logistics). I'm arguing that such themes and their effects are easier to understand when placed in the context of value-adding activities that advance the general health of the world.

Following this argument then, we should be less concerned that humanities justify their worth then that other disciplines underscore their worth through the injection of, say, humanities. I'm not suggesting here that we should devalue humanities, but rather we should interpret them in different contexts thereby enhancing their value.

The fabric of the whole man comprises several threads. The warp and woof of these threads suggests a pattern that grows increasingly complex through the generations. We, whether teachers or parents or mentors or executives, ought to seek and accept responsibility for helping the man (or, of course, woman) weave this new fabric.

Prompted by the growing functional richness and reliability of the cloud and the iPhone in my pocket, I've decided to take my first baby steps into the cloud as a source of function, not just information.

Depending upon my schedule I would find that I might go as long as three days without ever looking at my personal e-mail client, Outlook.  I reckoned that anyone would always call if there was a real need to get to me in short order.

Many of the things that I valued Outlook for can now be done in the cloud and my ability to look into the cloud from anywhere and at any time now presents a value proposition that looks as if it may be stronger than the client-based approach I have long used.

So, I'm trying an experiment using Gmail (jim.drogan@gmail.com).  I've set it up so that Gmail fetches the e-mail from my other ISP and I will be using Gmail to read and respond for say, a month.  I need to also experiment with a task list and calendar in the cloud.  Google looks like a good bet for these functions.

On occasion one receives little notes like this:

"Professor Drogan,

I remembered speaking with you one day about buying Drogan Notes online. I went to lulu.com and noticed that there were two sets, 2008 and 2009. Along with the year difference there was also a price difference. Because you were the most influential professor I had encountered during the graduate program I would like to utilize your teachings throughout my career. If you could please let me know if there is any noticeable difference in the two editions it would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,"

Yes I suppose I am boasting and being immodest, but I feel pretty good about having an impact on students.

It's the ability to impact students, to be a part of preparing them to survive, thrive, and make a difference in the world that is the reward for teaching. 

Education is criticized in this country and for good reason.  In many respects and in many places it has wandered from its true purpose, become a tool of the political hacks, an expensive baby sitting service, and a playground for the pompous to whom the status quo represents progress.

We see far to little celebration of education's accomplishments.  But then good news doesn't sell nor does it provide the opportunity to hold Congressional hearings.

Complementary to Ethics, Critical Thinking, and Communications, a recent lecture note, are the following two items that came across my desk this morning.

First, is For Bank of America and Merrill, Love Was Blind from this morning's New York Times.  Deep in this examination of the relationship between these two banks is the following paragraph.

"Interviews with almost 30 current and former Bank of America and Merrill executives and employees convey just how messy the merger has been. All of them asked not to be identified because they either did not have permission from the banks to speak or because they had signed confidentiality agreements with their former employers."

My observation here is that the article, while, in my view, newsworthy, brings to light ethical issues beyond the obvious.  Is it ethical for those who can "...not to be identified because they either did not have permission from the banks to speak..." to in fact speak?

Is it ethical for those that "...had signed confidentiality agreements..." to violate those agreements?

Is it ethical for journalism to motivate this behavior?

Second, is Irving Wladawsky-Berger's piece titled A Gathering Storm We Totally Missed where he takes to task his colleagues in the technical and research community for their failure to speak out, early and often, on an issue important to the national interest.

Did this community have an ethical failure?

Smart people can defend these decisions as, at a minimum, not being ethical failures.  But is ethics about performing at the lowest common denominator?  Journalism will argue that their behavior is perfectly legitimate within their context.  It's not their problem if others fail to keep their confidentiality agreements.  And if journalism encourages this behavior it's for a good and sufficient reason.  My observation would be that people who violate agreements often have selfish reasons for doing so.

I do suggest that these situations represent learning opportunities.  It's worth a bit of time to thinking about how each of us might react if we found amidst the events described in the two articles.

As for me I would like to think that in the first case I would have held to the agreements I had made.  In the second case I suspect I would not have said anything.

I had inserted this widget into the right side pane under Navigation to keep readers informed of recent notes and papers added to the site.  These are generally added in the lecture note collections and, as such, are not subject to the RSS feed.  However, it occurred to me that, in this case, folks would have to go looking and these additions would not appear in their news aggregators.

So, I'm removing the widget and will announce additions on droganbloggin.

Listed here, latest first, are notes and papers that were previously located in the widget.

A Note on Strategy and Its Descendants February 4, 2009

Ethics, Critical Thinking, and Communications February 3, 2009

DL ala Drogan January 16, 2009

The Intersection of Global Awareness and Technology Literacy January 6, 2009

Some Comments on Academic Assessment January 4, 2009

When Technology Fails December 8, 2008