<$BlogRSDUrl$>

9.29.2003

Drawing clear lines between information systems 


In my many ramblings through the wwweb, especially through various blogs and k-logs, I came upon this little gem - Drawing clear lines between information systems. When you read through it you may think, "Well, that's obvious!"

I thought the same thing as I read through it. Then I thought, "Well, if it is so obvious why are we still having all these problems described in the paper?" As I'm sure you will see when you think about the paper (assuming you read it), it is one thing to know what you should do, and quite another to figure how to do it (and then, of course, actually do it!).


- - -- --- ----- --------

Paper Prototyping: How-To Training Video from Nielsen Norman Group 


Paper Prototyping: How-To Training Video from Nielsen Norman Group.

I've not seen the DVD, but I'm sure it lives up to the high standards .NN/g adheres to on everything else they do. Basically, it shows techniques for, as the title states, Paper Prototyping.

I can't attest to the techniques they espouse, but the basic concept is, it seems to me, common sense and I've used it for quite a few things. Even if you are just using it for yourself as a way to figure out how to do something, it is a worthwhile technique.

And I'm sure this DVD is well worth the $50 (+ $3 s&h).


- - -- --- ----- --------

9.28.2003

Diffusion of Innovation Theory 


A thorough analysis of Diffusion of Innovation Theory. Nearly all of the links on the page, though, are dead.


- - -- --- ----- --------

Where have all the savants gone? 


The tangent in my last post aside, what really struck me about the use of the descriptor "savant" in Quicksilver is that it doesn't seem to be used today to describe "a learned person" or "scholar." I wonder why not? Do we have better words to describe them?

The term "academic" is used quite a bit, and of course "scholar," but they just don't seem to me to have the same je ne sais quoi as "savant." Maybe we just don't have any savants of the non-idiot kind anymore? Maybe our society is structured in such a way that savants don't, or can't, develop or thrive.

Just imagine the intense drive and passion, not to mention patience, it must have taken for the Natural Philosophers of the 17th and 18th Centuries to figure things out, many times when everyone else was actively out to stop you because your ideas were counter to the prevailing wisdom. How many people do you know today who could do that? Could you? Dedicate your life to an idea that no one else thought was worth pursuing?

It is more likely, however, that savants still exist and in fact thrive. It's just that most people are not aware of their existence, even though their contributions to our lives are everywhere. I imagine it was the same back then. And, in fact, it quite likely that most people today are not aware at all of the contributions of the great savants of history.


- - -- --- ----- --------

Idiot-Savant: Oxymoron?  


Reading Quicksilver, I'm struck by how often the term savant is used, in a completely non-pejorative way, to describe the great Natural Philosophers of the time (such as Newton, Leibniz, Hooke, etc). The only way I've ever heard the term was in conjunction with the word "idiot," as in "Idiot-Savant," used most often in the context of an otherwise mentally challenged/impaired individual (e.g. autistic) who has some sort of virtuosic talent in a single, limited area.

Naturally, this got me curious as to what the actual definition of savant is. From dictionary.com:
  1. A learned person; a scholar
  2. an idiot savant

The first definition fits with how it is used in the narrative of the book, but that second definition got my curiosity going once again, so looked up idiot:
  1. A foolish or stupid person
  2. A human being destitute of the ordinary intellectual powers, whether congenital, developmental, or accidental; commonly, a person without understanding from birth

The second of the two definitions above (by all means not all of the possibilities) seems to me the most accurate for how the term is commonly used today (unless of course you are using it as an insult).

And this is where (why) I ask the question, "Is the term idiot-savant an oxymoron?" Of course, before we can properly answer the question, we really should know what an oxymoron is. Back to dictionary.com:
  1. A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist.
  2. A figure in which an epithet of a contrary signification is added to a word; e. g., cruel kindness; laborious idleness.

Using either of these definitions, I think that oxymoron is an accurate description for the expression idiot savant.


- - -- --- ----- --------

9.27.2003

More on Tacit Knowledge... 


Sitting here studying some statistics - I'm sorry, "quantitative analysis" - listening to and watching a Joe Satriani DVD: Live in San Francisco (2001). I love listening to his music, and enjoy watching him and his band play even more.

Part of my fascination, especially as an amateur piano player, is watching the ease with they play even the most difficult pieces. It is as if their fingers, hands, indeed their whole bodies just know what to do. Of course, my point is exactly that: through extensive training, practice, repetition, and learning from mistakes, the body basically goes on autopilot.

This is not to take away from the performance. Not at all. You can still see the concentration it takes, especially on the difficult ones (they all look difficult to me, but that is beside the point), but it is a comfortable concentration. They are focused on the outcome, not on the playing.

They are having a hell of a lot of fun, and you can tell.


- - -- --- ----- --------

apropos to nothing... 


Going through a bunch of stuff about Knowledge Management, one of the most common things you come across is the various definitions of things like data, information, knowledge, wisdom, etc. etc. Every now and then, you will come across a discussion of noise, but following my recent thoughts on PowerPoint I don't think noise is given quite its due share.

I pick on PowerPoint for obvious reasons: The actual content in a typical PowerPoint presentation is a tiny percentage of the total number of bits within a presentation file. Even using PowerPoint properly, there is usually a huge amount of junk on every slide (pictures, etc) that add no value to the overall presentation.

When looking at how you can use IT resources effectively, reducing the noise (or more appropriately, raising the signal to noise ratio) should be right at the top of the list of things to do.


- - -- --- ----- --------

Analog vs. Digital 


There are many ways to look at the differences between analog and digital. The way music CD are produced provides a useful analogy to use when looking at analog vs. digital uses of corporate information technology.

There are three acronyms printed on CD cases to indicate how the music was recorded, mastered and stored: (definitions from the webofhifi.com dictionary)

Obviously, since we are talking about CDs the last letter will always be D, since a CD is by definitition digital storage. You could extend these definitions to include analog storage (LP or analog tape), so that you would have a wide range of possibilities: AAA, ADA, AAD, ADD, DAA, DDA,DAD, DDD.

I propose use of a similar classification system for business processes, either organizational or individual. Obviously, the three positions will not represent recording, mastering, and storage but something more appropriate to business processes. I suggest the following:

Hmmm. Will need some tweaking, but I believe it is a good starting point. Will look back on it and see how it fits as I layout various processes.


- - -- --- ----- --------

Quick example of individual productivity gains/savings based on "digital thinking" 


Using the ideas from my last post I worked this up as a quick example of how changing the way you do things to take advantage of the capabilities of IT (hereafter referred to as digital thinking) can save you money (or at least productivity):

Using MS Powerpoint in an analog** way to build presentations is very time consuming. You build each slide from scratch, or you copy an old presentation and go through and replace the information, hoping it all fits, etc. You may change a font here or there, have to move a text box because the size isn't quite the same as it was before. A lot of time wasted worrying about formatting the data. A very conservative estimate for the amount of time spent on formatting is ten minutes per presentation.

Using Powerpoint in a digital way (that is, how it was intended to be used), you have a slide master that takes care of all the formatting for you. You simply hit Ctrl+M to create a new slide and start filling in the blanks. The spacing is correct, the fonts are correct, the colors are correct.

Now imagine you have an organization where 15 presentations are created/edited, on average, every day. Using Powerpoint in an analog way results in a significant productivity loss:

(10 minutes/presentation) - unnecessary time spent on formatting
*(15 presentations/day)
*(250 days/year) - obviously work days, not calendar days
*(30 dollars/hour) - need to consider loaded rate, not just salary, this is obviously a WAG
*(1 hour/60 minutes) - to get all the units to work out
=====================
$18,750 / year

Nearly 20 grand a year spent for people to tweak fonts and box sizes instead of adding true value to the content of the presentation. (Again, these numbers are very conservative, actual productivity loss because of this is probably much, much worse.)
- - -- --- ----- --------

** By analog, here I mean using PowerPoint as a collection of pages, each of which must be individually formatted and prepared, similar to the old way of laying out and preparing overhead transparencies. Before you say to yourself, "No one does that anymore," consider that just yesterday I sat through a presentation given using transparencies and an overhead projector, with slides that were very recently created, obviously slide by slide.


- - -- --- ----- --------

Do Productivity Increases Generate Economic Gains? (from Alertbox) 


It's all good and well to say that changing a process from an "analog" one to a "digital" one to take advantage of IT will improve productivity, reduce costs, etc., but does it really? Check out this article, Do Productivity Increases Generate Economic Gains? from Jakob Nielsen' Alertbox.


- - -- --- ----- --------

Time to Make Tech Work (from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) 


As I was putting together a business case to focus on making better use of the IT assets we currently own instead of buying/developing more, I received an e-mail notification for Time to Make Tech Work (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox). Perfect timing.

Though the article is full of good ideas, three of them stand out for me (in my current situation):


- - -- --- ----- --------

9.26.2003

Strategy by design... 


...or strategy by default? Where do you stand?

Do things just happen to you, are you just along for the ride? Are you getting where you want to go, or are you simply getting where you are going? A couple of old proverbs (I forget where from):
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

-and-

If you stay on the road you are on, you will end up where it takes you.


- - -- --- ----- --------

Tacit Knowledge 


From Tacit Dimension, Polanyi (1966):
...the notion of tacit "knowing": here, the outcome of the action is the focal, or proximal, point and the doing (achieving the outcome) is characterised as a distal process. Through practice, the attention of the doer is focused on the outcome rather than the means of achieving the outcome.


- - -- --- ----- --------

Foundations for Leadership training course 


Writing about The Fifth Discipline got me thinking about it all over again. I have to admit that the last time I read the book as a whole was well over a year ago, and it has been several months since I've even referenced it. As a result, everything I said in my last post is likely a load of hooey. Since I don't have the book handy, I did the next best thing and went to the Society of Organizational Learning's site to see what is new in the area of organizational learning.

The leading item was the Foundations for Leadership course of the subject of this post. From the site, who should attend:
This course is intended for everyone commited to deepening their capacity for effective leadership - including those in senior management positions and those with no formal authority. Teams are encouraged to attend to further develop their collective leadership.

I'll leave the rest of the site for you to explore...


- - -- --- ----- --------

What if the "organization" doesn't want to learn? 


Anticipated learning from the Foundations for Leadership course mentioned before:
The special contribution of this leadership course comes as people discover the profound connections between personal mastery and systems thinking, seeing that deep change in our social systems and in oneself are inseparable from each other.

For the target audience of the course, this is perfect. Anyone willing to take the three days and spend the tuition obviously wants to gain personal mastery and affect a deep change in themselves and social systems. And these people are typically the leaders, whether formal or not, of an organization that they want to change.

Unfortunately, the members of an organization - especially a large and well established (ie, old) organization - may not have this same desire. How does an organization overcome this lack of interest and turn it into the burning desire to grow and excel that is the trademark of a learning organization?

In a word: LEADERSHIP.


- - -- --- ----- --------

Aren't all organizations "learning organizations"? 


In The Fifth Discipline, author Peter Senge describes the concept of "Organizational Learning" and the "Learning Organization." I think the book is a great resource, with great ideas (the obvious being the fifth discipline itself - Systems Thinking) and is a must read for anyone trying to improve their organization.

I can't argue with the idea of Organizational Learning, but I feel the term "learning organization" was an unfortunate choice of words. As described in the book, a "learning organization" is an unusual thing, a good thing. It seems to me, though, that all organizations are "learning" organizations - just as all people learn things everyday, good and bad, whether they are trying to or not, organizations are always learning.

You can track the history of any organization and see it "learn." This learning presents itself most commonly as the "habits" the organization learns, most of which are unfortunately bad habits. Just as with an individual person with no goals or direction in life, an organization with no leadership to guide it in learning "good" habits will be left to the whims of the individuals in the organization.

Unfortunately, I don't have any better labels to offer for what Senge calls the learning organization, at least not yet. (I'm in the same pickle with Knowledge Management, another unfortunate choice of words that doesn't really seem to accurately describe the concept.)


- - -- --- ----- --------

Negative feedback as model for "training" 


Negative feedback...is a way of reaching an equilibrium point despite unpredictable and changing external conditions.

The above quote is from Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steve Johnson, who goes on to say that negative feedback is a way of indirectly pushing a fluid, changeable system toward a goal.

Though not the context in the book, this definition and description of negative feedback is also an excellent definition of training (and, for that matter, learning). For what is training if not the process of getting to a point you want to be at based on continued refinement of what you are doing?


- - -- --- ----- --------

9.25.2003

Blogs as Waste Book 


I first read of Sir Isaac Newton's "Waste Book" in James Gleick's biography, titled simply Isaac Newton. Fascinating stuff. Of course, once I read this biography - which, by the way, I strongly recommend - I had to read the classic The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, a new translation by the recently deceased I. Bernard Cohen. Very difficult reading at times, but the history and explanation of the Principia is almost as interesting as the book itself.

I've always kept notebooks for random thoughts and jottings, writing things down that seemed worth keeping, though in no particular order except chronological. Makes it somewhat difficult to search, but then again the point of the notebooks, as it seems with Newton's Waste Book, is not so much to be able to go back and find things as it is to write the things down in the first place. Some things are worth going back to, most of it is just a part of a process of figuring things out.

Not sure why, but while reading an interview with Neal Stephenson about how he researched and prepped for his current book,
Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)
, I had what can only be called an epiphany about blogs and blogging - in many ways, basic blogs are nothing more than a modern Waste Book. Sure, you can make a blog much more, with lots of fancy stuff, categories, searches, archives, etc etc etc, but when you get down to it, many blogs are just a way for people to write down the things they have figured out about life.


- - -- --- ----- --------

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?