From: Eric Armstrong <eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com>
Eugene Kim wrote:
>
> > There are several reasons that prevent this approach from
> > being viable. Chief among them are:
> > 1) Organizations simply do not work that way.
> > While some seriously desire to improve their productive
> > capacities, virtually none want to "improve their
> > capability to improve".
>
> I'm not sure I agree. When a company tries to facilitate
> communication
> among its employees by building centralized cafeterias, intranet
> communities, or even rearranging cubicle arrangements, are they
> improving
> their productive capacities, or are they improving their capability to
> improve?
>
The *may* be improving their capability to improve, but I would
argue that their goal is to improve productivity. In other words,
they are engaging explicitly in a B-process. I'm going to hazard
a guess that any other effects are unintended, happening by chance.
More importantly, what would it *mean* to improve your ability to
improve, in the context of cafeterias? If communal sitting areas
bring people into closer contact, then "improving your ability to
improve" must mean getting better at figuring out *who* needs to
be in contact at any point in time, and rearranging the office so
that see each other more frequently.
Imagine that all the offices are on skids. At night, they get
rearranged so that people who need to see other more are more
closely adjacent. Maybe the CEO needs to be in touch with
technical folk this week and marketing folk next week. The
change in office locations would give low-level developers the
chance for some spontaneous and possibly eye-opeing contact with
upper management.
That idea is preposterous of course (the office rearrangement,
I mean). But that is one way to construe "improving your ability
to improve". And the difficulty of actually implementing tasks
of that nature may suggest why it receives so little attention.
You can take a horse to water, but you can't make him drink --
unless you speak his language and can sell him the water!!
To implement a DKR, it's necessary to speak the right language
and know how to sell it to executives, managers, and investors.
Who was it who mentioned their company's DKR-project? That is
an example of a system that IS fundable, because it is seen as
a very direct B-level activity.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 02 2000 - 15:57:35 PST