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November 27, 2006
Theory of Speed
Conventional wisdom is that speed is for making sure you won't be late arriving. But the best purpose of speed is to get away.
And the best reason to get away is to leave the crowd. This is how we know that what speed is about, essentially, is not movement from power but rather from position.
Highway driving makes this more or less obvious. What, after all, are the two biggest problems with "speed limits"? Not the posted rates, and not the cops. Instead it is the matter of driving amongst the dumb and the blind. This simple observation immediately gives the two most basic rules of driving: don't drive behind anything you can't see around, and don't drive behind idiots. Combined, it's the difference between the presumed speed limit and the real speed limit.
For one thing, driving behind either the dumb or the blind involves a transitive property: you will become effectively dumb or blind yourself. (One further complication is that driving behind something you can't see around might make you drive idiotically, and so forth. Riff amongst yourselves.)
For another, empirical evidence will show that the dumb and the blind rarely catch up to the crowd in front of them while getting away from the crowd that they create.
So, most importantly, these obstacles mean that all traffic not likewise stuck are more probably going to get ahead.
[Sidebar: now just taking a moment to enjoy the nuance of using "traffic" as a plural.]
On a multi-lane highway, the "fast lane" is the one you make by maneuvering first of all to avoid the dumb and the blind. This is a prerequisite. As a result, you have the further opportunity to capitalize on speed. That is, in trafficking, speed is the effect of routinely being in the best place before the other guy is.
That final elaboration of our definition leaves us with the main task in designing speed. Namely, we have to determine who are:
- the dumb,
- the blind, and...
- the "other guy".
As for knowing what makes a place "the best" -- well, if you don't know that, then you don't need speed.
Posted by Malcolm Ryder at 6:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 25, 2006
Oh Dark Thirty in the Garden of Good and Evil
Robert Altman Checks Out.
My cinema hero, Robert Altman, still has his latest movie in the video store racks, "A Prarie Home Companion". I haven't seen it yet, and he won't be seeing it again. But considering it's an Altman movie and all, my resistance to grabbing it when it was hot off the press still lacks explanation.
That despite the fact that for me, no one other than Altman or perhaps Wim Wenders could be expected to derive value from balancing the neurotic quirkiness that I dislike about Prarie Homes with the globally waning general interest in popporn queen Lindsay Lohan. I mean She Is You Know So Over.
More or less.
Popporn -- inhabited mainly by Tara Reid, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lohan herself, Christine Aguilera, and Scarlett Johannson -- prominently features a drastically diverse spread of talent, from Johannson (whose group membership is just skinnydipping) to Reid (who co-opted the space thought previously to have belonged, through manifest destiny, to real porn swinger Tracy Lords. Inexplicably, both parties, Reid and Lords, have dropped the ball, but it's probably a good thing.)
Comparing again the great to lame in this bunch, Aguilera, whose superiority to Spears is nearly blinding in its intensity, is just slumming; however, where the media is involved, she may be suffering from true independence. For example, regarding her involvement, we can easily imagine that Hollywood is actually looking the other way just to promote its belief that she, like anyone, can be replaced and that it won't need her. But she would be the way she is even if all the others in popporn or Hollywood were gone.
Meanwhile, the importance of popporn is that it is illegimate. It's not real porn, it's fake porn done through real acting instead of real porn done through fake acting. We see that the girls want to play the role -- otherwise, why would anyone care.
So -- what about Altman and Lohan? (Whattaya mean 'Altman "and" Lohan'...?) He was interested?
No chance he was only cradle-robbing, because he wouldn't put his name on the film if the film wasn't working. No, I think maybe it's more like him paddling the boat that could carry Lohan across the river Styx from a looming hell to some uncertain but preferable promised land. But why would he bother? Well, there's the punchline: could anyone other than Altman actually discover someone who had already been discovered, and get full credit for it? (Possibly Wim Wenders.)
Having not seen the film yet, I get to think there's still a chance that this might be obviously and truly the case on the screen. And if it turns out not to be, there will still be plenty of Altman flicks to watch again, and of course popporn will remain alive and well even through significant attritions, extractions and graduations.
It's just that now we won't have an authentic Altman extravaganza on YouTube featuring popporners. This was the necessary next step -- getting the mass media icons to slum on the alternate network under the direction of an iconic Hollywood heretic.
Oh well. Who's our daddy now?
Posted by Malcolm Ryder at 5:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 7, 2006
Be Careful What You Ask For, You Might Get It
Recruiting for "performance" relies of course on what is measurable, but even intuitively we know that an "unqualified" or "incompatible" or "misapplied" resource, if found, will be a key factor of an explanation for performance shortcomings.
The difference between potential, production, and performance is something often assumed to be self evident. Yet not only is the difference given final credibility only through "objective" measurement, but the gaps between the three points are actually seen as more important to manage than the three points themselves.
That is, resources are often seen to be *starting out* at one of the three points -- after all, we make a big point of "acquiring" them that way, whereas the real work (supposedly) is to get them to move up. Then, because we want an easier time of moving them up, we try to determine what characteristics at each level of acquisition are already the best predictors of a high rise.
From an analytic point of view, the question must therefore also come up as to why the predictors are reliable. In other words, if the predictors are singled out because of their association with desirable outcomes, is it because they are causes or are they just prerequisites?
"Development" is the generic term for engineering productivity from potential, while "management" typically stands for engineering performance from production. This brings up two more topics to consider. One: what type of resources are most compatible with development and management? And two: what kinds of development and management are best at moving resources up the value chain?
It's a fact that these perspectives essentially anticipate "processing" the resources -- but meanwhile the utilization of the resource becomes a third major dimension of the picture. That is, in the big picture, the Predisposition of the resource (its starting characteristics), the Processing of it (through engineering), and finally the Positioning of it (its utilization) will effectively decide how the resource relates to the outcome that we'll call performance.
In explaining performance, it thus becomes both notable and logical to discriminate -- not just suspect -- the point of failure or disabling constraint. In low performance, is the problem a resource? And if yes, then is it that the resource had a bad predisposition (low intrinsic quality)? Poor compatibility (hard to process)? A bad assignment (deficient position)?
In answering those questions, it will be necessary (for the sake of intellectual honesty) to identify whether the applied (or withheld) development and management was appropriate to the identifiable prospects for success. By prospects, we mean that we understand a rational relationship between what characteristics of resources should be opportunities for performance leverage -- and HOW they are opportunities.
Most often, sports provides a laboratory for observing how prospects fare. A resource becomes a part of a system, and may thrive or not. Superstar college quarterbacks disappear in the systems of losing teams that draft them and can't resolve a mismatch with the talent. Third-round draft picks costing orders-of-magnitude less money go to well-run teams that nurture a role or two in which the player becomes a league standout.
As architects of business processes know (and practice), the definition of a role is one of the two most decisive factors in process performance, with the selection of actors for the role being the other overwhelming determinant. It sounds like a simple idea, but the role definition and the actor selection turns out to be full of the nuance of interactivity, reliability, flexibility, strength and availability that finally accounts for whether the process runs well under the demand that is placed on it.
Given that demand is both variable and influential (some call it "pressure"), it cannot be ignored in the exercise of evaluating resources. The resource must help make an adequately sustainable process successful under demand. But the demand cannot be undefined. And the method by which the resource supports the process cannot be arbitrary. There's a way to make a sheet of paper hold up a brick, but you still wouldn't want to stand on the contraption if you had any choice. Yet both paper and bricks have their place in the makeup of a successful housing structure, as proven over hundreds of years of design.
Roles address the issue of whether a resource is a cause or a prerequisite. In a sense, a role says either "neither" or "both". In saying "both", the role means that the resource is integral to a system that produces the desired results, without saying that the system will necessarily always produce that way. Systems host processes, while the resources materially constitute the system. (Some might argue that systems "occupy" processes, which is an insightful description of the relationship between design/process and the construction/system that "realizes" the design. Increasingly, this is being called "orchestration".)
The punchline to this is that the secret of excellent resource selection lies in knowing the architecture that accounts for why outputs and outcomes can be predicted. In that architecture, the roles given to resources are part of a framework that helps point out when a resource is going to readily fit into the value chain of potential to production to performance.
Roles strongly help to define the prospects. In recognizing that the prospects may be quite idiosyncratic to the given organization, it becomes apparent that two very similar resources from different organizations may not amount to the same prospects at all -- and before these resources are acquired they should be evaluated as prospects of the future, not as products of their histories.
Posted by Malcolm Ryder at 11:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 1, 2006
The Innovative Simplicity of Complexity
Writing about innovation in the October 15 issue, CIO Magazine's Mike Hugo states, "It's too bad innovation doesn't happen from hard work alone; but... at the heart of every innovation there is... the moment of inspiration. "
He caps it off by saying, "Inspiration occurs when a certain combination of ideas suddenly reveals a simple underlying pattern that ties the work together and expresses what the work is about... Finally, remember that innovation is an art more than a science."
I like the attention drawn to artists as model practitioners of innovation. And Hugo's article is all about how artists work to capitalize on inspiration. But let's not get fooled into the idea that the "sudden revelation" that he calls inspiration comes from something other than hard work, too.
It can't be a surprise that as a businessman he lands on "simplicity" as a keynote of "inspiration". In effect, he suggests that complexity obscures the onset of inspiration, which in turn delays or prevents "true innovation" -- at least until someone orchestrates the complexity into a moment of simplicity.
This is an appealing argument because it resonates with the frustration and triumph of getting new things implemented. In fact, what Hugo actually winds up mostly talking about is how we should manage ideas into actual production. Along the way he emphasizes the notion that achieving simplicity in design (i.e., "the work") leads to production success, and that (in a business context) the product's economy of scope equals "innovation".
Despite the appeal, a lot is left loose in that presentation. Let's tighten it up.
For starters, his is not a good general definition of innovation. It might be true that a certain idea offers a breakthrough in efficiency that for some organization will be a new experience or capability -- in which case that "breakthrough" aspect would be the value of the idea for that organization. If the shoe fits, wear it. But efficiency doesn't make the idea absolutely innovative. In many organizations, an idea with the impact Hugo describes might simply be an "improvement".
Second, and more importantly, if (as Hugo argues) simplicity is achieved through "orchestration", then we need to know what the orchestration is about. Otherwise, we're left at this famous intermediate point of pain:
So what about this orchestration? As more and more executives are told to take responsibility for "innovation", a wise path for them would be to avoid reinventing the wheel and go learn something from R&D, who do this stuff all the time. The point: inspiration is cultivated. In fact, it's cultivated from experience; and experimentation is possibly the most important of those experiences.
Of course, making experimentation affordable is an issue. (We're encouraged to think of it in terms of ROI, not just in terms of expense.) But more importantly, what we have to do here is to understand where simplicity matters.
So... last, but not least, consider the difference between complexity and complication. Complexity is about the necessity of the many elements combining for one effect. (A high-performance football team is complex.) Complication is about the inclusion of unnecessary elements in the combination. (The famous Rube Goldberg contraptions are complicated.) Complexity almost always risks being complicated; but design, when faced with complexity, is usually quite intent on removing complication -- not automatically determined to remove complexity.
In science and math, which like to account for all the complexity we can stand, the related notion of "elegance" is extremely important. At Dictionary.com, "elegant" gets the following definition:
#6. (of scientific, technical, or mathematical theories, solutions, etc.) gracefully concise and simple; admirably succinct.
Going this route, Webster's New World Dictionary 2nd College Edition adds that "simple" means "having few parts or features; not complicated or involved." (Definition #2)
As of this writing, an excellent demonstration is found on Wikipedia.com:
"In modern notation, simple expressions can describe complex concepts.
This image:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Pic79.png/180px-Pic79.png)
Here, it is literally obvious that the effect (the image) is possible only through the combination of its many parts; but the logic of the combination is what is simple. The design work went into discovering that logic. It's not the image pattern (the effect) that is simple; it's the logic pattern (the cause). And what is the punchline here? Simplicity generates complexity. Where this matters versus Hugo's observations is as follows:
(Hugo) "When you find a simple combination of workflow processes and technology that can satisfy a wide variety of business requirements, then you have an innovative design."
Well, no you don't, not really, or not necessarily. You might just have a good design, or a versatile design.
And about those requirements: products everywhere are constantly upgraded by meeting a variety of so-called "requirements" (i.e., adding enhancements) that come in from all over and later get distributed together in a new "release". But what matters is how many of those enhancements add up (together) to a more singular important advance for most users. FInally, most product releases are not innovations unless they're used somewhere -- or in some way -- that they haven't been before.
What needs to be examined in the business context is threefold:
- Where is innovation valuable? Just being new doesn't automatically mean being valuable. By definition, value is in the significance of the difference that the newness offers.
- Where is complexity valuable? In general, when complexity allows a benefit that is otherwise not available, it should be managed, not arbitrarily reduced.
- Where is simplicity valuable? Simplicity is valuable when, as a cause, it provides a less complicated way to get the needed effect.
If we sum this up, we can easily conclude that the most valuable kind of innovation is this: something new that simplifies even more the way to get as much complexity as is needed for the benefits to kick in.
Posted by Malcolm Ryder at 8:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack