Joe,
It was Yogi Berra - "You can see a lot by just looking," is how I've
heard it.
Tom Davenport
(University of Texas)
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It was Yogi, and what he said was "You can observe a lot by watching."
Regards,
--Bob Hamilton ham@rahul.net (408) 730-0754
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Joe,
I'll keep this short. Thanks for letting Mike Whitmer share your
reflections with his father, a retired hospital chaplain who did
pastoral care by being with (PCBBW). The word "observe" and
"observant" means in Latin --- "to serve/toward serving" and "toward
servanthood." I'll look for the Harvard Business Review article on
"Taking a Tour." I tour with all my senses, especially my ears and
well as my eyes. In the medical world I think they call it "gross
observations."
God asked Jeremiah twice in a dialogical exchange a Columbo question,
"What do you see?" Jeremiah had to look twice to really see.
A principle of organizational learning, "keep the learning close to
the practice." I would say that enhances mutual learning.
I found a whole different way of focusing on listening from seeing and
observing and hearing. We call it "The Art of Story Metaphor
Listening."
Your article was full of metaphors, "Benchmarks", etc. Each making its
own contribution.
Thanks again. Keep Story Listening ALIVE. The story provides for
continual learning --- a way of sustaining learning. Doesn't HP like
the word "sustainable."
Marlin Whitmer
outreach@netins.net
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Joe, interesting read. One thing you said but didn't say was why.
Walking around and asking how it works (and doesn't) may or may not
make you an expert on the process that you're visiting...but if you
listen and observe closely, it can provide insight into a completely
different area. Often, the learning applies to an strikingly different
experience; a totally cross cultural one...if you like to look for
linkages.
Sometimes its not a process learning but an experiential leaning. One
that you can tell a story about that illustrates a point you want to
make in your next speech or conversation. We tend to operate within a
consistent set of boundaries in which it is difficult to have new
learning experiences. Touring, asking and looking opens a new world of
experiences from which to learn...and subsequently teach.
Regards,
Mark Levi
VP of Marketing & Communications
National Semiconductor
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About six years ago, I asked one of my friends who worked in the
nascent HP PC organization why I was having so much trouble figuring
out how to add a 500MB disk drive to my home PC. HP wouldn't sell me
the mounting brackets in less than quantity 10, and the machine needed
its BIOS chip replaced in order to "see the new disk".
"Why the heck do you need so much disk space, anyway," he answered.
"Delete some files! 250MB should be plenty!"
Today, as I type this, my work PC is spinning a 2GB disk, and it's
half full. A recent scan by Norton's Virus-scanner toted up over
19,500 files on my disk. And it's half full. New high-end PCs are
available with 3 and 4GB disks.
I've been accruing money in my personal bank account out of each
paycheck to buy new PCs for home. HP tells me that the kind of PC
they sell for home use, the Pavilion, doesn't run NT. I have NT on
the machine in front of me, so it scares me that I'll have a machine
at home that won't exchange files with the machine at work. What's
confusing to me is that several of HP's competitors seem willing to
sell me a high-end home machine that can run NT.
Is this a similar case of small-disk thinking?
People in the building I work in take trays and dishes and silverware
back to their desks with their lunches, then drop them off in the
"convenience rooms" where the coffee machines are.
The Cafeteria occasionally has to send out "search-and-rescue" teams
to bring those artifacts back, or else they'll flat-out run out of
them! On the other hand, the Site Maintenance crew tours the building
nightly, cleaning out dustbins, etc., but they can't pick up the trays
and take them back to the Cafeteria. Don't ask why not. Not even a
"not my job, mon!" issue.... more like "we don't know what to do with
the trays if we pick them up", or something like that. This is rocket
science? You pick them up, you take them to a cafeteria; if you take
too many of them to one cafeteria, they send some to the other
cafeteria if there's an inventory imbalance. Rocket science.
While recycling is pretty popular in our state, there are some folks
in this same building who don't seem to understand that the WRAPPER
that the Xerox paper COMES IN might be recyclable, so they toss it in
the garbage can next to the recycling bin. Lazy? I don't know why.
I sometimes rescue the recyclable, leaving it on top of the "Mixed
Paper" bin, so they might notice the connection. Let a week go by and
there's more wrappers in the garbage can. Low IQ? I still don't
know.
I had a neat go-round with the Facilities people about a month ago.
There are floor-plan maps of Building 46 on the walls in that
building. One of them even had a small ceiling-mounted spotlight
shining on it.
Then, one day, I noticed that the spotlight was pointed straight down,
lighting a small patch of the carpeted hallway. Someone had gone out
of their way to move the light from the map to a "straight-down"
position. Effort: yes. Cost: sure. Benefit: negative.
A week or so later, the spotlight was replaced by a floodlight, so the
light now was diffused across the span of the hall. The map was now
even harder to read for these tired old eyes than it had been, with
the spotlight illuminating the floor nearby. Really getting good,
now.....
I described the situation to a Facilities Manager. He saw the humor
in it, and put it on his todo list. Last count: no change.
re: blinking lights..... Well, is there a reason why the Maintenance
folks who ply the aisles and restrooms every day and night can't make
note of and log the lights that need replacing? Too hard a process to
implement? Just like the trays and silverware?
Restaurants: tipping: Did you ever ask your "waitron"
[gender-neutral P.C. version of waiter/waitress] whether their tips
were shared or not? If they were shared, did you tip a little less
for REALLY good service than you might have otherwise, since the
waitron who delivered REALLY good service would not receive as big a
"thank you" from your tip as you wanted them to get, and some bozo who
couldn't serve their way out of a wet paper bag might get a bigger tip
than they deserved.....?
How are people measured and motivated? A few years back there was a
scandal at Sears, where the Automotive folks were accused of doing
unnecessary work on cars and charging the customers. The San Jose
Mercury had an expose on it, and some activist group suggested a State
Agency be formed to regulate and oversee these problems.
I wrote a letter to the Mercury-News asking why we needed another
level of bureaucracy in our state, when a more effective solution
might be for someone at Sears who had their head screwed on frontwards
to just change the metrics: reward the Auto Service people for
Customer Satisfaction and not Quantity.
About a week or two later, the Merc had a quote from the Prexy of
Sears, saying that they were going to change the metrics and reward
systems for the Automotive Departments, moving to a Quality, not
Quantity-based measure of "success."
You're welcome, Sears. Rocket Science, again.
On my tiny little commute from home to work, there's one set of lights
that are timed so poorly that cars can line up all the way back to the
busy intersection behind them. Another team of folks go out and
ticket drivers for running red lights. Major technological items bear
down on drivers who run red lights. Maybe the folks that set the
timing of the lights could acknowledge that they've failed in their
jobs of helping cars move safely and swiftly down the highways and
byways, and that, acknowledging this, drivers have taken it into their
own hands to ignore poorly-set lights by ignoring them? I don't
condone it. I would personally arrest any red-light-runner on the
spot if I had the authority. Personally, I log their license numbers
and list them on my personal website (non-HP). Get your name in
print..... cheap. These people are endangering ME. Who? The
red-light runners? Yes, but the real culprits are the folks who set
the lights in the first place. Rocket Science. Why not hire the
local Junior College Math Class and have them computer-model the city.
No, there's a "better way." Right.
ps., re: restaurants: I wonder what the repeat-client business is at
the Red Lobster chain.... Every year or three, my wife and I, enticed
by the TV ads, try them again. Every time, the reality is nowhere
near as attractive, generous or tasty as the ads imply. Does the ad
agency (or the company pres) ever sneak into one of the shops and eat
there????
Cheers, Joe!
Neat Jotting.
Alan Falk
HP Cupertino
--JOE_PODOLSKY@HP-PaloAlto-om4.om.hp.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>