Subject: Re: Joe's Jottings #74 - Are We Determined to Get Better?
Author: JAMES H. CARRINGTON at HP-Chelmsford,om1
Date: 7/14/97 9:38 AM
"Everybody Is A Victim"
So says one of my subordinates when discussing any of the currently
perceived societal ills.
Another of his favorites: "Management 101 - Always Establish Blame"
These two statements go right to the heart of Jot #74, taking
responsibility for your actions. Too many times, I see individuals
around me refusing to accept such responsibility.
Witness the woman who sued MacDonalds for the coffee being too hot
(she put the cup between her legs while driving).
Witness the family that sued the Schwinn bicycle company when their
son was killed because he was hit by a car as he was riding his bike
after dark (Schwinn OBVIOUSLY should have warned the consumer that
riding a bike after dark with no lights or reflectors is unsafe. Well
duhhuh).
These two examples point out the one thing wrong with Jot #74.
"...admit that we have a problem. Most of us already do that, but we
stop there. "
This assertion is false. Most people WILL NOT admit that they have a
problem, and when they finally do, it will be someone else's fault.
Susan Smith killed her two young boys because her new boyfriend didn't
want a girl friend with kids. But hey, it's not her fault, SHE'S the
victim. She was allegedly abused as a child.
This point is demonstrated over and over again in news headlines and
tv tabloid shows. The statement that lawyers focus on cause instead of
prevention is right on the mark, though. Because when the lawyer can
prove that his client is the victim, then he can argue that his client
should be compensated (read:paid) for his 'inconvenience'. What then,
you ask, is the bottom line?
Money.
If the lawyers for the coffee drinker were truly concerned about the
health and safety of the public (and their client) then why didn't
they sue simply for medical bills plus lost wages and force MacDonalds
to lower the temperature of their coffee? Because the more money the
client gets, the more money the lawyer gets. Is any amount of money
going to bring back the boy bicyclist? I don't think so. That didn't
stop the court from awarding punitive damages. Schwinn started putting
tags and stickers on their bikes, warning against night riding. The
interesting part is that they were not ordered to do so by the court.
They took this step as a precaution against litigation.
It all comes down to money.
Therefore, your statement "decide to get better, as measured by
business results, from metrics specified by business managers"
should probably be restated "make more money, as measured by business
results, from metrics specified by business managers, to the
satisfaction of your stockholders"
Unfortunately, I see companies headed down this road. When a CEO tells us
that there is a hiring freeze on because of our lack
lustre performance of 8% growth instead of the Wall Street expectation
of 10%, I have to ask a serious question about corporate
responsibility versus profit margin. Wall Street could care less if
our products killed people, as long as we could balance out the losses
and still meet our revenue goals. (Ford didn't recall the Pinto
because they felt that it would be cheaper to pay off the lawsuits
than to fix all of those cars so that they would not explode while
refueling.) Who are we kidding when we say we can maintain our level
of quality and we have six engineers working 60+ hours a week each.
Mistakes will be made in this situation. Design flaws that may only
manifest themselves once in the hands of the consumer.
So Joe, to answer your questions;
Q. What are the linkages between our key processes and business
results?
A. Profit Margin (money)
Q. What are the trends?
a. Less emphasis on quality, more on profit margin (money)
Q. What are the problems that we are seeing?
A. Not enough profit margin (money)
Q. Are we publicly discussing the problems in clear terms,
not Microspeak, without worrying about blame?
A. No. Fixing problems takes time away making money, and blaming
someone means you can sue them for money.
Q. Rather than just living with the situations, are we determined
to get better?
A. As long as getting better means making more money.
We are living in a society where our children are taught that the
wealth of ones bank account means more than the wealth of ones soul. I
intend not to make that mistake with my children.
Cynically (and barely solvent),
James Carrington
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Joe
Ever since I stumbled across your jottings, I have been stimulated by the
various essays and responses that are generated. A lot of the themes I've
read discuss issues through the eyes/experiences of a learning individual
vs. a command/control person. I really like seeing both sides of an issue
discussed.
This last jotting on getting better touched a couple of nerves. I am
disturbed at the trends to homogenize and assimilate unique
individuals/cultures into one human mass. We as a species are doomed to
extinction if we do not have tolerance for those pushing the edges of human
experiences. Likewise, those pushing the edges of experience should not be
expecting the whole human family to share the consequences of their
inquiry. Of course we can be delighted when other people are excited by
new possibilities, but we can't force feed technology.
Computing technology is here to stay and will have even more profound
effects on our society and culture in years to come. Computing
professionals MUST recognize their responsibility to make their products as
bug free as possible. Especially as computers are advancing into every
aspect of our daily life, when people are starting to believe machines more
than they believe people, it is critical that the machines behave as they
are intended. What is even more critical is teaching critical thinking
skills to humans that interface with machines, so that they can sense
whether the computed answer is a "real" solution.
Before succumbing to the economic or ego pressure to be first, to get to
market, to make the buck or to get the applause, computing professionals
should be nurturing their creations as they would children. Don't make
excuses for mistakes. Accept consequences and actively resolve to do better
the next time. Don't rush to release if the product has not been thoroughly
tested and retested by the creator, a development team and some cold
customers that don't have a stake in the product success, but could benefit
from the product features.
What disturbs me most about the computer revolution is the lack of
foresight. Many of those that are fluent in computer hardware/software can
make their machines do amazing things that have never been considered
before. Most of the computing world is under 50 and lacks certain life
maturity that would give them pause before wasting time and/or energy on
some of these antics. Alot of computer literate people are very illiterate
when it comes to world literature or history. The trend towards instant
gratification is nihilistic.
One of the real problems that we are experiencing as a company is the rush
to innovate. Innovation is the lifeblood of HP and every other company
devoted to scientific products. Product life cycle must be reassessed in
more human terms before more products are introduced. When we as business
managers or consumers make a commitment to a particular strategy, by
default we are not choosing other options. These choices must not be made
in a vacuum or without some testing of the possible outcomes. Maybe it's
more expensive to develop more than one way to skin the cat, but before we
hang a shingle that says we're expert cat skinners we should be so good at
it that people wait for our products to imitate rather than developing
their own technique.
Humans can only tolerate change in manageable mouthfuls. When we are forced
to gobble beyond our ability to chew and digest, we frequently choke to
death on the content...unless we spit some of it out.
In my 13 years with HP, I have learned 6 word processing programs, 3
spreadsheet programs and 4 graphics programs. I have worked on HP120's,
150's, Vectras and Unix workstations. I like learning new things, but my
enthusiasm is not shared by many of my coworkers. It is an irritant to have
to learn a new skill to perform a known function. It is frustrating not to
be able to retreive past work products because the hardware upgraded or the
software upgraded and the old files are no longer accessible.
Yes, we need trailblazers and new technology constantly evolving. But we
also need someone to be thinking about the human aspect of these
transitions. Training and development plans must consider individual
learning curves and the differences in each business economy. Some HP
business are high volume, low mix with low individual unit returns. Some
are low volume, high mix with high individual unit returns.
When I think of the way HP has handled distributed computing, I am reminded
of the way the Immigration service has been trying to retrain all its field
offices to process ever increasing amounts of immigration requests for
citizenship and still maintain the quality control that screens out known
criminals. Some divisions jump on the bandwagon and play the new tunes as
quickly as the sheet music is available. Other divisions play the tunes but
with their own queer interpretations of what the music should be.
Microspeak might have a place in public relations releases, but we owe to
ourselves to speak truth as plainly as we possibly can to our internal
community.
Frankly, I think if HP is to maintain our leadership position, we should be
speaking truth as much as we are fanatical about reliability. If we want to
distinguish ourselves from competitors, we must be different. What works,
what is real will be obvious to our customers. The experience of being
baited with technology and then switched over to a product that essentially
does exactly the same thing as the previous model with no substantial
increase in capability leaves a bitter taste in a customer's mouth.
Every time we rush to innovate without a clear strategy or product life
cycle plan, we jeopardize our credibility with our customers. If HP is to
remain healthy, we need customers to be repeat customers. Customers will
always return to the product that has the most solid value and good sales
support and service. Customers that are "sold" before they ever open their
checkbook are the external salesforce for HP products. They tell their
friends and we get new customers.
We need to tell it like it is to demonstrate not only our technical
competence but our intellectual and emotional maturity.
Thanks for the forum to dump these thoughts to!
Linda Curry
HP-Sonoma County
=====================================================================
This one has triggered more thoughts than I can attend to right now, so
I'll just take the top two.
First, we start teaching children from day 1 in school (and earlier in most
homes) that there are right answers and wrong answers and that children who
guess right answers are good children and those who guess wrong answers are
bad children.
Most of our teachers, having grown up in this system themselves,
consistently humiliate children who don't give the answer the teacher
thinks is the right one. There is almost never examination of the path the
child took to their answer, and soon, many children are no longer even
capable of reporting on their path since they have been taught to not do
it. Those children grow up to work for Microsoft, or Stanford Hospital, or
TWA. Where will they learn to honor and examine thoughtfully a path that
led to an undesired or at least unexpected outcome? We insist on not
teaching that skill.
In most classrooms, even the classrooms of very dedicated and otherwise
thoughtful teachers, as little time as possible is spent understanding
error. Most teachers behave as if spending time on errors would be worse
than wasteful; it would be confusing and detrimental to learning. They
have been taught to act as if the process of learning is fundamentally a
process of becoming able to reproduce known, correct outcomes. Learning is
re-covering terra cognita.
But welcome to the real world, where most of the terra, certainly all of
the terra we map with software, is incognita. The only thing that saves us
from our schooling is that humans are natural scientists and our schools
aren't effective enough to destroy our spirit of inquiry. They are,
however, effective enough to make us ashamed of the need for it.
The school system is doing what we, as a community, ask it to do. The
chief metric, the gateway to college and good jobs, is number of right
answers per minute. Fortunately, it turns out that the ability to recall
or construct a large number of right answers in a given time does not
entirely exclude the very different ability to examine failure thoughtfully
and productively.
Now, about continuous improvement in a constantly changing world... I think
the key here is that we have to focus our improvements on the
meta-processes which change at a much slower rate. So maybe we won't use
Java long enough to improve our use of it, but we will use language, and we
will use the scientific method for a long time. These are things we can
improve while we surf the constant rolls of technology.
I've just skimmed the surface. Thanks for raising these interesting
issues. Innovation and risk taking are HP values that are especially dear
to me (more so after having spent a couple of years in a culture that
generally does not value them). But sometimes we act as if we only value
innovation and risk that works out the way we wanted it to. It is the very
nature of risk that you're going to get lots of failure to learn from. I
don't want to fly an airline that values risk taking, but then again, I
don't want to work for an airline either.
Hudi Podolsky
HP-Palo Alto
=====================================================================
Hi Joe:
Have you read: The Logic of Failure? It talks about people fixing the
problem (such as starvation) with well-engineered systems (like crop
rotation and well-water systems) only to create worse problems later down
the line (like over-population and diminished water resources). The intent
and the expertise are genuine and well-planned. The long-term result is
disaster.
You'd like the premise of the book : business ecosystems.
Cheers,
Margery Auvinen
HP-Roseville
--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/>