Dear Steve, dear LO'ers,
Thank you for the warning, Steve. We did already some dialoguing in
private. I try now to compose an answer with other words. Hopefully that
this will add another picture to illustrate and bridge the abstract world
of mathematics with the world of organisations.
In the contribution of me, towhich you referred (LO23007) I thought to
build this bridge (or link) with the chain problem. Apparently the problem
was not well described:
> (Trying to solve your chain puzzle, I drew six little lines in a straight
> line, and found that I needed 5 connections to make them into a linear
> chain, and a sixth to join the two ends of the chain into a circle. From
> your description of costs I did not know if each of the first five
> connections cost $3, $4, or $5. My failure, then, to solve the puzzle did
> not come from my using "linear thinking," but from my inability to
> understand the example that was meant to help me understand.)
Your way of representing the chain is o.k., although you neglected the
contents. I am sorry that my description lacks enough clarity. What I had
in mind was the following: opening an individual link cost $1, and making
a new connection (closing that link) costs $3, thus putting two pieces of
chain together will cost $4.
With linear thinking (as you did) it will cost 6 times $4 to compose a
chain of 30 links form the 6 smaller chains: $24.
However, if you use one of the pieces (composed of 5 links), open all its
links (5 times $1) and use these links to make connections between the
remaining 5 pieces (5 times $3), you will have also a chain of 30 links.
But now it cost 5 times $4, thus $20.
What I had in mind was an illustration of purely linear thinking, thinking
only on the form, will be less economic. Thinking only on the form, means
that the number of links of the 6 pieces of chain does not matter; they
could be composed of any number of links, it will cost you always 6 times
$4. But if you involve the content, thus involving the fact that these
pieces of chain are composed of precisely 5 links, this special solution
of $20 comes in the picture: sacrificing one piece of chain and using its
links for the connection of the remaining 5 pieces.
But this problem was only ment as bridge to the world of organisations. A
bridge, a metaphor, or analogy.
I realise that it deserves some imagination to follow a series of bridges:
linearity - form/content - chain problem - organisations. Maybe this was
too much, especially if the contents of these bridges are not clear. You
have explained this situation in the following, by using a series of
analogies:
> I suggest to you that our basic problem in this discussion, one that
> afflicts many LO's, is that we are using the wrong tools for the work of
> learning we need to do.
>
> "Linear thinking" is a literary device: a metaphor. Like all metaphors, it
> tries to show, or create, a resemblance between two things, or phenomena,
> that are otherwise unlike.
>
> We are not really helped to understand metaphor by taking the metaphor
> literally, or trying to apply the methods of mathematics or science to
> understanding a metaphor.
>
> Consider the "hands" of a clock. If the resemblance between the shape and
> function of the pointers on the clock "face" are not clear to a listener,
> he or she will not be helped by invoking biology, or the mathematics of
> fingers on the human frame.
>
> Consider another metaphor of thinking that uses spatial imagery, as does
> "linear thinking": the term "circular reasoning."
>
> Someone makes a case, takes a position, and we say of that case or
> position, "That is circular reasoning."
>
> If the meaning of "circularity" in reasoning can not be made clear in
> context, we will not be helped to make it clear by involving form-content
> differences, or by discussions of radii and pi and circumferences.
>
> The explanations take us further and further away from the kind of
> reasoning we are trying to illustrate.
>
> That, I think, is what has happened here: in an effort to explain linear
> thinking "scientifically" we have gone off on "tangents," begun to move in
> "circles" of language that are taking us further and further away from the
> tendencies we are trying to describe and summarize.
If the bridges become stepping stones that end somewhere in the middle of
the river that you were trying to pass, than this path is indeed useless,
or at least disappointing.
But does this mean that it is useless to make another try and trying to
find another way to bridge both river banks?:
> In such cases it is often better to conclude that the term is so elusive,
> so vague and prone to endless interpretation, that it has little utility,
> and is best discarded.
Steve, I am going to take you immediately to the other side of the river:
the side of (learning) organisations. Let's see if we can find a way back
to cross the river and connect it with the side of linearity. I hope that
the jumps from one stone to the other will not be too large, and that the
final jump could be made too.
I am going to describe two organisations. The first is a
constructing company. I think of an automobile (Ford) company, or the
kitchen of a pizza restaurant. You may also think of your own cooking
experiences (making a meal for the whole family). In these places a lot of
successive actions must take place before the final product (a car or
pizza) has been finished.
These places could be organised in different ways. When Henry Ford build
his first car, maybe he got some help. He and his team were working on one
car, they started at the very beginning and continued untill the car was
finished.
In the pizza restaurant where once in a hour one client arrives, the cook
in the kitchen makes the pizza from start to finish on his own.
However, the car of Henry became popular and the pizzas were so delightful
that the number of clients increased.
We could cope with this increase of demand by increasing everything with
the same factor in the company or restaurant. For instance we just could
increase the waiting time of the client: capacity will be the same. We
could also think how we could increase the capacity of the organisation.
We could increase everything with the same factor in the organisation:
increase the personel, increase imported goods, increase the working
space, increase machinery (number of pizaa ovens) etc. In this case, we
hope that the waiting time for the client will be the same. In this case
there are a lot of small units that produce the end product from start to
finish.
The chain had still to be invented.
There is ofcourse an other way: the chain. With this type of organisation,
each working unit will produce only a part of the product, and one team
starts with the finished product of the team prior to them in the chain
and adding their part to this product, so it could be transferred to
the next team in the chain. The balance in the chain is crucial, but
tricky and vulnerable.
Again, the restaurant or automobile company has to cope with increasing
demands. Again, our first thoughts might be to increase either the waiting
times of the clients, or increasing by some factor the capacity of
each team in the production team. In this later case, is the vulnerability
increased by the same factor?
And now automation and robots were introduced. The chain had to be
reorganised again. I leave possible solutions to you.
The same excercise we could do with reductions. Reductions in demands,
reductions in waste goods, reductions of production time, reductions of
budgets, etc.
Both, the pizza restaurant, or the car factory could be analysed by the
accountant. He does not know anything of the product itself, the
difficulties of making the product, the expertise of the personel, etc. He
only observes the number of people of each team in the chain and the
productivity of each team. He starts with making graphs of these two
elements. Since the chain of teams is in balance, all successive teams
have the same productivity. But there is something strange in the analysis
of the accountent: one team consists of more personel than the other.
Since he does not know anything of the working conditions and the
production process, he starts to 'economise'. Each team should be composed
of the same number of people, taking the smallest team as the minimum.
What a great thought he had.
He starts to think of reducing the total production time. He looks at his
graph and tries to reduce the inclination of the graph, by reducing the
production time in each team with the same factor. Unfortunately, he was
not aware of the baking time of the pizza in the oven, and fortunately
the clients of the pizza restaurant received their pizzas in record time,
but they were not very eatable.
He made other graphs of production time, salaries, but also 'soft' issues
like illness percentages, gender and age of personel, level of experience,
etc. etc. And since he did not know of the working floor, he started to
reform all the resulting graphs by manipulating the numbers on the axes
with a variety of names: production time, salary, ilness, etc., etc. What
great thoughts he had.
I leave the conclusions to you.
There is a completely other 'organisation'. It is composed of a chain of
separate organisations. It is the classical information chain:
author - manuscript - publisher - referee - editor - printer -
journal/book - library - reader
This chain is during the past decennium a hot issue in the boards of
publishers, libraries and also with governments, concerning copy right
laws.
Why is this such a hot issue? Since this chain is shaken completely by the
introduction of electronic publishing, electronic transfer of information,
Internet, etc. Particularly, the classical scientific publishers like
Elsevier, Springer and Kluwer became very nervous. Also the governments
don't know yet how to deal with copy rights. And libraries are nervous and
looking to other services. And even printers have changed the past years
enormously. Finally also the authors, particularly the researchers and
authors of scientific information become aware of what happens in their
surroundings. The debate is far from ended. It is also because a lot of
new players entered the scene: Microsoft, Netscape, all kinds of search
engines and automated keywording software, discussion lists and preprint
services, etc.
The original information chain, that looked so nice and quiet, has become
a ring-mail, such armoured coat of the old days. Interlinking, new links,
short cuts.
If we only take one issue of the old chain in mind: the avarage time that
it took to get a scientific paper published. In my field of science (earth
sciences) it generaly took 1 year between submission of manuscript to
printed issue of a journal on the desk of the readers (ofcourse this
depends very much of the journal). If we make a graph of this we could put
on the horizontal axis each link of the classical information chain, and
on the vertical axis the progress in time. So if the graph was linear and
we take five successive steps (links of the chain) the manuscript had to
follow, each step will take a 73 days (1 year = 365 days). However, the
'bottleneck' was the step of passing the referees. That step took far more
days, sometimes half a year! One of the reasons of increasing popularity
of electronic publishing is to cope with this peak in the graph of
publishing time. You will get an impression of this time by looking in
scientific journals. Usually the date of submission, date of
acceptence and the dat of the very issue is mentioned. Some authors
(particularly the physicists) put their electronic manuscript immediately
(without refereeing) on a preprint server, receiving comments from their
worldwide colleagues. This manuscript may be afterwards published on paper
in a regular issue of a standard journal. Scientists' intention is to
communicate as fast as possible, publishers prime interest is money.
University boards and national science institutions who grant succesfull
scientists have serious troubles now to use 'objective' citation data to
'measure' the scientific output.
Steve, and other list members, I hope that I have reduced the distances
between the stepping stones of metaphors and analogies. I hope that you
are now able, starting from the organisation-side of the river, to reach
the other side of abstract mathematical linearity. I seriously hope that
the chain problem and chain examples were clear enough to make the
following step between form and content. And from there to linearity and
mathematical graphs. I hope you finally see how the excercises of At de
Lange in LO22881 has so much to do with organisations.
The issue of linearity, form and content is of the utmost importance for
organisations. It could tell us and learn us at least the pitfalls of
reorganisations that are ment to cope with the changing circumstances in
the world outside the organisation. It will give also clues how
organisations may be transferred into Learning Organisations.
dr. Leo D. Minnigh
l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl
Library Technical University Delft
PO BOX 98, 2600 MG Delft, The Netherlands
Tel.: 31 15 2782226
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Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.
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--Leo Minnigh <l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>