|-----------------+------------------------------------------------------------|
|                 |                                                            |
|                 |                    L  E  A  D  R  S  H  I  P               |
|   OBSTACLES     |                                                            |
|      and        +---------------------+----------------------+---------------|
|   SOLUTIONS     |     Establishing    |    Align People      |               |
|                 |     Direction       |    Communication     |   Motivating  |
|-----------------+---------------------+----------------------+---------------|
|                 |                     |                      |               |
|Obstacles Caused |   Technology Hype   | Data Pollution Means |Constant Change|
|by Technology    |  Obscures Direction |  Miss-communication  |  Erodes Will  |
|                 |                     |                      |   and Focus   |
|-----------------+---------------------+----------------------+---------------|
|                 |                     |                      |               |
|Obstacles Solved |  Access to History  |  Integration Aligns  |  Technology   |
|by Technology    |Illuminates Direction|  People & Objectives | Moves the Team|
|                 |                     |                      |               |
|-----------------+---------------------+----------------------+---------------|
|                 |                     |                      |               |
|Leadership to    |                     |  Educate to Overcome |    Support    |
|Deploy Technology|   Lead by Doing     | Fear Ignorance Denial|   Initiative  |
|                 |                     |                      | Demand Results|
|-----------------+---------------------+----------------------+---------------|


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The leadership component of communication is in PMBOK section 2.4.1 on setting objectives and motivating performance. Clearly, when people speak there is always an intent to lead the listener toward some understanding that is usually aimed at achieving specific follow up action. Accordingly, communities need strong leadership as an element of communication. How can technology help the process by which leadership does its part of the communication process in setting objectives and motivating action.
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Most of us associate the notion of leadership with someone who can talk people into doing things. This is regarded as a personal trait beyond the reach of technology, except to widen the audience subject to leadership, as with politicians making a speech on television. Such people are described as "good communicators." Deciding what to talk people into doing, however, requires setting objectives and deciding which path to take. So today we demand that the leader have the "vision thing."
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One dimension of setting objectives is recognizing organic structure. All of existence is comprised of components or building blocks of nature: atoms, molecules, cells, and so on. Human objectives have a corollary structure: life, air, food, water, shelter, etc. Every organization has a mission ultimately aimed at satisfying some aspect of the basic human objective to live: vision, strategy, tactics, tasks, and many other forms of structure that comprise a complex array by which modern people organize themselves. Those who understand this complexity well enough to select the right objective from among the multiplicity of choices are said to posses "vision." Computers can aid this selection process by enabling the leader to capture and maintain the organic structure of the many possible objectives. It can also capture the record of performance in pursuing objectives, so that at any moment a vision of the future can be tested based on understanding the past. The TQM movement has spurred awareness of the challenge to set the correct vision.
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What though does the understanding part of communication mean and how is it impacted by technology?
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Commnication is Understanding
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People try to achieve "understanding" through meetings, calls and documents. There remains a sense of unease, however, that understanding is missing, so people try harder with endless meetings, more calls and today email, resulting in an avalanche of information. The electronic component of this effort is hailed as the "Information Highway." Many are beginning to question whether this works. Intel's presentation at Asilomar on "Information at your Fingertips, Myth or Reality," cites the Information Highway as resulting in "data pollution."
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In simplest terms "understanding" means getting desired results. If desired action is taken, the leader assumes people got the message, i.e., "understood" what was intended. Such assumptions sometimes turn out to be mistaken. Near term action can align with leadership direction for reasons other than those put forward by the leader, and those other reasons can later lead the team off course. This suggests a deeper sense of what "understanding" means. It seems related to the underlying reasons for action and the connections or linkages to desired results, i.e., objectives. The legal profession refers to "causation" to describe the connections between events, chronology, reasons and objectives that comprise "understanding."
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Similarly construction people recognize the importance of connections that support a structure. "Understanding" is so critical in construction that specialists are used, called "architects," to figure out the right connections, and they inspect the actual work against original objectives set out in a data base, called "plans and specifications," to ensure those connections are correct so that the building will stand up under the loads it will encounter. Similarly, lawyers inspect to see if testimony will stand up under what they call "scrutiny." They also use the term "discovery." The legal presentation at Asilomar describes "discovery" as resulting in a data base of management details analogous to the architect's data base of construction details. These forms of inspection reflect the popular TQM notion of "metrics" to see how management is measuring up.
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So "understanding" can be meaningfully grasped from its root words that suggest the connection between something that "stands under" or supports something else. In a building, a column supports a beam. In management, "understanding" is a set of facts and objectives that supports a decision for action. Without adequate support, i.e., understanding, eventually a structure of concrete and steel, or of decisions taken by managers, will fail. Thus, leadership that convinces the team to take action where there is no understanding of the key connections between cause and effect will NOT achieve the aims of communication to build a better community, but rather will lead people down the wrong path.
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"Understanding" in management is bi-directional with respect to time. It looks forward and backward from the present. The leader must grasp the correct connections between objectives and the record of prior performance as support for setting direction. The team must be helped to see the connections between the direction set to reach specific goals in the future, and their skills and awareness of constraints and opportunities. This often requires conveying information about some of the reasons for setting direction, i.e., sharing understanding, in order to form shared meaning that can sustain conflicting influences that arise over time.
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What are conflicting influences? When people leave the leadership arena, e.g., a meeting, they continue to be influenced by subsequent events and information. So "understanding" requires aligning action to be taken in a manner that either supersedes subsequent influences, or is seen to be consistent with them, including personal goals. This means associating desired action with goals commonly recognized to be highly desirable, e.g., survival, promotion, higher earnings. Leadership that fails to make this alignment will fail.
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In today's environment, managers go from meeting to meeting and receive a constant barrage of calls, documents and email throughout the day. All of these "influences" impact conduct. How does what the leader said in meeting "A" align with what is in our contract, or with what a different leader said in meeting "B," "C," telephone call "K" and email "D." Clearly, the more we communicate about a wide range of issues the greater the web of connections becomes that requires alignment for effective leadership. This increases the chance of making a miss-connection. So leadership must not only "align people through communication" as called for by the PMBOK, it must also have in place a continuous process to maintain shared meaning over time as people are subjected to a constant stream of other influences. Otherwise, initial alignment will drift away.
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This point seems to follow from work by Dr. Thomas K. Landauer in his paper on cognitive science entitled "A Solution to Plato's Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge." Dr. Landauer describes a study showing human mental "understanding" changes as a function of new information. Initially, this does not seem very insightful. We all hope to become more "knowledgeable" by getting more information. That is why we go to school, read books, newspapers, watch television and attend meetings at work and seminars like the Asilomar Conference. Dr. Landauer's point, however, is that this change in knowledge state occurs often without the volition or awareness which normally accompanies our thirst for more knowledge.
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Another way to see the crucial insight of Dr. Landauer's point is to consider "Murphy's Law" (see also discussion in New World Order... paper) This is the famous worry about mysterious errors that seem to crop up unexpectedly and cause havoc. It was considered at the 1994 Asilomar Conference under the aegis of TQM.
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An obstacle to leadership then is that having motivated the team, common understanding of the vision, strategy and tactics at time "now," will later, at time "now + t1," (a day, week, month, year), drift off course, absent directed effort to maintain shared meaning. Since it occurs slowly and incrementally, people are unaware of this drift. Executives are particularly burdened because they are less subject to being questioned about what they know by the people they encounter in daily work. The absence of a daily "metric" to link communication back to original sources, reinforces belief that our knowledge is consistent when in fact it is drifting off course under Landauer's finding of induced meaning from the constant flow of information. Thus, leaders and followers alike gradually float in circles, like a ship without a compass, as the human mind drifts in a sea of information.
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Because meaning drift occurs slowly it is hidden from the conscious mind. Leaders are therefore drawn to the common sense conclusion that others have not told the truth, or are less dedicated to working hard than they are. Only rarely do executives get the chance to discover their "knowledge" is mistaken, as when being examined by a lawyer who shows documentation that conflicts with testimony. Those occasions are often dismissed as "blowing things out of proportion," rather than a recognition that business practice needs to be adjusted to avoid the malady of false knowledge due to the mind's bent to drift off course.
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Communication is Follow Up
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How can technology help leaders make the adjustments needed to avoid drifting off course?
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This leads to the third key ingredient in communication: a system of "follow up" linked to original understandings that ensures desired action is taken, because if needed action is not taken, leadership fails. How is "follow up" accomplished?
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Turner has explained at the Conference how the construction industry uses a system of inspection to ensure the actual work conforms to the original details. Thousands of years of cultural evolution in the construction industry shows that without an inspection process calamity will often occur because the web of connections in constructing a building is so complex that even people of good will can make a mistake. So the architect periodically shows up on site and compares the actual work with the construction details in the plans. This is a feedback "metric" process to measure results against intentions and requirements, and then plan and schedule adjustments.
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In the computer industry we use a different form of "follow up" called "debugging." Many end users have experienced the frustration of using software that was not adequately debugged. In the middle of doing an important task, the computer or the software fails, also called "crashes" -- failed "metrics."
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How do leaders debug or inspect to follow up on their decisions? There are two basic methods: accounting which reports earnings and impacts the stock price, and lawsuits which create a data base of "management details" that led to harmful conduct, and impose adjustments to conform to community standards, called "law." Two intermediate forms of "follow up" have emerged called cost and schedule control. There is actually a third form that has long been a staple of daily leadership called "meetings" or more simply "dialog." The manager or leader can ask the team how they are doing and assess, like a judge, whether the understandings conveyed comport with original objectives. Indeed, this form of follow up makes up the bulk of most leadership time: talking and listening.
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The challenge of the Information Highway is that all of this talking and listening impacts understanding in ways that cause the team to drift off course under Landauer's theory of knowledge acquisition that says more information causes meaning drift. What is the missing ingredient that can make more information useful instead of harmful?
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Let us turn back to the model of the architect inspecting the work. Recall this is done from a data base called plans and specifications that reflect original understandings about the construction details needed to achieve the end result. This data base is not static. During the course of the project changes will be needed that are reviewed and approved to meet unforeseen conditions or to accomplish various needs that become apparent as work progresses. The job of the architect is to integrate new details in a way that does not adversely impact the functioning of the original details, so that the overall objective can still be accomplished.
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It is not too difficult to see that the leader of a business has an analogous role in guiding the team toward a common objective and accommodating needed change that becomes apparent along the journey. The key difference is that the architect has a data base from which to inspect and link on-going activity to measure performance. The business leader lacks this ingredient. This is becoming a growing obstacle to effective leadership in the age of the Information Highway that causes "data pollution" cited by Intel in its presentation at Asilomar.
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The architect can measure a door to see if it is located as planned. But, when a leader hears a report in a meeting about progress and plans for future action, how can the leader measure whether this communication aligns with the data base of management details for the initiative being reported? The leader can look at notes from the last meeting, or ask a manager to check the file for letters and contract provisions related to the report received, but this is so time consuming that the effort is only made if a catastrophe occurs such as an industrial accident or a lawsuit is filed. In those rare instances when the record is checked, leaders find that they cannot read their notes and everyone has a different recollection.
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Of course there is no "process" at the present time to create a "data base" of "management details" to effectively trace new information against original understandings, as the architect does with his data base of construction details to inspect a building for conformance with the plans and specs. There is a lot of "management information" and many data base reports, but they do not address the heart of leadership work which is deciding which path to take on the Information Highway of the 21st century. Those decisions are predicated on dialog and there is no tradition or practice to capture understandings from conversation that comprise the majority of "management details." Leaders are in fact cut off from the details of most of the decisions they make each day. The Information Highway compounds this disconnect by increasing the number of details that impact performance and the rate at which errors are distributed.
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Technology can redress this growing disconnect by empowering leaders to capture the record of daily management details and connect it up to prior related events and organizational objectives. This new practice provides the understanding and follow up that is essential for effective leadership.
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While the architect works with a finite dimensional space, the manager deals with an amorphous "knowledge space" of information, time and objectives. All of us readily recognize dimensional space because we deal with it all the time by interacting with a world bound by gravity and distance. All of us use the terms "knowledge" "information" and "data" regularly, but interchangeably. Figuring out how to use technology to improve leadership requires, however, making some distinctions. Data can be considered as facts and figures, as in a cost report or personnel report on the number of vacation days we took last year. It is helpful to use "information" to mean the language that forms a narrative description to position "data" in a context relevant to immediate concerns. "Knowledge" is the web of connections between information from different sources over time and the various objectives it impacts. So information connects data, and knowledge connects information resulting in "understanding," which is our goal.
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Time magazine (Mar 25, 1996 p. 50) recently reported efforts in cognitive science to research human consciousness. This is the faculty that converts data into information and into knowledge, common sense, wisdom and vision which leaders seek. Like all organic structures in nature, it appears the mind has the capacity to assemble wider patterns of understanding as a function of time.
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A complete structure of consciousness can be represented as:

             +----  Vision        (seeing the future by knowing the past)
  Leaders    |      History       (specialists write and form judgements)
  do this? --+      Wisdom        (i.e., "uncommon sense")
             |      Common Sense  (culture, tradition, manners)
             +----  Knowledge     (web of connections cause/effect)
                    Information   -----+
               +--  Data               |- IT is struggling to bridge
 Computers do  |    Words/Numbers -----+    this gap for managers
  this --------+    Bytes
               |    Bits
               +--  0,1           (on off, yes no, right wrong, life death)


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