1. How can benefits of good management that are typically deferred for weeks, months, sometimes occurring even years later, be identified by customers in the 20 minutes to an hour people have available for pilot testing a next generation Knowledge Management technology? Andy Grove, like Doug Engelbart, recommends experimenting to improve; but, if the experiment only lasts 20 minutes, then the tools adopted will cause harm, like fools gold, as seen from email, cell phones, fax, Palm Pilots.
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2. Need, even huge need which you cite, does not translate into market demand, if the need is otherwise being met in some manner with familiar processes. People are willing to accept problems, including reduced earnings, conflict and loss, in order to avoid the burden of learning something new. Drucker makes a similar point that new methods have to be 10 times better to change work practice. What Drucker does not mention is that nobody wants to go first to pilot test in order to separate fools gold from real gold. So, even if a method is 100 times better, Drucker's rule fails when there are plenty of sunshine profits. In that case, as now, people demand things that are pretty, easy and fun, regardless of the need. The only exception is overwhelming need, as in a war setting. If people are immediately threatened, we can all pull together and focus on improving productivity.

However, the lack of concomitant demand for adding intelligence to the work in order to save lives, time and money presents an equally clear dilemma. How can technology be deployed that reduces the level of diligence, i.e., makes it faster and easier, to maintain alignment, so that calamity and crises are avoided, as reported to Henry on September 26?
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We can further argue that the biggest problem, overshadowing all others, is the expanding complexity that drives management toward entropy, threatening to implode into a morass of bumbling, due to success accomplishing the centuries old dream of getting more information. We are innovating ourselves into ignorance, making communication the biggest risk in enterprise, because human span of attention cannot maintain alignment under conditions of expanding complexity. We can argue and argue, but people are not moved to action because problems in the microcosm are beyond span of attention. Twenty minutes to an hour for learning how technology aligns daily work with requirements, and takes less diligence to do it, is not sufficient to arrest the magnitude of the threat caused by negligence; nor is it enough time to grasp the huge opportunity that awaits from gaining control over lower levels of organic structure in the microcosm of the human mind. It's a dilemma.
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Let's then look at the issue differently: not as how much diligence it takes, but how much fun it is to add intelligence to management; saving time and money are just incidental extras.
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Like playing a piano, while the music is not audible, there is a strong mental satisfaction from quickly and easily connecting information into continuous arrangements that align daily work with objectives, requirements and commitments. There is added pleasure anticipating future benefits from being effective in meetings, calls and email, which is increased and reinforced as events occur throughout the day. Landauer says that effectance is a big motivator, so having fun and being effective might work, where talking about big needs and diligence seems to fall on deaf ears.
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As well, getting millions of people to have fun adding intelligence to daily work, will solve big problems and prevent small problems from becoming big, even if people do not pay attention to huge needs.

What do you say? Let's have fun!

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY

Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net