CONTACTS 
0201 - Sandia National Laboratories                                                                                                                                       O-00000543 0201
020101 - Mr. John C. McMichael;
0202 - Moravec and Associates                                                                                                                                             O-00000537 0101
020201 - Mr. Milan Moravec; President

SUBJECTS
PMI Monthly meetings

0903 -
0903 -    ..
0904 - Summary/Objective
0905 -
090501 - Follow up ref SDS 14 0000, ref SDS 10 0000.
090502 -
090503 - Milan Moravec gave a presentation on need for change; heard
090504 - presentation on the value of planning.  Dan Ono is assigned to do a
090505 - study on the value of project management.
090506 -
090507 -
090509 -  ..
0906 -
0907 -
0908 - Discussions
0909 -
090901 - Ran into Ahmet Taspinar, Sherrill McDonald and Richard Lingensjo, but
090902 - did not have time to visit extensively.
090904 -  ..
090905 - Met Raisa _______.
090906 -
090907 -   This is her first PMI meeting.  She is a young woman who provides
090908 -   project planning and procedure support as an independent consult-
090909 -   ant.  Raisa described a current project in San Francisco where she
090910 -   developed a quality control program and then helped negotiate a
090911 -   contract to apply it so that her client's vendor of a key product
090912 -   could overcome previous quality failures.
090914 -    ..
090915 -   She won Milan's raffle in the business card drawing.
090916 -
090918 -  ..
090919 - Bob Denmark
090920 -
090921 - Bob sat across from Raisa and next to Chris Snyder.
090922 -
090923 - He told us about a project he has been involved with to build 9,000
090924 - units of housing in Israel.  Sounded like it is a T&M deal, and
090925 - includes providing training for Israeli soldiers who are assigned to
090926 - support the project.  They soldier part of the day, and then work on
090927 - Bob's project to learn skills they can use after leaving the
090928 - military.
090930 -  ..
090931 - They are training a polyglot of other nationalities, e.g. Russians,
090932 - Etheopians, Arabs, etc.  I commented to Bill DeHart who sat next to
090933 - me that this seems like what CDWR has done in staffing the Coastal
090934 - Aqueduct project.
090936 -  ..
090937 - I did not get a chance to ask about his eye condition which he
090938 - mentioned at the PMI conference in Vancouver last week, ref SDS 17
090939 - line 61.
090940 -
090941 -
090943 -  ..
0910 -
0911 -
0912 - Milan Moravec on Challenge of the Future
0913 -
091301 - Milan gave a short form presentation of his ideas presented at the PMI
091302 - Asilomar conference on 940610. ref SDS 9 3955
091303 -
091304 -    Milan asked attendees to draw a circle, and then section out a
091305 -    portion that represents "information we know," relative to what we
091306 -    need to know.  He asked we estimate another section representing
091307 -    "what competitors know that we do not know." For most people these
091308 -    sections comprised about 25% to 33% of the circle.
091310 -     ..
091311 -    Milan asked what the remainder of the circle represents?
091313 -     ..
091314 -    Suggested it comprises the potential for "knowledge growth," which
091315 -    is stymied by the pace of modern business life on the Information
091316 -    Highway.
091318 -     ..
091319 -    Milan took a different tack.  He indicated the blank space in the
091320 -    pie chart represents the amount of risk which leaders are prepared
091321 -    to take, but which "managers" avoid.
091323 -         ..
091324 -        I did not pursue the issue further because Milan was working
091325 -        hard at presenting his ideas.  It seems though that "good"
091326 -        leaders identify and reduce risk by capturing the record in
091327 -        order to acquire and preserve "understanding" and thereby
091328 -        create new knowledge, so that when they move into uncharted
091329 -        waters, the risks and opportunities, costs and benefits and the
091330 -        steps to meet objectives are as well "understood" as possible.
091331 -
091333 -             ..
091334 -            Selecting the Right Path
091335 -
091336 -            I mentioned as an aside to Bill DeHart the conventional
091337 -            wisdom about a "leader" as focusing on the arts of
091338 -            persuasion with the result that too often people are led
091339 -            down the wrong path by the sweet sounding Pied Pipers of
091340 -            "change" (see analysis of Stephen Covey on 921205.
091341 -            ref SDS 2 4820)
091343 -         ..
091344 -        The haunting question after attending a seminar advocating
091345 -        change, is what change to make?  What are the new skills and
091346 -        paradigms managers need to increase their value and remain
091347 -        competitive?
091348 -
091349 -           [On 040621 10 years later learned that the year before this
091350 -           seminar in Jan-Feb 1993 Alan Webber wrote a piece proposing
091351 -           conversation for change and renewal under the banner of
091352 -           "Knowledge Management to replace declining confidence in TQM
091353 -           and reengineering. ref SDS 22 HJ8M
091355 -            ..
091356 -           [On 951230 General Hank Hatch argues fortunes fall when
091357 -           people make changes in the wrong direction without
091358 -           understanding what aspects of management are causing poor
091359 -           performance. ref SDS 21 2131
091360 -
091362 -         ..
091363 -        Old Technology - Consuming Information
091364 -
091365 -        The fundamental paradigm of "leadership" is talking to make a
091366 -        living at conferences, meetings, E-mail, celluar phone, dialog.
091367 -        ref OF 1 4079  They ask for the bottom line and look for the
091368 -        big picture.  Thus executives give orders and persuade others
091369 -        to act, based on summarized (i.e., cursory) understandings.
091370 -        This worked fine for 5,000 years, but its time is over.  Today,
091371 -        management is more than talking and persuading. ref OF 1 2468
091372 -
091373 -
091374 -
091375 -
0914 -

SUBJECTS
Deviation from Truth Multiplied by Time, Ransdell
Truth Deviations Multiplied by Time

1104 -
110501 -         ..
110502 -        New Paradigm - Investing Intellectual Capital Solves Murphy
110503 -
110504 -        Paradigms are understandings of cause and effect that comprise
110505 -        knowledge, per work on 940621. ref SDS 11 7489
110507 -         ..
110508 -        Today, the increasing rate of creating and distributing
110509 -        information increases the rate of misunderstanding. ref OF 1
110510 -        25H6  When conflict surfaces, little problems are ignored
110511 -        hoping they will go away.
110513 -         ..
110514 -        But as Aristotle noted 4,000 years ago, little deviations from
110515 -        the truth in the beginning, lead to ruinous results in the end.
110516 -        ref SDS 13 0000  Murphy's Law results, as discussed at the PMI
110517 -        Asilomar Conference on 940612. ref SDS 10 5882
110519 -         ..
110520 -        Time calcifies hope into an "official view of reality."  Peer
110521 -        pressure and hierarchy bend strong, good people into cover ups.
110522 -        (see for example the record on 941021, ref SDS 19 7488).  The
110523 -        only solution is to increase the ability to convert information
110524 -        into new knowledge, i.e., to lift the capacity to think,
110525 -        remember and communicate, so that people can discover
110526 -        opportunity and avoid mistakes.
110528 -              ..
110529 -             [This material could be used to integrate and expand the
110530 -             articles on POIMS and the New World Order.]
110532 -         ..
110533 -        This requires learning new skills.  Like the farmer who learned
110534 -        to put things into the ground to get a bigger reward than
110535 -        merely taking what nature provides, executives can learn to
110536 -        invest intellectual capital to reap a richer harvest of know-
110537 -        ledge and ideas.  They must transcend the old paradigm of
110538 -        knowledge as coming from talking, observing and listening.
110539 -        Sound conveys impressions and our eyes are especially suscep-
110540 -        tible to misimpression in the frenetic environment of modern
110541 -        business life on the Information Highway.  So we need new
110542 -        skills to grow, test, preserve, and retrieve critical
110543 -        knowledge.
110544 -
110546 -  ..
110547 - Chris Snyder sitting across from Bill and I, said that PG&E senior
110548 - managers should have attended this evening to hear Milan's ideas.
110549 - This echoed Jake's comments on Milan's presentation at Asilomar,
110550 - ref SDS 11 0000 155.
110552 -  ..
110553 - After his presentation, Milan asked me to call about meeting to
110554 - discuss things further, perhaps over breakfast.
110555 -
110556 -     [On 040621 10 years later learned that the year before this
110557 -     seminar in Jan-Feb 1993 Alan Webber wrote a piece proposing
110558 -     conversation for change and renewal under the banner of "Knowledge
110559 -     Management to replace declining confidence in TQM and
110560 -     reengineering. ref SDS 22 HJ8M
110561 -
110562 -
110563 -
110565 -  ..
1106 -
1107 -
1108 - PMI Education Project
1109 -
110901 - The moderator said Dan Ono is heading up a project to identify the
110902 - cost advantages of using project management.
110904 -  ..
110905 - Possibly this is an opportunity to let Dan know about POIMS.
110906 -
110907 -
110908 -
1110 -

SUBJECTS
Planning & Oversight

1203 -
120401 -  ..
120402 - The main presentation focused on the advantages of "planning" in
120403 - advance of spending a lot of money on a project.  It offered ideas on
120404 - starting a project that are similar to those presented at the Cal
120405 - Tech seminar, ref SDS 1 line 74, including the course manual received
120406 - and analysed at ref SDS 3 line 87.
120408 -  ..
120409 - This evening we got the results of a study involving 600 or so
120410 - projects that concluded it is beneficial to do planning, i.e.,
120411 -
120412 -                  Look before you leap!
120414 -  ..
120415 - Seemed like the main finding of the study was that project controls
120416 - (presumably cost and schedule tools) contributed the most to success.
120418 -  ..
120419 - It was not clear from the presentation when these successful projects
120420 - were performed.  "Success" usually requires a period of time after
120421 - "official" completion of the project, to determine if everything
120422 - really works and all of the claims are resolved.  This can take
120423 - years.  I would expect that this study represents projects within the
120424 - past 20 years, rather than those being performed in the modern era of
120425 - the "Information Highway."
120426 -
120427 -
120428 -
120429 -
1205 -

SUBJECTS
Sandia Labs, Livermore
SDS, Marketing, Sales discussions
Trial Installations

1505 -
150601 -  ..
150602 - Saw Jake McMichael following up our discussion at PMI in Vancouver a
150603 - few weeks ago, ref SDS 17 line 94.
150605 -  ..
150606 - He asked Bill DeHart about using SDS at PG&E?  Bill mentioned the
150607 - discussion with Chris Snyder on this point in extending the Welch
150608 - contract, per ref SDS 16 line 84.
150610 -  ..
150611 - I will send Jake the notes of that discussion.  Bill asked Jake to
150612 - call him to follow up.
150613 -
150614 -
150615 -
150616 -
150617 -
150618 -
150619 -
150620 -
1507 -