Accelerating Change

Steve Paikin hosts an interesting debate on the up and downsides of being Wired 24/7. He asks the panel experts if the rate of progress in computing will be infinite. Ray describes why a limit will be reached, referencing Moore’s Law. A similar but different question is what is going to happen to the rate of change we are experiencing. If the limit for hardware will be reached at the atomic level, what about the limit for software? Beyond the tangible world we live in and have labels for today, there are things we haven’t thought of yet that will have an impact on the rate of change we experience. Gravity existed before we knew about apples and trees, and before we had a name and equations to describe its behaviour and effects. What else awaits discovery? Technology accelerates the time lapse between when a question is asked and an answer is found. Answers are found quickly through increased collaboration of experiences, better measurement tools to find factual conclusions and a higher level of awareness of how we translate conclusions into new knowledge. We are making fewer mistakes in the realm of knowledge. I believe that it is possible for the rate of change to approach infinity. In practical terms, answers will be available as soon as the question is realized. The more we know, the more there will be to know. The universe may or may not be infinite, but it is full of infinite questions to ask. See the entire debate here: http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=104106&ts=2009-10-20 20:00:00.0

The Root Cause of Responsibility

Recently, a Canadian woman has decided to sue the Canadian government after her passport was revoked in Kenya.  While the facts of the case are still coming out, apparently her lips didn’t match that of her photo.  And whose fault is that?  The government?

http://www.canada.com/Woman+stranded+Kenya+seeks+over+passport+dispute/1916529/story.html

While it may be that the government wasn’t perfect in their response (like that is a surprise), as citizens of this country, we have a certain duty when travelling.  I know that I no longer look like my passport photo from four years ago, having changed weight and hairstyles, but before I travel anywhere, and use it to rely on the proof of my identity, I will get a new one, one that undoubtably looks like me. 

The root cause of this incident is leaving your country with a passport that doesn’t reflect your true image. 

Canadian tax payers and citizens are the ones who are going to pay.  If successful, the government should respond with shorter timelines on the validity of a passport to decrease the probability that people will change from their image.  That will be a pain for both government and citizens a like.  Government money comes from taxes.  I pay enough, as I am sure we all do.

Canada is a welcoming country, letting in others to give them a good, safe home.  And this is how they thank us?  Is the Canadian government as bad as the one she fled, as bad as the one she was born to?  Let’s put things in perspective.  Sure, bad things happen, but instead of looking for a payout, let’s try to make them better.  At least, we can take responsibility for what we can do about it, what is in our control and that is our behaviour abroad and our planning before we leave, to say the least.

Be a Blogger

While listening to the inspiring, challenging book, What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis, I got angry listening to the writer’s conflict with Dell and their lack of good, appropriate response.  I felt the author’s experience, from all the times that businesses have abused my information, trust, loyalty or lack of choice.  While I have never bought a Dell, now I have my own speeding ticket as my reason not to.  Bad customer experiences just don’t disappear.

In a transparent society, organizational wrong-doings just don’t disappear.  Just as bad celebrity photos don’t go away on the internet, neither do bad customer reviews.  If I didn’t hear the story in the book, Google spits it out in a search.

Which crimes hurt society more, and which ones should we be spending more to get?  How about anyone following in the footsteps of the three executives of Purdue Pharma, who buried evidence of OxyCotin’s addictive properties?  In his book, Jarvis details a host of benefits from bloggers digging, finding and posting the truth from doctored photos, internal memos, and faulty evidence.

Blogs, webpages, podcasts are the cops of a transparent society. Want to catch the bad guys?  Don’t be a cop, be a blogger.

The Lessons of Fallibility

Memory Aids

 

When we make embarrassing mistakes, we try to learn from them to avoid them from happening again, or at least I know I will.  Last week I made the mistake of referring to Sarah Palin as a Democrat, when in fact she is a Republican.  Good thing I am not an American Voter!

 

Recently, Gloria Steinem wrote “Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton”.  Interpretations of this quote lead several newscasters to try to remember which chromosome combination is male and which is female: XY or XX.  When clarification was given that XY is male, the newscaster said, “I will remember that from now on because B-O-Y is Y.”

 

Humans are not blessed with accurate, computer like memories.  We forget, confuse and stumble.  No matter how many times I have made a recipe, I will still refer to the written version to verify quantities and ensure I don’t leave out an ingredient.  When I run out of an ingredient, I write it down to remind myself on my next shopping trip.

 

Making knowledge accessible is an important part of creating robust and sustainable solutions.  Written work instructions and checklists are proactive memory aids to help us achieve our highest capable performance even when we are not functioning on every synapse.

 

Sometimes, knowing better does not mean doing better.  Accepting that fact leads us to find real reasons why mistakes are made – mistakes carry the notion of special cause, when in fact it may be the process itself that needs to change.  One friend struggles with her teenage son putting his clothes into the basket, not on the floor.  He knows better, he just doesn’t.  While this could have escalated and become a source of struggle, the solution was simple to put the basket where the clothes end up anyway.  Instead of a walk down the hall to the basket, the basket moved to exactly where the clothes got tossed anyway.  A change to the process, not to the instruction.

 

Accessible knowledge means it is available when and where it is needed, as is demonstrated with the load charts.  Have you ever left a meeting and forgotten what it is that you needed to do?  On a larger scale, it can means keeping notes at meetings. 

 

How much time do you spend searching for information or trying to remember something?  As individuals, we tend to have our own quirks, of which we are all well aware.  What are they, and how much simpler would life be if they were diminished?

 

On the flip side of the coin, what comes easily to you that you know others struggle with in your organization? What information and knowledge do you have that you could share?  Perhaps you know how to pull up a report that others could use.  Perhaps you have a lot of experience with a procedure, such as travel expense reporting, which may benefit others who don’t complete them often.

 

I think I will remember that Palin is Republican, since they both end with an n.  What can you do this week to error-proof your own performance, your processes or your areas?