Managing Information: C. Tryon/book review by J. Colannino

 This review first appeared in the newsletter of the Knowledge and Information Professionals Association (KIPA)

Knowledge Management (KM) is a fledgling discipline with origins in four established ones: computer science (informatics), library science (cataloging and indexing), business (project management), and psychology (organizational dynamics). Depending on its birthplace, KM means different things or at least has different emphases, from the philosophical to the pragmatic. In fact, KM is in desperate need of better philosophy, primarily for the sake of undergirding its praxis, which has often taken many a wayward turn.

Although educated in the library science tradition, Tryon comes down solidly on the project-centric side of things where he has spent the better part of his living. Tryon cuts to the chase by systematizing what works and presents a considered step-by-step process: 1. Create a knowledge management vision and goals statement based on best KM processes and practices. 2. Evaluate your organization by conducting a KM assessment. 3. Use the assessment to define a knowledge inventory. 4. Create a knowledge portal to share and disseminate that knowledge.

In order to facilitate these steps Tryon systematizes Knowledge Management into what I believe will become a foundational model for KM -- the KIPPAR model. Picture a knowledge inventory (KI) supported on three pillars: projects (P), processes (P), and artifacts (A). These pillars are grounded on knowledge repositories (R); these then, are the elements of the KIPPAR model. The knowledge inventory declares what counts as knowledge; knowledge is produced especially when an organization undertakes projects. Such projects require a variety of processes that inevitably contribute to organizational knowledge. That knowledge is defined and codified by particular artifacts (e.g., documents, specifications, etc.). In order to keep from reinventing the wheel, knowledge must be preserved for posterity in the knowledge repository and remain accessible via various portals.

None of this feels new, but it is. Although it has been known for sometime that good PM requires good KM, Tryon firmly establishes PM as KM's handmaiden. Moreover, the KIPPAR model is a real contribution, showing succinctly how the pieces fit together. Finally, Managing Organizational Knowledge provides a practical guide for establishing formal KM practice in a language that organizations already speak.

The work is organized into ten chapters and has an introduction, conclusion, acknowledgements, and an Appendix with helpful templates. Such a project-centric approach to KM is bound to be useful, and I recommend this book for any organization or practitioner seeking to install or enhance KM efforts.

The Information: J. Gleick/book review by J. Colannino

Comment: "(This book review first appeared in the pages of "In the Know", A Newsletter of the Knowledge & Information Professional Association, VOLUME 2, ISSUE 6, NOVEMBER, 2011)

What is information? Knowledge theorists such as myself use the "wicked" acronym (actually WKID) to provide a clue: Wisdom > Knowledge > Information > Data. Data are generally defined as "bare facts." By the time we get to information we have a collection of organized data or taxonomy. Knowledge is information employed for a purpose; this is the level of understanding that defines a discipline, e.g., psychology, engineering, etc. Wisdom is knowledge plus some moral or normative component: knowledge will tell you how to make a bomb, wisdom will tell you if you should. It is at the level of wisdom that paradigms and worldviews operate and compete: e.g., environmentalism, theism, materialism, etc. -- all make normative claims regarding to what effect we should employ knowledge. Even so, the WKID categories are to some extent points of convenience along a continuum; the dividing line is often less obvious than advertised.

Into the fray jumps Gleick. Beginning with African drums, moving to Shannon's information theory, and ending at the modern flood of continual information, Gleick attempts to provide perspective on "the information" (an element so foundational to human existence that the author decided to introduce the subject with the definite article). With an interesting prologue and provocative epilogue, the work is organized into 15 chapters and 526 pages, of which nearly 100 comprise end notes and an index. Although the book is not formally divided into parts, it is roughly divided into three sequential themes: forms of communication, Chapters 1 - 5 (a history); the theory of information, Chapters 6 - 9 (a theory); and the sources of information, Chapters 10 - 15 (a flood). The first five chapters survey language in its various forms, first oral then written; I found them riveting. The next four chapters begin the dive into formal communication theory. They reveal the remarkable result that digital codes (as opposed to analog transmissions) can be made arbitrarily accurate even over noisy channels. In fact, the most accurate, condensed, and efficient digital code known to man happens to be the genetic code -- so, information is foundational to humanness in more ways than one -- and it gets its own chapter (10).

If the book had ended with Chapter 10, it would have remained a very good book, if not incomplete. But the author earns extra points for soldiering on. Because in fact, Chapter 10 sets up an implicit tension: what has generated all that information? At the time of the mid-nineteenth century, the answer was well known: all known information sources were sentient. Had DNA's digital code been discovered then, rather than 100 years later, the verdict would have likely remained unanimous, and the question would not have been "What..." but "Who..." with God declared Author; Shannon's information theoretic would have only cemented the view: the unparalleled informational carrying capacity of DNA, its digital nature in a pre-digital world, its remarkable error correction routines...

But that is not how history went, and it is not what Gleick believes, nor how he chose to end his book. He does not shy away from attempting to answer the questions his subject demands. Four chapters are devoted to memes, randomness, quantum mechanics, and other non-sentient explanations for the origin of biological information. (This is something I have studied at some length. I generally find non-sentient explanations of biological information incoherent, and I say that is the case here; I am apparently a century out of time.) Notwithstanding, the writing is very good, and in places, spellbinding. His investigation is fearless and authentic. Gleick is committed to follow his subject to its end, and I cannot help but to recommend this book."

TRIZICS/book review by J. Colannino

This review first appeared in the newsletter of the Knowledge and Information Professionals Association (KIPA)

TRIZ is a Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solution. In the 1940s G.S. Altshuller (1926-1998) studied invention in a novel way. Rather than interview inventors in hopes of advancing psychological theories of invention, he studied their output -- specifically patents. Thus TRIZ systematizes known results and does not depend on unverifiable mental models of inventiveness. Altshuller ultimately surveyed about 200,000 patents. His work has now been extended and validated into the millions of patents. What Altshuller found was that all inventions could be reduced to 40 inventive principles and 39 parameters. The basic method is to reduce the problem to a contradiction and resolve it (Cameron provides a TRIZ table to select which method(s) will solve the contradiction).

For example, suppose you need something to be lighter AND longer. Because longer things are heavier and not lighter, one has a basic contradiction. In TRIZ, weight of a stationary object is Parameter 2 and its Length is Parameter 4. Again, there are 39 such parameters. Using the TRIZ table, one finds a number of standard principles to solve the contradiction: For example, one may change materials (Principle 35) or add holes/porosity (Principle 31) among other changes.

TRIZ forces "out of the box" thinking. However, most problems can and are solved by thinking "inside the box"; in a sense, that is the definition of a discipline. It is only when standard tools of the discipline cannot solve the problem at hand that out-of-the-box thinking is required. The marriage of inside-the-box and outside-the-box thinking is one reason that Cameron's TRIZICS is so powerful.

In addition, Cameron assembles and organizes all kinds of ancillary support systems. For example, one powerful mnemonic is MATCHEM: systems tend to begin mechanically (M) and become augmented by acoustics (A), thermal (T), chemical (CH), electric (E), and magnetic (M) or electromagnetic inventive principles. Consider the evolution of the drum: acoustics were subsequently enhanced, thermal treatment was added to produce more uniform drum heads from natural materials such as animal skins, chemical formulations were adapted for synthetic drum heads, electronic amplification was added, and then electromagnetic systems (synthetic drums) were finally introduced. Overlying this general development, evolutionary trends toward increasing completeness and coordination/harmonization were applied to produce drum kits -- a coordinated assembly of various drums; Cameron describes eight such evolutionary trends.

Additionally, one learns four types of problem categorization: cause unknown, cause known, improvement/development, and failure prevention. These ancillary structures are important, because TRIZ is designed to solve cause-known problems, so some sort of root cause analysis must be bolted onto TRIZ to make the method comprehensive. This is another of Cameron's many contributions turning TRIZ into TRIZICS.

The book is organized into 11 Chapters and 8 Powerful Appendices: Chapter 1) Introduction to TRIZICS, 2) Standard Structured Problem Solving, 3) Cause-Effect Chain Analysis, 4) Ideality, S-curves, and Trends of Evolution 5) Nine Windows, the Anti-system, and DTC operator, 6) Functionality, Functional Modeling, and Trimming, 7) Scientific Effects, 8) Inventive Standards and Su-field Modeling, 9) Part 1 Contradictions and ARIZ Tools, 10) Part 2 Contradictions and ARIZ Tools, 10) Subversion Analysis, 11) Root Cause Analysis; Appendix 1) The 39 Parameters and 40 Inventive Principles, 2) Contradiction Matrix, 3) The 40 Principles with Examples, 4) The 39 Parameters Definitions, 5) Inventive Standards Flowchart, 6) The 76 Inventive Standards, 7) Table of Specific Inventive Principles to Solve Physical Contradictions, 8) Flowcharts/Roadmaps/Templates.

As an innovation professional, I have headed R&D departments, produced patents, and invented my share of stuff, but Cameron's book -- a comprehensive guide to invention and problem solution-- is the best I have ever seen, bar none. Its contents will easily support a full year course in invention/knowledge creation at the university level. A rich source of information, it will require careful study, reading, and re-reading to master its contents. However, it is worthy of the effort. TRIZICS is the new quintessential resource for creative problem solving and invention.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath/Review: J. Colannino

"This book review first appeared in the May edition of the KIPA newsletter: http://www.kipanet.org/

Switch is a book about managing change by the Heath brothers (Chip and Dan). Chip is a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and Dan is a Senior Fellow at Duke University' Social Entrepreneurship center. The two have teamed up before -- in 2007 they released their critically acclaimed Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. This latest effort focuses less on the stickiness of the idea and more on the change process itself. What should a change agent do to implement lasting change in a hard-headed organization that desperately needs it?

The book is organized into eleven chapters in three parts: Part 1, Direct the Rider; Part 2, Motivate the Elephant; and Part 3, Shape the Path. The titles come from a vivid metaphor by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt. In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt likens a person to a rider on an elephant. The rider is the rational side of a person: the part that tells him to eat better, exercise more, and stop procrastinating, for example. The elephant is the emotional side that doesn't want to work to lose weight or exercise and would rather stay put; let's say willpower vs. won't-power; but why should that be? Whatever is autonomous and ingrained by habit belongs to the elephant. The rider is theoretically in control, but it is exhausting to continually tug on the reins and direct the stubborn elephant. Eventually the rider relents and the elephant goes back to doing what he's always done. Sound familiar?

Before going much farther, you should know that two things separate Switch from so many other glib books about change: first, the book has a very solid psychological basis. Despite its accessible style, scores of major psychological findings and studies are reported and undergird the book's practical formulae for change. Second, Switch is not a self-help book. I have no doubt that the book could be used in this way, but it is really a book about how to change things. It is primarily directed toward organizational change, though its principles are much broader. And there are many surprises.

The first big surprise occurs in the very first chapter.

"We know what you're thinking -- people resist change. But it's not quite that easy. Babies are born every day to parents who, inexplicably, welcome that change. Yet people don't resist this massive change -- they volunteer for it. In our lives we embrace lots of big changes. So there are hard changes and there are easy changes. What distinguishes one from the other?"

And the surprises keep coming. Like the two researchers who dramatically and permanently got folks to reduce their saturated fat intake. Or the doctor who saved over 100,000 lives and counting in American hospitals on schedule (18 months) by getting thousands of doctors and organizations to change their practices. Or the American who went to Vietnam and changed the face of malnutrition. Or the student who saved an endangered species in a Caribbean country that didn't give two hoots about it.

What do all these stories have in common? For one, none of these change agents had the sufficient budget or authority to succeed; yet, they did. How? Every one of them gave clear rational direction to the rider by finding the bright spots, scripting the critical moves, and clearly pointing to the end goal. All of them motivated the elephant by emotionally connecting with it, and they shrunk the apparent change by carefully communicating progress. They refused to underestimate their people. Instead they provided them with a newfound identity that let them to grow into the challenge. But there was more.

As the authors note, many times what looks like resistance is really confusion or even the result of misaligned incentives. That's why the path needs to be shaped by making manageable changes to the environment, building sound habits, rallying the herd, and reinforcing the new habit until it becomes a way of life.

Well, maybe that sounds like a lot of work. I think it is. But speaking from firsthand experience, it will be a labor of love. And if your heart is not in the change and you do not think you can derive reward from the process, perhaps you are selling yourself short -- or, maybe you're the wrong person to lead the change and you should stop kidding yourself. And perhaps that is what I like most about this book. It does not promise a panacea. It tells it like it is without the jingoism that has become the substance of many change management essays. If you are leading organizational change, the book will provide a solid prescription for achieving lasting results because Switch uses real research, reports real experiences, and provides real guidance. Here, my recommendation is enthusiastic."

The Death of Common Sense/Review, J. Colannino

"The Death of Common Sense" is Howard's classic text (1994).  It is prescient in its approach, predicting the health care legislation of 2010 by many years.  Howard argues that common sense has died, sacrificed on the altar of prescriptive legislation.  That is, once upon a time, common law with its general principles reigned supreme.  For example, the general principle that property belongs to an owner means that others are forbidden to harm it.  This is the ultimate basis of environmental law.  The problem as Howard sees it is that this general approach has been legislated out of existence by statutes that are prescriptive ad nauseam, including many arcane rules of procedure.  For example, Amoco spent many millions dollars attempting to capture an insignificant amount of benzene at the pipe while much larger emissions were not allowed to be touched, both to the dismay of Amoco, the public, and presumably some regulators.  If the general principle of reducing benzene to its lowest practical level were followed, the cost would have been reduced and the emissions abated -- both by an order of magnitude.  However, the law was so prescriptive that neither regulators nor the regulated were allowed to do the right thing. 

Since 1994, things have only gotten worse.  As an environmental professional, I see this in spades in environmental law today.  Regulators simply will not confine themselves to telling the regulated *WHAT* they must accomplish, but *HOW* they must accomplish it.  That is a recipe for disaster because no amount of planning can anticipate every scenario.

The bigger problem, according to Howard, is that accountability is emasculated.  The regulator is not accountable for using common sense because the statute disallows it.  The legislator is not accountable because he has delegated regulation to the executive branch.  The result is a perfect storm: elected officials are unaccountable, regulatory executives are unaccountable, and the regulated spend wasteful amounts of money without addressing the actual problems.  Just look at the complicated one-size-fits-all codes put out by OSHA, the EPA, the IRS, and every other agency that cost too much and accomplish too little. 

Up to this point, I agree with Howard.  However, in the closing chapter, he misses the larger issue.  The reason accountability has been jettisoned is because the legislative branch has unconstitutionally granted legislative powers to the executive branch.  This is a clear violation of the separation of powers.  Legislators are given the enormous privilege and awesome responsibility of making law because they are the only branch of government elected by the people.  The only responsibility and required duty granted by the Constitution to the executive branch is to execute and defend the laws passed by the legislature.  This sacred obligation has been violated willy-nilly in both directions: not only has the executive branch usurped legislative powers, it also has refused to execute the will of the legislature.  These are impeachable offenses, yet they are happening at all levels of government with barely a notice.  As an example, consider the defense of traditional marriage (e.g., Proposition 8 in California and DOMA at the federal level).  The point is not whether one agrees with the law -- bad law and bad legislators can be remedied by the people at election time -- the point is that respective executive branches are refusing to execute the will of the people by failing to execute or defend established law duly enacted by the people's representatives.  This is a recipe for disaster, and the cake is just about baked.

Because Howard misses the forest for the trees, his final chapter "Releasing Ourselves" offers anemic and milquetoast "remedies." If only we would return to principles rather than prescription, Howard feels we would be safe.  But this is tantamount to tautology: yes, the problem will be fixed once the problem is fixed; the larger issue is that there is no way under the current system to return to principles.  The legislature has endowed the executive branch with prescription in lieu of principle; until they take it away, we shall continue to reap what we have sown.  Remember that the legislative branch is the final constituted power.  They alone have the power to abolish agencies and repeal laws -- from the IRS to the U.S. Constitution itself -- nothing is beyond their reach including the executive and judicial branches.  Yet, the legislature has one master -- the people themselves.  We ultimately bear the full blame of our fate befallen.  Perhaps history will record 2010 as the beginning of a great awakening of the American people, or perhaps not.  Time will tell.

The book is organized into four chapters: I. The Death of Common Sense; II. The Buck Never Stops; III. A Nation of Enemies; IV. Releasing Ourselves.  Long a classic text, I recommend this book for many reasons, foremost among them, Howard's book and its contained examples remain a classic proof text and a cogent testimonial to an executive branch run amok. 

Slack by Tom DeMarco/Review: J. Colannino

Tom DeMarco wrote Slack in 2001.  However, I have a ten-year rule on management books.  If they're still around in ten years, then I read them.  I formulated this rule after reading Blue Ocean Strategy which was mostly abject nonsense.  Maybe I am already crotchety (is there a such thing as a young fogey?) but after more than 25 years of leading high performance teams I don't have much patience for most management consultants and their books.  DeMarco is a bit different because he has practiced in real life what he has preached in his book. 

Slack has something important to say, but first, the bad news.  Although the book is short (220 pages) I often found it boring.  The good news is that it is also interesting and insightful in some important places.  And besides, having written a 630 page book on combustion modeling I am in a dicey position to complain about boring reads.

DeMarco starts out by describing an old puzzle you may remember if you are over 40: a square 2"x2"puzzle with 8 plastic tiles in a 3x3 grid with one space left over. The object was to order the tiles from 1 to 8 by sliding them around and interchanging tiles and spaces. DeMarco proposes a new "optimized" puzzle: 716/483/259. Great! If you like 716/483/259 then the puzzle is already in its final "optimized" configuration. The only problem is that there is no space left over to move the tiles around.  Not much of a game, but think of the analogy with today's manufacturing model.  All the air is squeezed out of the process.  The minimal amount of effort is required to maintain 123/456/789. Everything is great, UNTIL you need to respond to changing market conditions, and then, you can't!  There is no slack in the process.  All unessential overhead has been cut.  Folks are so busy doing their jobs and the jobs of one or two others that have been let go that they can't possibly do anything more. 

As far as DeMarco is concerned, optimization is fine on the shop floor, but not with knowledge workers because thinking takes time and freedom, the very things that have been squeezed out of the process.  No one is available to redirect the process.  The best an organization can manage is some incremental improvement here or there. No breakthroughs can occur; just the same thing better, faster, and cheaper until better, faster, and cheaper can no longer compete.

My first chemical engineering professor actually worked in a buggy whip factory.  How much better do you suppose their buggy whips became before they went broke?  How much faster were they produced?  How much cheaper did they become?  Here is a link to a better, faster, cheaper buggy whip.  Quite a bargain for under 13 dollars, especially when adjusted for inflation.  So did a few better, faster, cheaper businesses survive?  Not really.  The company I reference started in 1973, and they do lots of other stuff besides buggy whips.  Businesses only survive when they can adapt. Being best in class is important, but the ability to change or create the class is more important.

The book is organized into 33 short chapters in four parts.  Part One introduces the concept of slack.  Part Two: Lost, but Making Good Time illustrates a saying of mine: "When you're headed in the wrong direction, speed is not your ally."  Part Three addresses change and growth, and Part Four speaks to risk and risk management.

DeMarco makes many good points; e.g., people are not fungible; transaction costs are almost always underestimated or ignored; invention requires resources; tactics without strategy is disastrous, etc.  However, he also makes several blunders, almost all of which come from his errant view of anthropology and ultimately theology. 

In Chapter 5, Managing Eve, DeMarco's worldview gets in the way. According to DeMarco, Eve made the right decision by breaking the rules rather than limiting her "growth as a person."  I am no prude, but there are lots of experiences for which we are the poorer, not the better, and sensible policy is designed to limit bad consequences.  Do organizations entertain destructive policies?  Yes, but our job should be to reform the policy, not to do our own thing. 

DeMarco also analogizes blind obedience to management policy as religion, but this is a poor analogy.  The Christian religion is responsible for the hospital, the university, and science.  Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Blind adherence to anything (including policy) is never a good idea, but that has much more to do with totalitarianism than religion. 

Elsewhere (Chapter 28,Change Management) DeMarco decries the family as a poor model for business, especially during the changing times that we find ourselves in.  But this is founded on an inadequate and misguided model of family as an authoritarian regime.  Good family does have clear structure and authority.  But that is not all it has.  It also has apprenticeship, nurturing, guidance, training, and it prepares its junior members for succession to greater responsibilities.  All in all, I think that is a very good model for business.

Yet and despite my disagreements, the book is a worthy read and a reasonable antidote to the blind dogma that poses for leadership in many organizations. One can only hope that those indicted are up for the challenge.

Operations with Continued Fractions and Square Roots/ J. Colannino

Continued fractions represent a powerful and efficient method and codify an algorithm to generate the best rational approximations for any irrational number.  For example, 355/113 is a remarkably accurate rational approximation to pi (and easy to remember: 113355, then split the 3s and invert).  2721/1001 is a good approximation for e.  Likewise, 99/70 is the best rational approximation to the square root of two for any two digit denominator.  (1393/985 is the best for a three digit denominator).  Indeed, square roots are always expressible as periodic continued fractions.  For example, sqrt(2) = 1+1/(2+1/(2+1/(2+1/(2... and simple continued fractions (those with 1 in the numerator exclusively like the one just shown) always reduce to the best rational approximations.  In fact, square roots are always expressible in continued fraction form using unchanging numerators and denominators, e.g., sqrt(7) = 2+3/(4+3/(4+3/(4+....  I refer to these as facile continued fractions because they are easy to derive.  They can always be converted to simple continued fractions; e.g., sqrt(7) = 2+1/(1+1/(1+1/(1+1/(4+... using simple operations.  Since this blog doesn't permit the graphical features required, I've uploaded a document describing the procedure here.  If you want to have fun deriving the best rational approximations, I've uploaded an Excel spreadsheet here.  If you are interested in these kinds of things, my full LinkedIn profile has many more uploaded documents.

The Other Side of Innovation/Book Review, J. Colannino

The Other Side of Innovation emphasizes R&D execution. Amen. After 20+ years as a senior executive in charge of R&D initiatives, I can affirm that good ideas are not the same as good R&D. Here, Govindarajan and Trimble tackle the oft overlooked piece of the puzzle -- execution. If your R&D is lackluster, the cause is almost certainly the execution structure of your organization -- specifically, a failure to differentiate between production and invention -- what Govindarajan and Trimble call the performance and innovation engines, respectively.

The performance engine is a finely oiled machine that doesn't tolerate a wrench in the works. Within the performance engine, incremental improvement might be tolerated, but breakthrough innovation will be fiercely resisted: the mission of the performance engine is to turn out reliable, repeatably performing product, not to have "creative" employees deviate from specifications. By contrast, the innovation engine is a kind of managed chaos requiring unique and one-off approaches. Such R&D inventions are unique and differ from what the current system has been optimized to produce. Even so, creativity in the R&D organization will get you inventions, but not innovations. For real innovation to occur, the invention must be assimilated and adopted by the performance engine. This is the creative tension that all innovative organizations must constructively maintain. How to do that? The authors insist that a hybrid team must be formed to mix the oil and vinegar. I am bit less exclusive in my thinking, but I certainly agree that it is one proven way to get there.

Besides an introduction and a conclusion, the book is divided into two parts. Part I: Build the Team, comprises three chapters: (1) Divide the Labor (2) Assemble the Dedicated Team (3) Manage the Partnership. Part II: Run a Disciplined Experiment, holds the remaining chapters: (4) Formalize the Experiment (5) Break Down the Hypothesis, and (6) Seek the Truth. The book tends toward the pedantic at times, but possesses real wisdom nonetheless.

Is that all there is to great innovation? No; much more could be said, and at the end of the day, innovation must be embraced as a person-centric enterprise. But I am convinced that "The Other Side of Innovation" is a good start. The organization that proceeds from its central framework will be ahead of those that do not because innovation requires good execution as well as good invention.

No, Virginia, There is no Santa Claus

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrongright. There is no Santa Claus.  But there is truth.  I, on the other hand, shall commit a series of logical fallacies to justify a lie in order to preserve my paper’s advertising revenue that spikes during the Christmas season.  Let me begin with the ever-effective ad hominem fallacy and claim something about your friends for which I have gathered no evidence whatsoever: They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. [Of course, this is simply attacking the source rather than providing a legitimate argument.  But it often works.  Now to commit logical suicide by making use of something known as the self-destructing argument:] All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.  [The reason that such an argument is self-destructing is because I, myself, am a mere man.  If men’s intellects are “little” and “insect”-like, then I have disqualified myself from making any truth claims whatsoever, including the particular truth claim that Santa Claus lives.]

[Now to repeat the unsupported conjecture (repetition of a false or unsupported claim is an important device in propaganda):] Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. [I now continue with a false logical device known as the non-sequitur:] He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.  [Whether any of the previous statements are true or false is actually immaterial because no argument has been proposed that connects the existence of Santa Claus to the existence of love, or generosity, etc.]

[Here is another non-sequitur:]Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! [And now to introduce the fallacy of the affirming the negative:] You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. [Lack of observation does not constitute a proof.]

[Now for a string of unsupported conjectures and non-sequiturs:] You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

[And another restatement of the unproved thesis:] No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. [And a final unsupported conjecture:] A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

[The moral of the story?  Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.]

Handbook of Technology and Innovation Management/Review: J. Colannino

I have been searching for many years for a suitable text with which to teach a course on technology and innovation management, and at last I have found it: The Handbook of Technology and Innovation Management, edited by Scott Shane.  The book is a source book with each chapter written by an expert in the field; however, Shane's masterful editing coheres the book and makes it read as if it were written by a single author.  Having written my own book and collaborated on several others, I know firsthand how difficult this is.  I have worked in R&D since I was 20 years old, and how I wished I had this text when I began to manage technology and innovation development years later.  The book would have saved me many hard knocks.  Well, that was then and this is now.  And despite thirty years of work in the field and having the privilege of leading global technology and innovation for a world class company, this work still taught me a few things.

The book is organized into 16 chapters subdivided into five parts.  Part 1, The Evolution of Technology, Markets, and Industry, contains two chapters: 1. Technology and Industry Evolution, and 2. The Evolution of Markets.  Part 2, The Development and Introduction of New Products, comprises three chapters: 3. Understanding Customer Needs, 4. Product Development as a Problem-Solving Process, and 5. Managing the 'Unmanageables' of Sustained Product Innovation.  Part 3, The Management and Organization of Innovation, also holds three chapters: 6. Rival Interpretations of Balancing Exploration and Exploitation, 7. R&D project Selection and Portfolio Management, and 8. Managing the Innovative Performance of Technical Professionals.  Part 4, Technology Strategy, contains four chapters: 9. The Economics of Strategy of Standards and Standardization, 10 Intellectual Property and Innovations, 11. Orchestrating Appropriability, and 12. Individual Collaborations, Strategic Alliances and Innovation.  Part 5, Who Innovates?, encompasses the last four chapters: 13. Technology-Based Entrepreneurship, 14. Knowledge Spillover..., 15. The Financing of Innovation, and 16. The Contribution of Public Entities to Innovation and Technological Change. 

The text is a very good introduction to the panoply of issues facing those who manage technology and innovation including very important areas such as how innovation diffuses in society (and how to influence that diffusion), how to develop robust products and discover unarticulated and unmet needs, how to manage the NPD portfolio and select among competing projects, marketing and technology strategy, and intellectual property protection.  It is the very best book I have ever read on the subject and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Blue Ocean Strategy: Book Review/J. Colannino

This book was initially written in 2005 and enjoyed success.  This is my first opportunity to read it.  Based on what I have observed, I think I will place a 5-year moratorium on reading any new book on management or business practice; it is much easier to separate the B.S. from the peanut butter that way.  Management has been around as long as societies have been around as a cursory reading of Genesis will attest.  Let us call management the world's second oldest profession, the first being, of course, agriculture.  (I hope you knew that.)  Since human nature does not appear to have changed, I think that management books should be read with particular suspicion, and in the case of this book, deservedly so.

The central them of the book is that one should create new markets (blue ocean) rather than slugging it out in existing markets (the red ocean).  But most of the book is tautology.  For example, Kim and Mauborgne argue that one should use a "strategy canvas" to assess the competitive landscape.  The strategy canvas is a central tool in Blue Ocean.  It comprises a categorical abscissa on which are listed subjective customer benefits and an ordinate that measures the degree of achievement for each category.  The authors can call this an analytic; I believe that it is too non-quantitative to be exceptionally useful.  But my main objection is that the categories themselves are nebulous, useless, or worse -- leading to an errant conclusion.   For example, let us revisit the circus. 

What categories should we place on the horizontal axis?  Well, before Cirque du Soleil existed, we may have placed items like ticket price, entertainment value, number of acts, quality of acts, act variety (animal, flying trapese, clown...), etc. on our strategy canvas.  Now scoring each of those, Ringling Bros. was the best game in town.  The only problem was that customers didn't care about most of the items.  The 3 different rings were distracting, the animals were smelly (or viewed as evidence of cruelty), the high priced performers were unknown to the average customer, etc.  The only reason most adults went to the circus was to take their children.  With that kind of strategy canvas, I would have been tempted to offer free school bus rides to kids as a major innovation.  Cirque du Soleil transformed the circus to an event for adults with no animals, a vague but central storyline, a theater-like experience, ethereal music, and beauty and artistry that celebrated human beings in motion.  When Kim and Mauborgne placed those items on the strategy canvas, then Cirque du Soleil became the clear winner.  But the analysis was done post hoc.  No one knew that such items should even be scored until the Cirque du Soleil strategy became successful.  Using an outcome to inform the question is question begging at its purest.

Another objection I have is that the categories are open to manipulation.  Anyone who thinks that they will be able to use a strategy canvas to convince a refractory management to change their ways will just find themselves in an argument over what belongs on the category axis.  In the end, the strongest proponents -- the very ones steering the ship into the nighttime ice -- will be the ones deciding what categories should be scored.  And surprise, the status quo will win and be more justified than ever in staying the course.

What I have learned over the years is that customer value is subjective and that innovation comes from visionaries (not the customer).  What one needs for success is for visionaries that know their markets and customers and are cogent and capable to persuade management to do the right thing.  And no book is going to create a persuasive visionary.  Visionaries are born, not made.  To paraphrase Robert Mitchum, one might as well go to school to learn how to be tall.  To find persuasive visionaries requires excellence in talent selection, because they need to come from the outside.  That fault lies with the refractory organization, not its internal visionaries.  Steve Jobs would have been fired from Apple long ago if he weren't their CEO.  In fact, he was fired even though he was their CEO.  But Apple wasn't worth anything without him.  Visionaries see the world a different way so it takes a superlative management team (or a desperate one) to embrace them.

Notwithstanding, the book finishes better than it starts with recommendations for how to navigate organizations to blue ocean in spite of themselves. To that end, Kim and Mauborgne have the following suggestions.  Overcome the cognitive hurdle by exposing upper management to the pain of the customer through direct engagement.  Mobilize a critical mass of resources by horsetrading with other leaders.  Find the critical mass of managers ("kingpins") who will ally with you, and enlist their support early.  Once you have enlisted support of key management, make measures visible to all ("fishbowl" management; I would call this aligning incentives.) As for executing the strategy, persuade downstream personnel using a "fair process" that openly engages employees, shows them why the new strategy is in their best interest, answers their questions, and resolves their fears.

These are contained in Chapters 7 and 8; and besides reading the Chapter 1 for context, these are the only chapters worth reading and the only reason I (barely) recommend the book.

Reinventing Corporate Growth, G. Slowinski; Reviewed by J. Colannino

Honestly, I was unprepared for how good this book is. I wish I had read it five years ago when it was first published, and I wish it were published 20 years ago. That would have been much easier than learning the hard way, from experience.

We all know that firms grow in two ways -- organically, and by merger and acquisition (M&A). But we are all wrong. Firms grow also by alliance -- what Slowinski calls transformational growth or t-growth. The concept is as simple as it is overlooked: firms at the margins of your industry would benefit enormously by linking with your firm; and your firm would fare even better, because breakthrough innovation comes at the margins where "disciplines collide."

The book is organized into ten chapters. Chapter 1, The Transformational Growth Imperative shows why an alliance strategy is essential for growth in modern firms. Chapter 2, "Identifying the Organization's 'Wants'", begins Part 1 of the book: the Want, Find, Get, Manage (WFGM) framework.

Part 1 is developed through several more chapters: Chapter 3, "Finding the Technology the Firm Wants"; Chapter 4, "Getting the Technology: The Alliance Framework"; and Chapter 5, "Managing the On-Going Relationship". Chapter 6, "Working with the Venture Capital Community", begins Part 2 of the book, and is devoted to analyzing and inspecting the venture capital community (VCC). The VCC and its proper relationship to your firm is fleshed out in three more chapters: Chapter 7, "Building a Venture Capital Capability"; Chapter 8, "Outlicensing and the Fundamentals of Intellectual Asset Value Creation"; and Chapter 9, "Becoming the Partner of Choice". A "Conclusion" follows in Chapter 10.

But why should you work with VCs? Because they are plugged into the market space in exactly the opposite way you are: they are the early adopter of a technology that is more valuable to you than to them; they, unlike your firm, are adept at finding breakthrough technology; they have breakthrough technology but, unlike your firm, need a channel; you, unlike their firm, have a channel but need more breakthrough technology; and, they want to cash out precisely at the point you want to buy in.

I have spent the last 20 years of my life assisting in M&A valuations, developing and safeguarding intellectual property, and structuring alliances and ventures. Through both positive and (unfortunately) negative experiences, I can personally validate much of the wisdom contained in Slowinski's book. As Slowinski's states, "The failure mode begins when individuals inside the partner firm do not agree inside the firm and do not know that they disagree. (195)" "Complex tasks such as coordinating resources across corporate boundaries, integrating different skill sets between firms and resolving cultural differences are formidable barriers. (197)" Formidable yes, insurmountable, no. And Slowinski's book sets about articulating valuable solutions. For one thing, not all the important parties have been allowed to weigh in on the agreement. For another, hidden disagreement has to be actively hunted and exposed BEFORE approaching an alliance partner. Yes, I can already hear the objection: "But if I did that, the agreement might collapse." Perhaps... but only if the agreement never made much sense to begin with from one or more important perspectives. And wouldn't it be better to find that out earlier rather than later, behind closed doors, before approaching an important partner or losing credibility externally?

And speaking of intellectual property, why shouldn't you license some of your technology to your competitors? Well, because they'll use that technology to compete against you. Yes, fair enough. But perhaps they already are, and you aren't looking carefully enough to find it. If violations exist, a licensing agreement should be pretty easy to negotiate. But why license? Well, maybe you shouldn't. But if you did, you could avoid an expensive and unpredictable lawsuit, you would obtain an ongoing transfer of wealth from their bottom line to yours, and your competitor would handicap its own R&D efforts. Why? Because, as Slowinski states "Technology licensed in = capability driven out" (183). Part of the loss comes from from cost-cutting to pay for the royalty. Part of the loss comes from demotivation and demoralization of your competitor's R&D group.

If this is a different style of thinking than you have been exposed to, then you would do well to read this book; and if you already know all this, please write another. As good as this book is (and I think it is stellar), a single book in this area is too few.

Expert Political Judgment (Philip E. Tetlock)/Book Review: J. Colannino

"Expert political judgment" -- it sounds like an oxymoron, but only because it is.  Philip E. Tetlock's groundbreaking research shows that experts are no better than the rest of us when it comes to political prognostication.  But then again, you probably had a sneaking hunch that that was so.  You need rely on hunches no more. Tetlock is Professor of Leadership at the Haas Management of Organizations Group, U.C. Berkeley.  A Yale graduate with his Ph.D. in Psychology, Expert Political Judgment is the result of his 20 year statistical study of nearly 300 impeccably credentialed political pundits responding to more than 80,000 questions in total.  The results are sobering.  In most cases political pundits did no better than dart throwing chimps in prediciting political futures.  Of course, Tetlock did not actually hire dart throwing chimps -- he simulated their responses with the statistical average.  If the computer was programmed to use more sophisticated statistical forecasting techniques (e.g., autoregressive distributed lag models), it beat the experts even more resoundingly. 

Were the experts better at anything?  Well, they were pretty good at making excuses.  Here are a few: 1. I made the right mistake.  2. I'm not right yet, but you'll see.  3. I was almost right.  4. Your scoring system is flawed.  5. Your questions aren't real world.  6. I never said that.  7. Things happen.  Of course, experts applied their excuses only when they got it wrong... er... I mean almost right... that is, about to be right, or right if you looked at it in the right way, or what would have been right if the question were asked properly, or right if you applied the right scoring system, or... well... that was a dumb question anyway, or.... 

Not only did experts get it wrong, but they were so wedded to their opinions that they failed to update their forecasts even in the face of building evidence to the contrary.  And then a curious thing happened -- after they got it wrong and exhausted all their excuses, they forgot they were wrong in the first place.  When Tetlock did follow-up questions at later dates, experts routinely misremembered their predictions. When the expert's models failed, they merely updated their models post hoc, giving them the comforting illusion that their expert judgment and simplified model of social behavior remained intact.  Compare this with another very complex system -- predicting the weather.  In this latter case, there is a very big difference in the predictive abilities of experts and lay persons. Meteorologists do not use over-simplified models like "red in the morning, sailor's warning."  They use complex modeling, statistical forecasting, computer simulations, etc.  When they are wrong, weathermen do not say, well, it almost rained; or, it just hasn't rained yet; or, it didn't rain, but predicting rain was the right mistake to make; or, there's something wrong with the rain guage; or, I didn't say it was going to rain; or, what kind of a question is that?

Political experts, unlike weathermen, live in an infinite variety of counterfactual worlds; or as Tetlock writes, "Counterfactual history becomes a convenient graveyard for burying embarrassing conditional forecasts."  That is: sure, given x, y, and z, the former Soviet Union collapsed; but if z had not occurred, the former Soviet Union would have remained intact.  Really?  Considering the expert got it wrong in the first place, how could they possibly know the outcome in a hypothetical counterfactual world?  At best, this is intellectual dishonesty.  At worst, it is fraud.

But some experts did better than others.  In particular, those who were less dogmatic and frequently updated their predictions in response to countervailing evidence (Tetlock's "foxes") did much better than the opposing camp (termed "hedgehogs").  The problem is that hedgehogs climb the ladder faster and have positions of greater prominence.  My Machiavellian take?  You might as well make dogmatic pronouncements because all the hedgehogs you work for aren't any better at predicting the future than you are -- they're just more sure of themselves.  So, work on your self-confidence.  It is apparently the only thing anyone pays any attention to.

The Black Swan by N. Taleb/Book Review: J. Colannino

A few weeks ago I heard Vinod Kholsa speak at the ARPA-E conference in Washington D.C. He recommended this book, written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT), so I read it. NNT is in some ways what I aspire to be -- a renaissance man. Three years my junior and born in Amioun, Lebanon he speaks fluent French, Arabic, and English. He has a reading knowledge of classical Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew. NNT received his MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the U of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the U of Paris, Dauphine, in Management Science. He reportedly made a personal fortune predicting the collapse of the financial markets and Fannie Mae. In fact, that prediction is in this book published in 2007, a year before the crisis. The Black Swan is Taleb's magnum opus -- at least so far.

Swans are white, by definition, until the first sighting of a black swan in Australia in 1697. The view was game changing and the definition of what a swan was had to be revised. By analogy, NNT defines black swans as rare, unanticipated, and game changing events; things like the laser, the Internet, and the personal computer.

Clearly an iconoclast, and I dare say angry man, NNT rails at the current state of academia and business, especially the statistical sciences as applied to economics and finance. He is angry because mistakes in finance and war destroy lives. One thing that NNT cannot brook is "epistemic arrogance" -- gasbags that bloviate about things that matter but that they only pretend or delude themselves into thinking that they understand. According to NNT, people become arrogant because arrogance grows faster than knowledge. Experts are the worst (most arrogant) and thus make suckers out of their clients/victims. If this language sounds extreme, you should read the book. I am toning it down. Taleb has to self-censor his own expletives with asterisks.

The Black Swan compares two hypothetical countries -- Mediocristan and Extremistan. In Mediocristan, all of the usual rules apply, including the normal distribution and derived statistics. In Extremistan, the bell curve is the "great intellectual fraud (GIF)." The problem, according to Taleb, is that we live in Extremistan, not Mediocristan. For example, market fluctuations of 20 standard deviations have arisen historically -- this is simply impossible in a world governed by the normal distribution. As a remedy for statistics based on the normal distribution, Taleb recommends Mandelbrot's fractal geometry; this does not give the precision of classical statistics, but it does give the best one can hope for in Extremistan -- a gray swan. A gray swan is a partially anticipated black swan. Black swans are hatched by nature, not created by man. The best one can do is maximize opportunities and conditions for hatching black swans.

Black Swans (game changing innovations) are accidents. They only seem predictable because of a post-hoc story that is irresistibly constructed to make sense out of the surprising. For example, there is no end of books about World War I and its cause. But consider this: if anyone really knew what caused World War I, it would have been prevented. One of the many things that really irritates NNT is that the experts who destructively lull the general public into believing financial markets are stable are never held accountable for the harm they do. That is, being perennially wrong has no consequence to their career.

I can draw many parallels in my own R&D career. Almost anything beyond incremental progress is serendipity. I agree with Taleb that the best one can do is to maximize opportunities for favorable outcomes. In my own experience this happened by moving incremental R&D to other groups, and maximizing the amount of breakthrough R&D we performed internally. In other words, I deliberately set about to maximize the opportunities for R&D by having more bites at the apple. The result was breakthrough research.

Part (or all) of NNT's pessimistic outlook seems to me to be conditioned by his worldview: that we are a chance result of grander forces. Hence, matters that count are random, unpredictable, and non-sensible; we merely invent post-hoc narratives as comfort food. Taleb is a pragmatist, and whether this is absolutely true or apparently true makes no difference to him. In everyday living, the end result and the proper actions to take are the same in both cases. Ironically, he seems to base his philosophy on this evolutionary paradigm, itself the ultimate example of the post-hoc narrative fallacy that he decries. While I don't share his worldview, I do think that he rightly shows that extreme events do not operate in a business-as-usual environment and that there is much money to be made by properly recognizing this difference.

The Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 1

This is a profound and remarkably boring/pedantic work (as are most original philosophical tomes). Despite that, Aristotle still has relevance today and has influenced science, philosophy, and knowledge management (long before the latter was even a discipline). I have purchased both volumes of this work and am slogging through the first. I hope to be finished with the first 1200 pages in a couple of weeks and if I have the stomach I will crack open Volume 2.

I have long wanted to read Aristotle. Although I read ancient Greek, Aristotle is simply over my head, so I am hoping this English translation will get me through it all.... Oh, how I wish someone had written "The Portable Aristotle." But there is this.  Too bad I already purchased seven pounds of Aristotle. (Yes, I weighed them.)

******20 Feb 2010******
I have now completed Volume 1, and I must say, I am flabbergasted. Contrary to university lore, everything I was taught about Aristotle was wrong. First, Aristotle's method was not purely deductive; he also made regular use of observation and induction. Not only did Aristotle make copious use of observation in many of his works (especially "History of Animals"), he was an astute observer. However, and at the risk of being classed as an iconoclast, nearly every conclusion Aristotle draws is abject nonsense. No doubt, he retarded science by millennia with his reliance on the four elements (earth, water, fire, and air) and their affectations (dry/moist, light/heavy, hot/cold) to explain all phenomena. When commenting on anything that was not directly observable he was wrong in virtually every conclusion he drew. A few examples from biology will make my point.

"Smooth chinned men are less inclined to baldness.... When men are afflicted with varicose veins they are less inclined to take on baldness; and if they be bald when they become thus afflicted, some get their hair again (p 823)."

"[W]e should reasonably expect baldness to come about this age upon those who have much semen.... [T]he front part goes bald because the brain is there, and man is the only animal to go bald because his brain is much the largest and the moistest. Women do not go bald because their nature is like that of children, both alike being incapable of producing seminal secretion. (p 1211)"

"Men go grey on the temples first, because the back of the head is empty of moisture owing to its containing no brain... (p 1212)"

"[H]air protected by hats or other coverings goes grey sooner (for the winds prevent decay and the protection keeps off the winds)... (p 1213)"

Or regarding menstruation...

"In most cases the menstrual discharge recurs for some time after conception has taken place, its duration being mostly thirty days in the case of a female and about forty days in the case of a male child.... After conception, and when the above-mentioned days are past, the discharge no longer takes its natural course but finds its way to the breasts and turns to milk. (p 913,914)"

Or again...

"Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine.... Those that have more teeth are longer lived as a rule; those with fewer teeth more thinly set are shorter-lived as a rule. (p 797)"

Nor are Aristotle's faux pas confined to natural science. He is dead wrong about cosmology, astrology, meteorology, and virtually every subject he considers. Aristotle reaches false and absurd conclusions so regularly and with such conviction that he should have classed arrogance as his fifth element. More surprisingly, he commits logical fallacies with near perfect regularity.

Still, I must recommend this volume because to read the author is his own words is absolutely eye-opening. I will never again look at Aristotle in the same way. His philosophy is deeply suspect and like Santa Claus there seems to be a large-scale conspiracy to keep his myth alive.

Well now... on to Volume 2." 

Syntactic Structures (Chomsky)/ Book Review -- J. Colannino

Syntax relates to the ordering of words; grammar goes deeper, examining relationships among sentence parts and making a normative pronouncement; semantics deals with meaning: Chomsky showed that it was possible to divorce grammar from semantics to the benefit of linguistics.  He did this with a variety of examples, none more famous than "colorless green ideas sleep furiously." The sentence is clearly syntactical and grammatical but lacks any real meaning (Chomsky, 15).  Contrastingly, I might add that a sentence such as "me wants on swing to play" (Hanegraaff, Apocalypse Code, 71) has meaning but is ungrammatical.  Nowadays, this seems obvious, but it was "Syntactic Structures" that made this distinction plain.  This seminal text was published during my birth year and I have always wanted to read it, but for a variety of reasons have not done so until now.
My research  is actually interested in the opposite problem -- constructing semantics from structure for the purpose of semantic searching. For example "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe (Carroll, Jaberwocky)" is of course meaningless, yet the grammar still provides semantic clues.  For example, it is clear that "brillig," "wabe," and "toves" are nouns, "gyre" and "gimble" are verbs, and "slithy" is an adjective, though they are words without meaning.   

I suppose the obvious question now is "So what?".  Well, divorcing grammar from semantics was actually a big deal -- one that lead to a great deal of progress in linguistics and grammar, and one that remains the dominant linguistic position of the day.  Chomsky showed that grammars could be vastly simplified if they were reduced to a tripartite construction comprising 1. a phrase structure -- e.g., noun phrase-verb phrase [the man] [hit the ball], 2. transformational rules -- e.g., a rule to turn a statement into a question [Did] [the man] [hit the ball], and 3. morphophonemic transformations -- e.g., things like rules for changing tense -- [the man] [will] [hit the ball].  This allowed for grammars to be simplified and divorced from thorny questions about meaning.  That is not to say that structure and meaning are divorced.  Language is primarily about meaning; grammar functions as an aid.  And as Pinker has shown (see my reviews) structure provides cues to meaning even at very elemental levels.  But the converse -- that grammar requires semantics -- is what Chomsky demonstrated to be false, and I suppose the fact that the same meaning can be shared in languages with very different grammars is one proof of this.

I am nonetheless reluctant to recommend this book: those who are linguists will have already read it and those who are not will be uninterested.  And, I think there are more modern works on grammar which are better suited for instruction.  Notwithstanding, it remains a remarkable work, and at only 118 pages something of a marvel besides.

Makers and Takers (book review/J. Colannino)

Communication is the giant part of knowledge management. Without communication, there is no corporate knowledge, no learning organization, and ultimately, no organization at all. Amazingly, those who ought to know better engage in actions that are destructive to both the organization and one's self. What actions am I referring to? The inability to disagree agreeably. Creative tension is vital, but one cannot cross the line to ad hominem attack. Ideas should be critiqued, not people. Yet, there is a huge ideological polarization today between neoconservatives and modern liberals that I have observed to shut down communication. When ideology trumps facts, we have a problem. Here is what I mean.

Compared to modern political liberals, it is apparent that conservatives are more selfish, greedier, lazier, less emotionally satisfied, and more politically ignorant; this is echoed in television news media and programming: in 2003, McIntosh et al examined 124 political characters in 47 popular films spanning five decades -- they found that liberal characters were portrayed as smarter, friendlier, prettier, and more noble. However, as Peter Schweizer shows, a dispassionate examination of actual scientific evidence shows exactly the opposite and by a wide margin. That is, conservatives are far more generous and give much more to charities for the needy. Additionally, conservatives work harder, are emotionally better-adjusted, and are much better informed regarding the political issues and general knowledge. But how would one REALLY know? Actually, liberals and conservatives say so themselves in extensive scientific survey data.

Well, perhaps liberals are just being more honest and self-critical. No. As a statistician myself, this is something I know a bit about. For example, we can check for consistency by rephrasing questions and interspersing them throughout the survey; we can make truth telling more palatable by keeping responses anonymous; and we can ask questions designed to ferret out duplicity (such as asking for strength of agreement to statements such as "I have never told a lie" -- which oddly enough is answered "false" if you are true and "true" if you are false). Finally, we can separate the wheat from the chaff using various statistical tests. In these ways, scientific survey methodology is a dependable and mature discipline.

Schweizer examines seven main areas in as many chapters: 1. The Mighty Me (selfishness); 2. Think Globally, Sit on Your Butt Locally (generosity); 3. Liberal$ and Money (envy and sloth); 4. The Whole Truth and Nothing But (honesty); 5. Anger Management (emotional disposition); 6. Mind Wars (knowledge); and, 7. Whine Country (complaint). The 258 page book also has an introduction, conclusion, notes, and an index. In all of these major categories liberals flunk resoundingly compared to conservatives.

As examples, consider the following. Should you always help a friend in need -- conservatives, 95% Y; progressives 79% Y. Did you do volunteer work last year -- conservatives, 44% Y; liberals 39% Y. Do you aspire to be rich -- liberals, 61% Y; conservatives, 51% Y. People can get ahead by working hard -- conservatives, 75% Y; liberals 14% Y. It is morally wrong to cheat on your taxes -- conservatives, 86% Y; liberals, 68% Y. I have been angry with someone in the last five days -- liberal, 27% Y; conservative, 14%. Knowledge: e.g., Is Al Gore Jewish (he is not); liberals 12% Y; conservatives, 1% Y (similar trends hold for general education and economic knowledge). Spiritual beliefs: I believe in ghosts -- liberals, 42% Y; conservatives, 25% Y; we can communicate with the dead -- liberals, 43% Y; conservatives, 29% Y; God is important in my life -- conservatives, 70% Y; liberals, 40% Y. Outlook: Life is exciting -- conservatives, 54% Y, liberals, 43% Y; I am very happy -- conservatives, 45% Y, liberals, 30% Y; I love my job -- conservatives, 53% Y; liberals, 41% Y.

Well, that is all very interesting, but the question remains, Why? Schweizer answers that liberals are essentially self-absorbed. They are all about feeling. Objective reality is secondary. "Caring" for the needy is good enough -- no need to actually help the needy. Whining about injustice is good enough, no need to actually do something about injustice. Subjective "knowing" is sufficient, no need to objectively check facts. God becomes "God to me..." truth becomes "truth to me..." reality becomes "reality to me..."

By now, the reader may be conjuring all sorts of anecdotal evidence that leads in the opposite direction. Let me help. Paul Newman was unabashedly liberal and very generous in his charitable giving. In fact, his foundation continues to give to the needy and disadvantaged, even after his death (over $250 million, cumulative to date). During his lifetime, he made no show of his charity; in contrast to his very public performances, here he practiced a quiet humility . He was clearly an intelligent man. Moreover, his profession, acting, is one that requires keen intelligence to do well because one must assume the role of the other, as sociologists say. Indeed, one can think of many actors and entertainers who are clearly liberal in their thinking and above average intelligence. In fact, there are lots of things that are true on average and false in particular.

Notwithstanding, ON AVERAGE, conservatives embrace many more of the qualities that we all adore. If conservatives are smarter and kinder in aggregate, it is obviously impossible that media characterizations (themselves, generalizations) of the boorish conservative ignoramus can be true -- it seems sad that one must resort to scientific data to make such a case. That is why liberals and conservatives alike should read this book.

Book Review: Orbiting the Giant Hairball/J. Colannino

Gordon MacKenzie is an artist turned manager who worked at Hallmark for thirty years. His book gives an insider's look at how creativity can be nurtured and expressed even in the confines of corporate structure. As someone who has successfully been fighting this battle for more than 20 years, I like what Gordon has to say. According to MacKenzie...

The giant hairball is the corporate system of rules and regulations. A hairball starts when two hairs get together, then three, then, one-day, a hairball. But hairballs aren't all bad. There's safety in the hairball. It can be a nurturing place where structure provides guidance and order for necessary corporate functions. But then there's creativity -- that most unstructured and vital part of sustaining an organization. What to do about that? One could go rogue, upset the applecart, make a big mess, and ultimately cheese enough people off to doom your correctives to failure; or... YOU CAN ORBIT THE HAIRBALL!

Orbiting the hairball is the process of finding a creative way to do the necessary things required for you and your company to succeed. The hairball has lots of entanglements and cannot be furiously fought. What should be fought, however, are the unintended consequences of generally good rules and regulations. Here, one must learn how to find a way to do the right thing in a way that can be understood by those in the hairball.

Here are two instructive quotes:

"...the Anal Retentives, as Trustees of the Hairball, are loath to commit resources or genuine moral support to the amorphous concept of creativity. They lust for the fruits of creativity (especially when they see the very measurable results of a successful competitor's creative efforts) but mistrust the act of creativity, which remains invisible and elusive." p 197

"...your challenge is to help that bureaucrat discover a means, harmonious with the system, to meet your need." p 139

[italics, punctuation and capitalization in original]

For example, MacKenzie tells the story of a creative environment he structured. He had to break down some barriers to use things other than the common cubicle and drab office fare -- and he did. However, one sticking point was the waste basket -- MacKenzie had bought many milk cans to function as waste receptacles. But he was now having a conflict because milk cans were not on the list of approved furniture. Standing in front of the bureaucrat, he was about to go ballistic. Just then his co-worker asked if the milk cans could be classified as corporate art. Satisfied, the bureaucrat went happily on her way. What happened?

It turns out that most bureaucrats are not evil demons -- they are custodians of the corporation performing an important fiduciary duty. It's not personal, it is their job. You can entangle yourself in the hairball (and lose or create so much ill will your victory will be hollow) or you can choose to orbit the hairball, using some of your creativity to help everyone get what they need -- fiduciary discipline and creative production.

If you are frustrated with an organization that says they reward creativity but whose policies retard it (and that's all of them to a greater or lesser extent), you should read this book. You'll take a few points off your blood pressure and find out that, in the end, nearly everyone wants to do the right thing.

The Balanced Scorecard

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Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard has become something of an icon in the business literature. Originally published in 1996 it has seen many reprintings. The fact that the title is still available is a major testament to the quality of the work. The basic thesis of the book is this: metrics for Financial, Customer, and Internal Business Processes, along with metrics for Learning and Growth are all vital to corporate growth and must be considered in tandem. If we wish to score financial health through some metric -- say return on net assets employed (RONAE) -- we should not do so by shipping shoddy products early. In other words, there is a right way and a wrong way to achieve financial metrics. The wrong way increases a financial metric at the expense of another dimension of corporate health. Only by scoring all metrics simultaneously, can we get a true picture of the enterprise. I remember the main four metric areas with the acronym FACILE (Financial And Customer, Internal business process, LEarning and growth). Well, it works for me.

Because actual measures are always lagging indicators, we need to construct some hypothesized model using leading inputs for each of the four balanced scorecard dimensions. For example, in the Customer dimension we can measure customer satisfaction by means of a survey. However, we won't be able to get that result until sometime after the sale and we can't understand from that metric why a customer chose not to use our product or service in the first place. Therefore, customer satisfaction is a lagging indicator. One leading indicator might be the waiting time for the customer to talk to a sales representative or cycle time to respond to a customer inquiry. Tacit in this leading indicator is an assumption that faster service means higher customer satisfaction. However, if orders are filled quickly but inaccurately, faster service will ultimately achieve nothing. So, we add order fulfillment accuracy to our metrics. We proceed in this fashion so as to add a mix of leading (input) and lagging (output) metrics. But even this is not enough.

We can make all our customers very satisfied by efficiently delivering product below cost. But profit will suffer horrendously. So, we must consider financial metrics in tandem with customer metrics; that is, we must balance the scorecard. Kaplan and Norton contend (and I agree) that balancing scores across all four dimensions is needed to maintain a profitable company -- one that is growing to satisfy customer needs (and add value to society, by my way of thinking).

But what if our model is wrong? What if we choose the wrong leading indicators? Because we are not omniscient (or even prescient in many cases) we must continually validate our model by seeing if inputs are actually correlating with outputs; and in the case that they correlate, we must assure that they cause. There is a whole science of statistical model building and validation (something I have studied and practice extensively) that can help here, but organizations can puzzle this out if they actually take the time to look at the data. While we're here, I should say that the authors do not use the terms model or validation though they do describe the concepts in different words. I suppose my process control experience is showing here; but we do have a process -- the process of making money by providing value to society -- and we are trying to control it. The validation step fine-tunes the process. Here, and in other writings, Kaplan refers to this concept of continual fine tuning as double-loop learning. The first loop is the proposed input-output model and the second loop is the man-in-the-loop learning activity which reconfigures the model to match reality. Reality includes changing social conditions, new features of the competitive landscape, etc.

If we have arrived at this point, all should be well, presuming that the model is explicit and coded appropriately into balanced scorecard (BSc) metrics; this cannot be taken for granted. Kaplan and Norton are very explicit here: the BSc must be driven from the top down (CEO level) because success requires enterprise-wide buy-in. And this process is a continual one. The authors devote several chapters and an appendix to actually doing this.

In sum, and considering the many management books I have read, this is clearly the best practical guide for management toward achieving sustained profit in the marketplace. It is consistent with the proper role of profit in society and the value-added nature of capitalistic enterprise. I strongly recommend the work -- even after more than a decade, the book continues to deliver.

Ten Steps to a Learning Organizaiton/ Steps 6-10 Summary/J. Colannino

In 2007 I wrote a summary of Kline and Saunders "Ten Steps to a Learning Organization," Steps 2-5. In the meantime, I had already submitted my Master's Thesis and graduated with and M.S. in Knowledge Management. However, recently Tori left a comment and asked if I would complete the series. Well, then... okay.

I have always said that the glory is not in the dreaming but in the doing. The dreaming is necessary, of course, but not sufficient. Steps 6 - 10 are about the doing. The authors begin:

"Imagine an organization in which everyone from top to bottom is either actually or potentially learning for the improvement of the organization.... Just in Time learning has become standard." "Who wouldn't want a learning organization? The answer is: all of us. [O]ne way or another we all tend to undermine the prospects for a Learning Organization."

With that surprising revelation, Kline and Saunders go on to argue that our misapprehension of learning as a scarce commodity is the root problem that keeps us from enabling the learning organization. Learning is not a scarce commodity. People are capable of unlimited learning, and talent is a resource in everyone. "We could learn all the time, if we were not prevented by one [of three] barriers[:]"

1. the logical barrier -- missing explanations derail our understanding or else we fail to see the relevance of new information and we quit trying to understand.
2. the ethical barrier -- if one feels an "important principle" is being violated, one's ability to learn is compromised.
3. the feeling barrier -- we fail to learn because we fear our new knowledge
   

At least, that's what the author's assert, albeit without any supporting evidence. I must say, I disagree. First of all, people do not have an infinite capacity to learn -- for one thing, our life spans are finite, for another we do not learn and grow without error. Moreover, the "barriers" to learning are really just tautologies. Being prevented from learning is the same thing as not learning. Being enabled to learn is the same thing as learning -- at least if Kline and Saunders were consistent -- because the only thing they believe prevents us from learning are barriers to learning. This is just circular reasoning.

Notwithstanding, while I do not agree with the authors in absolute, I do think they are on to something. Learning capacity may not be infinite, but it is much larger than many give it credit for. And there is great joy in learning for many, if not all. Learning is empowering. So things like workplace training, tuition reimbursement, encouraging and rewarding personal mastery, etc. can be effective -- or not. If the focus is training, the program is likely to be ineffective. If the focus is learning then results are much better. That is, the outcome, not the process, is the important thing. Because people are different, one size does not fit all.

The theory of multiple intelligences states that there are different varieties of intelligence and they vary with each person. The seven major groups are

1. Linguistic: sensitivity to meaning and syntax
2. Logical/Mathematical: fluency with symbolics and logic
3. Visual/Spatial: perception in 3D
4. Kinesthetic: preference for hands on learning
5. Musical: recognition of rhythm, melody, and harmony
6. Interpersonal: ability to sympathize, empathize, and communicate
7. Intrapersonal: ability to reflect and contemplate

Kline and Saunders then go on to describe a learning leader model where empathetic and cross-disciplined trainers are taught and then go on to share their knowledge in team environments. This is perhaps a bit formulaic, but overall, not a bad approach to leverage and disseminate learning.

Step 7 is to "map out the vision." That is, the big picture must be articulated, genuinely believed, and shared by the bulk of the organization including top management: they must walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Although incentives should be aligned, when push comes to shove, self-interest that is not aligned with organizational goals is likened to "organizational cancer" -- a part of the organization growing or operating uncontrollably at the expense of the whole. The cancer must be cured or removed.

Step 8 is "bring the vision to life." In particular, the organization must communicate in a way most can understand. The most neglected intelligence according to the chapter is kinesthetic. Many people learn by doing by physical involvement with the work. This is contrasted with traditional "book learning." Book learning has its place and is important, but should not be overemphasized to the point of impeding the growth of knowledge within a large section of the workforce.

Step 9 is "connect the systems." Here Kline and Saunders talk about techniques such as "mind mapping" and "kinesthetic modeling." But the basic idea is to get people to see the organization as a whole and understand how their learning and actions integrate with other parts of the body. This understanding will allow informal but powerful links to supplement and improve the dissemination of knowledge throughout the organization.

Step 10 is "get the show on the road." This, ultimately, is the act of getting on with things. No plan is ever perfect, and an organization must take its first steps despite that fact. In Step 10 Kline and Saunders describe activities that can help, such as a shared metaphor. Their preference is a dramatic metaphor whereby the employees (actors) all understand their roles and the importance of perfecting their craft. Managers are really directors, taking individual talents and focusing them in a harmonious way. Everyone understands that the show must go on.