Joe Costa of MSC Software Corporation Completes #3 of a Series on Wireframe and Surface Analysis Techniques
Projects, Teams, and Knowledge
Joel Orr, Cyon Research Corporation
Excerpts from “Managing by Respect: The Dandelion Principle,” by Joel Orr (www.managingbyrespect.com).
Until knowledge capture and management are fully automated—and that is not likely to happen soon—we had best learn to properly manage the main repositories of knowledge in organizations: Individuals and teams.
Individuals in a project world
Individuals and their unique contributions are the organization's greatest assets. The challenge before every organization is how to create a framework that is synergistic - one in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts - while encouraging, or at least allowing, innovation to continue.
The value of the team structure is that it reduces this problem to a local issue, involving relatively few people. Strong families have strong individuals. In healthy families, the culture nourishes and supports diversity; in dysfunctional families, strong individuals can become autocratic and repressive.
Having a diversity of projects on an ongoing basis is what allows a wide variety of people to make their contributions, and “find themselves.” So in a project world, individuals are the operative units. They determine the success or failure of the projects, as well as the longevity of the “field” of projects.
Individuals: An organization's greatest asset
Creativity is a human quality, not an organizational one; likewise innovation. The source of creativity and innovation operates through individuals.
An innovative organization is one that has innovative people working in it, and in which the organizational structure facilitates each individual's exercise of creativity, and rewards their pursuit of innovation.
That's a primary business reason for nurturing individuals; without them, the organization is a dead thing. In most organizations, people are also the repository of knowledge. Few are the organizations whose processes and products are so well documented that individuals are not required to be the knowledge-bearers of the organization's common practices.
But in this role, they can be - and ultimately will be - replaced by computer systems. The role in which computers will probably never completely supplant people is that of creator.
Tom Peters : “In the new economy, all work is project work.”
Building, manufacturing, selling, buying, planning—whatever you do in the New Economy must be measured; must give an account of itself. Peters was saying that there is no more room for make-work, for purposeless activities. All work is project work now.
In Measuring and Sustaining the New Economy , the editors (Dale W. Jorgenson and Charles W. Wessner) identify increases in U.S. productivity that seemed to correlate with Moore 's Law. From 1996 to 2000, labor productivity grew at an annual rate of 2.5% per year.
“Although a macroeconomic phenomenon, the processes underlying the New Economy appear to combine elements of technological innovation, structural change, and public policy”—including “a reconfiguration of knowledge networks and new patterns of business activity made possible by innovations in information technology.”
At the same time, the report also notes: “Not all economists, however, are ready to proclaim a technologically driven New Economy, if only because they have been unable to discern a measurable economy-wide benefit from the substantial investments that U.S. business has made in the these new technologies.” See, for example, Paul Strassman's The Squandered Computer.
So what Peters probably meant was that, in a world in which IT renders all things transparent, organizations will realize they cannot afford to pay for activities that do not have a clear purpose, and clear limits.
This adds impetus to organizations and individuals who are instinctively Dandelions - and should help Dandelion Dynamos to step out in the courage of their convictions, and start treating people with respect.
The project team and the family
Parents raise children, helping them mature. At least, that's what they used to do. These days, parenting has largely deteriorated into a caretaker role, where parents believe their job is simply to keep the kids alive till they can go out into the world on their own.
 But the world's literature is full of examples of proper parenting that are remarkably culture-independent. A fundamental purpose of parenting is to help children learn to live above their feelings. Not to suppress feelings, but to acknowledge them, while not allowing their behavior to be dictated by them.
“Self-control” is what this used to be called. That phrase today is generally interpreted as a terrible form of psychological warping. Nevertheless, without teaching a child to live above his or her feelings—exercising self-control in order to be able to choose their behavior rather than have it dictated to them by how they feel—you get a phenomenon that has acquired a name since it became so prevalent: The “terrible two's .”
At around two years of age, the child discovers the word “no,” and proceeds to test its limits. Since parents are now subject to their children, and do not know they should teach them self-control, let alone how to do it, the whole family must ride out the storms of whim and the winds of emotion to which the two-year-old is subject.
So it is with some trepidation that I reiterate: The Dandelion Principle is the “family plan.” It is the recognition that people have built-in ways to work in groups, given to them because they must live in families to prosper as humans.
The source of my trepidation is that so many families today are so wildly dysfunctional that few people have had good models for what family life can be like. But when they see it demonstrated—even unwittingly, as in films and television dramas—they recognize it and yearn for it. It's interesting to watch “the making of” sections of good films, and see the people - the team - fumble for words to express their experience.
The very people who created characters with precisely the qualities that good families encourage in their members—loyalty and courage and patience and forgiveness—talk about the experience of being part of the film, and they don't really have words for the caring and bonding and toleration of differences, the love, that manifested during the making of the film, and that were demonstrated in the lives of the film's characters.
Everyone recognizes it, but most people don't know how to make it happen. Even many film companies are rent with dissention as people engage in personal and interpersonal behaviors they learned in dysfunctional families. The difference between the film teams is that on one team, someone instinctively knew how to create a Dandelion, with personal respect of each for all at the top of the “this is how we'll behave and handle stress here” list; and on the other team, nobody took that position.
Project teams—indeed, all organizations—tend to behave like families, just because that is what people do when they get together. We are “programmed” for it, on deep levels. Yet, if the team members don't know what good family behavior is, how can they exercise it? How do they know what to require of themselves and others?
To get the most benefit from the Dandelion Principle, we need to understand what properly functioning families are like. The founders of a marriage “project ” become, if all goes well, parents. As people are added to their project, new understandings and behaviors are learned, but unconditional acceptance - love - is the basis for all behaviors and decisions.
The “founders” of a project , usually its manager or managers, are positionally the “parents”- the authority figures, teachers, mentors, coaches. As people are added to the project, they recapitulate the physical and emotional growth of a family as children are born or adopted into it.
Children mature and take on more and more responsibility in the family. Team members do the same within the project team, usually over less time than it takes to raise kids.
Knowledge management in today's organizations is more about proper structuring and leadership of project teams than it is about specialized KM software. We need both. While the software is a long way from being truly useful, it's improving; but it can only function in a well-designed structure.
About the Author
Dr. Joel Orr (www.joelorr.com) is VP and Chief Visionary of Cyon Research Corporation (www.cyonresearch.com).
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