Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 73, Reply A, by Tom Davenport, Bob Hamilton, Marlin Whitmer, Mark Levy, and Alan Falk
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 11:51:06 -0700
Joe, It was Yogi Berra - "You can see a lot by just looking," is how I've heard it.
Tom Davenport (University of Texas)
It was Yogi, and what he said was "You can observe a lot by watching." Regards,
--Bob Hamilton ham@rahul.net (408) 730-0754
I'll keep this short. Thanks for letting Mike Whitmer share your reflections with his father, a retired hospital chaplain who did pastoral care by being with (PCBBW). The word "observe" and "observant" means in Latin --- "to serve/toward serving" and "toward servanthood." I'll look for the Harvard Business Review article on "Taking a Tour." I tour with all my senses, especially my ears and well as my eyes. In the medical world I think they call it "gross observations."
God asked Jeremiah twice in a dialogical exchange a Columbo question, "What do you see?" Jeremiah had to look twice to really see.
A principle of organizational learning, "keep the learning close to the practice." I would say that enhances mutual learning.
I found a whole different way of focusing on listening from seeing and observing and hearing. We call it "The Art of Story Metaphor Listening."
Your article was full of metaphors, "Benchmarks", etc. Each making its own contribution.
Thanks again. Keep Story Listening ALIVE. The story provides for continual learning --- a way of sustaining learning. Doesn't HP like the word "sustainable."
Marlin Whitmer outreach@netins.net
Joe, interesting read. One thing you said but didn't say was why. Walking around and asking how it works (and doesn't) may or may not make you an expert on the process that you're visiting...but if you listen and observe closely, it can provide insight into a completely different area. Often, the learning applies to an strikingly different experience; a totally cross cultural one...if you like to look for linkages.
Sometimes its not a process learning but an experiential leaning. One that you can tell a story about that illustrates a point you want to make in your next speech or conversation. We tend to operate within a consistent set of boundaries in which it is difficult to have new learning experiences. Touring, asking and looking opens a new world of experiences from which to learn...and subsequently teach.
Regards,
Mark Levi VP of Marketing & Communications National Semiconductor
About six years ago, I asked one of my friends who worked in the nascent HP PC organization why I was having so much trouble figuring out how to add a 500MB disk drive to my home PC. HP wouldn't sell me the mounting brackets in less than quantity 10, and the machine needed its BIOS chip replaced in order to "see the new disk".
"Why the heck do you need so much disk space, anyway," he answered. "Delete some files! 250MB should be plenty!" Today, as I type this, my work PC is spinning a 2GB disk, and it's half full. A recent scan by Norton's Virus-scanner toted up over 19,500 files on my disk. And it's half full. New high-end PCs are available with 3 and 4GB disks.
I've been accruing money in my personal bank account out of each paycheck to buy new PCs for home. HP tells me that the kind of PC they sell for home use, the Pavilion, doesn't run NT. I have NT on the machine in front of me, so it scares me that I'll have a machine at home that won't exchange files with the machine at work. What's confusing to me is that several of HP's competitors seem willing to sell me a high-end home machine that can run NT.
Is this a similar case of small-disk thinking?
People in the building I work in take trays and dishes and silverware back to their desks with their lunches, then drop them off in the "convenience rooms" where the coffee machines are.
The Cafeteria occasionally has to send out "search-and-rescue" teams to bring those artifacts back, or else they'll flat-out run out of them! On the other hand, the Site Maintenance crew tours the building nightly, cleaning out dustbins, etc., but they can't pick up the trays and take them back to the Cafeteria. Don't ask why not. Not even a "not my job, mon!" issue.... more like "we don't know what to do with the trays if we pick them up", or something like that. This is rocket science? You pick them up, you take them to a cafeteria; if you take too many of them to one cafeteria, they send some to the other cafeteria if there's an inventory imbalance. Rocket science.
While recycling is pretty popular in our state, there are some folks in this same building who don't seem to understand that the WRAPPER that the Xerox paper COMES IN might be recyclable, so they toss it in the garbage can next to the recycling bin. Lazy? I don't know why. I sometimes rescue the recyclable, leaving it on top of the "Mixed Paper" bin, so they might notice the connection. Let a week go by and there's more wrappers in the garbage can. Low IQ? I still don't know.
I had a neat go-round with the Facilities people about a month ago. There are floor-plan maps of Building 46 on the walls in that building. One of them even had a small ceiling-mounted spotlight shining on it.
Then, one day, I noticed that the spotlight was pointed straight down, lighting a small patch of the carpeted hallway. Someone had gone out of their way to move the light from the map to a "straight-down" position. Effort: yes. Cost: sure. Benefit: negative.
A week or so later, the spotlight was replaced by a floodlight, so the light now was diffused across the span of the hall. The map was now even harder to read for these tired old eyes than it had been, with the spotlight illuminating the floor nearby. Really getting good, now.....
I described the situation to a Facilities Manager. He saw the humor in it, and put it on his todo list. Last count: no change.
re: blinking lights..... Well, is there a reason why the Maintenance folks who ply the aisles and restrooms every day and night can't make note of and log the lights that need replacing? Too hard a process to implement? Just like the trays and silverware?
Restaurants: tipping: Did you ever ask your "waitron" [gender-neutral P.C. version of waiter/waitress] whether their tips were shared or not? If they were shared, did you tip a little less for REALLY good service than you might have otherwise, since the waitron who delivered REALLY good service would not receive as big a "thank you" from your tip as you wanted them to get, and some bozo who couldn't serve their way out of a wet paper bag might get a bigger tip than they deserved.....?
How are people measured and motivated? A few years back there was a scandal at Sears, where the Automotive folks were accused of doing unnecessary work on cars and charging the customers. The San Jose Mercury had an expose on it, and some activist group suggested a State Agency be formed to regulate and oversee these problems.
I wrote a letter to the Mercury-News asking why we needed another level of bureaucracy in our state, when a more effective solution might be for someone at Sears who had their head screwed on frontwards to just change the metrics: reward the Auto Service people for Customer Satisfaction and not Quantity. About a week or two later, the Merc had a quote from the Prexy of Sears, saying that they were going to change the metrics and reward systems for the Automotive Departments, moving to a Quality, not Quantity-based measure of "success."
You're welcome, Sears. Rocket Science, again.
On my tiny little commute from home to work, there's one set of lights that are timed so poorly that cars can line up all the way back to the busy intersection behind them. Another team of folks go out and ticket drivers for running red lights. Major technological items bear down on drivers who run red lights. Maybe the folks that set the timing of the lights could acknowledge that they've failed in their jobs of helping cars move safely and swiftly down the highways and byways, and that, acknowledging this, drivers have taken it into their own hands to ignore poorly-set lights by ignoring them? I don't condone it. I would personally arrest any red-light-runner on the spot if I had the authority. Personally, I log their license numbers and list them on my personal website (non-HP). Get your name in print..... cheap. These people are endangering ME. Who? The red-light runners? Yes, but the real culprits are the folks who set the lights in the first place. Rocket Science. Why not hire the local Junior College Math Class and have them computer-model the city. No, there's a "better way." Right.
ps., re: restaurants: I wonder what the repeat-client business is at the Red Lobster chain.... Every year or three, my wife and I, enticed by the TV ads, try them again. Every time, the reality is nowhere near as attractive, generous or tasty as the ads imply. Does the ad agency (or the company pres) ever sneak into one of the shops and eat there????
Cheers, Joe! Neat Jotting.
Alan Falk HP Cupertino