Mike Lehr's Blog

Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway and holder of 440 patents worldwide, says in the June 12th issue of The Economist, “Technology is easy to develop. Developing a new attitude, moving the culture from one mental model to another, that’s the difficult part . . .” From the rifle, to the machine gun, to the tank, to the aircraft carrier, military history supports Kamen;  people might employ new technology but they still fight using old strategies and tactics.

In the workplace, we often see technology just supporting old processes rather than creating new ones. For instance, people continued to keep extensive paper files long after word processing and desktop storage improved. Thus, while people used the technology, they did so with an old mindset that made computers glorified typewriters just as they made the rifle and machine gun just other guns rather than the transformative agents of new tactics.

Compounding the integration of technology is the old mindset that doesn’t demand highly developed soft skills of IT, Process Management and Organizational Development people. Very few receive experience and training in areas such as selling, active listening and relationship building. It’s not uncommon to hear employees say, “So now, IT is telling me what my job is?” Much of this is because the IT person didn’t do the necessary advance work in relationship building.

If we truly have “internal customers,” shouldn’t we apply the same sales and service protocols that we use with external ones? This is why soft skills and intuitive adeptness are critical to capturing the potential of new technologies in the form of new processes.

While helping a non-profit, a board member said, “We can only deal with a problem if we know there is one.” Here the state knowledge assumes alters our perspective. In this case, it causes us to ignore the idea of prevention, dealing with problems before they arise. In reality, problems don’t care whether we know or prove they exist. Thus, if knowledge’s form can alter our perspective and prevent us from seeing potential solutions, it is important to have a grasp on the different states of knowledge.

To that end, I’ve created the map to the right. It has five basic states: Unknown, Aware, Know, Prove and Quantify. Each is a subset of the previous one:

Knowledge Map

• Unknown: Not knowing what we don’t know
• Aware: Knowing what we don’t know, or not being able to express what we do know
• Know: Knowing without proof but being able to express what we know
• Prove: Using approaches that adhere closely to the scientific method or the one used in courts of law.
• Quantify: Being able to count, calculate or formulate.

By looking at knowledge’s states in this manner, we see how much reality we exclude if we only accept what is quantifiable and provable. Imagine in warfare or the game of poker if we took no action unless we could prove it was the right one. Business is not immune to this. Therefore, success is more determined by how we treat what we don’t know or barely know and not by how we treat what we can prove and quantify. Thus, if we lived by the advice of the board member above, we would surely fail without a great amount of fortune.

A CEO of a 150-employee services company made this astute observation: processes reduce the need for top talent, and thus, reduce labor costs. This company requires highly talented professionals to deliver its services. Historically, management allowed them to work without defined processes because the employees knew what to do. However, as the company grew, finding such talent became harder and more expensive.

Processes become the path to training and developing in-house talent. They are analogous to painting by numbers or following recipes in cooking; they improve the output produced by individuals who don’t have a grasp on the entire work. However, just as we wouldn’t confuse painting by numbers with being an artist and following a recipe with being a chef, we shouldn’t confuse executing the steps of a process with being talented. Processes allow the breakdown of a task without necessarily needing to understand the task itself. It’s like following a series of directions; you don’t need to know your destination.

Since an employee doesn’t need to understand the whole task to follow a process, he does not need the talent that that understanding requires. Essentially, the process is making the decisions for him as embodied by its rules and procedures. As a result, the company does not have to pay a premium for that talent.

The scientific method’s usefulness falls far short of people’s belief in it. In other words, hype exceeds reality, and it becomes a panacea for solving problems of any type. The emotions behind this belief are so strong that people are often willing to deny, ignore or discount a reality if they cannot “prove” it. Since emotions and relationships often fall in this unproven domain and play important roles in many events, this belief can retard innovation and problem solving where intuitive approaches are viable solutions.

The inherent weaknesses of the scientific method are produced by its strengths as a disciplined inquiry. In its rigid quest to define observations and hypotheses, to control the experimental process, to quantify results and to present conclusions in a manner that can repeat results with different experimenters; the method excludes aspects of reality that aren’t easily observed, defined, controlled, quantified, presented or repeated. For example, something as obvious as good leadership being good for business cannot be addressed by the scientific method. The same holds true for proving that a good sales person sells more than a bad one or that good morale is better for business than bad morale is.

The proof of the scientific method’s inherent weaknesses is the common observation that what works in the laboratory doesn’t necessarily work in reality. That is why the idea must be reintroduced to reality via developmental and engineering phases. This is reflected in everyday life through disclaimers on product guarantees. For example, a window might be guaranteed but only if the homeowner uses the installer recommended by the window manufacturer. In other words, the best window in the laboratory might not be the best in reality because it’s too difficult to install.