Schlagwort-Archive: Knowledge

The clockwork – the ideal metaphor for technical order

Descartes and the enlightment divided the world into parts as small as possible, in order to examine and understand exactly, how it ticks. This world view is still valid. And until today many people only trust on what they can repeatedly prove. Accordingly enterprises divide work into controllable units. These areas, teams and positions get the tasks, authority and responsibility assigned for a small part of the value chain. Together, all parts represent the whole enterprise – for some people like clockworks. If the smallest part is missing, the clock does not tick any longer. That makes the clockwork an ideal metaphor for technical order.

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Human-made structure is based on rules, logic and calculations. The following points clarify this thinking.

  • Structure
    The architecture of a clock is determined by the watchmaker. On various layers the different displays of time, like the respective hours, minutes, seconds, dates or moon phases are implemented through cog wheels of different sizes. The watchmaker recognizes, how it works and in which sequence it can be put apart and be rebuilt by looking at the clockwork.
    In the same way the company consists of different areas. The larger the number of areas, the more layers, groupings and fields exist. Due to the limited number of parts, the most difficult clockwork is easier to get going than an enterprise.
  • Format
    The condition of the cog wheels, the screws and the material determine the quality of the clock. Each part has a purpose. In a company, there are likewise tangible components – e.g. the buildings, the pipes and the machines. Some people even consider the employees as tangible resources. For better grasping the soft aspects of people, they are described with forms that regulate the exchange of information and define a common language. Over time these guidelines shape up to the dense jungle of bureaucracy. The regulations are created, described, published and the application ensured without interruption. The clockwork does not have these soft factors. This makes the clockwork to the ideal description for a flawless enterprise driven by leadership.
  • Leadership
    The small flywheel, the balance wheel, is crucial for the even operation of a clock. Accordingly, it takes people in the enterprise, who take over this role. In a technical order the directions run clearly from top to bottom, from outside to inside. Nothing happens, without the superordinate, super-superordinate approval of the superiors. This creates reliable and smooth operational sequences, but it slows down the flexibility of the employees. They always have to obtain permission initially. As the balance wheel ensures the even running of the clock, the leadership takes care that even with time pressure the corporate procedures run reliably.
  • Key figures
    Well adjusted clocks provide the exact time accurately. Further key figures are the caliber, the energy source or the number of beats per second. Also the technical order uses measurable key figures. The activities have clear measuring points, as long as they are tangible. Thus the decisions can be justified, the employee performance evaluated and different scenarios simulated. With growing digitization also the number of measuring points increases. The new abilities of Big DATA are still able to recognize patterns in the flood of information. Eventually not the quantity is crucial, but the reliability.
  • Collaboration
    The clockwork lives of the immaculate interaction of its parts. As soon as sand slips into the clockwork, it stops. The business cooperation in the technical order is regulated. The farther they are from each other, the rarer are direct contacts. Contrary to the clock, where the cooperation takes place inside, the business depends on informal relations of the employees, who unfold rather outside, in the private environment. Cooperation is made more difficult due to the existence of an area specific, separatist secret language that can hardly or not at all be understood by others. For fans of the technical order the clock represents the ideal state of cooperation.
  • Knowledge
    The wisdom of clockwork consists of its design, the mechanical finesse of its parts as well as, of course, and the time. In the enterprise the knowledge is distributed across all levels and ranges. The superordinate levels have thereby a limited view, while the subordinated levels have a limited operational know-how. The rigid structure limits the available knowledge to what was originally inserted into the organization – learning is for this thinking a wrench in the works.

Bottom line: The clockwork is the ideal metaphor for a technical order, as it coins the economy for centuries. The price for this tangible corporate structure is a large number of layers, an overwhelming bureaucratization, a strictly hierarchical chain of command, easily attainable measuring points, a firmly given cooperation and the insufficient use of knowledge and learning.

Documented cluelessness

A large issue of the information society is the fact that people

  • are not aware what they do know and
  • cannot grasp, what they do not know.

Already in ancient times Socrates, the wise of its time, putted it that way „I know that I know nothing.” Our information-hungry society is propelled by the dilemma to learn a lot and to be obliged to inform oneself constantly. This urge for knowledge leads to permanent information overload that creates nothing else than documented cluelessness.

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Our brain is not a hard disk that doubles its storage space and the access speed to stored data every 18 months. Quite the contrary. A Chinese study discovered that our brain is shrinking for the past 10,000 years from 1500 cm3 to 1350 cm3. And our everyday life experience shows that we function differently than a digital data memory. We seem never to be full, therefore

  • we subscribe more newspapers, magazines, on-line offers, than we can process. The paper piles up either in the room or in the garbage;
  • we buy books that become thicker and thicker and ever more rarely read, stuck in the shelves for years waiting for their ’consumption’;
  • we send and receive enormous amounts of emails that overflow our mail box. At the same time we wish to be on more and more mailing lists, in order not to miss anything;
  • the Germans consume on average nearly 4 hours television per day – and remember at best the transmission on the next day, but not the contents;
  • one gets lost when surfing in the Internet.

The documented cluelessness is the information that we have virtually and physically on hold to ensure that we do not miss anything. Who does not have a too large heap of documented cluelessness, as unread articles, books, unseen films, throw the first stone?

The deficit that blocks our access to already known and unknown does not result in an economic use of resources. We do not make anything out of what we already know and continue to untwist the information faucet, in order to perceive, what we think not to know. Eventually we do not feel progress.

The way out of this dead end begins with changing our convictions that drive us.

  • Accepting the own capability
    As soon as we understand that our processing capacity is as good or as bad, as for all others, we can better use the existing resources.
  • We know almost nothing about everything
    There is nobody, who has less cluelessness than we do. Accepting this lack of knowledge, not being afraid of posing questions and making curiosity a virtue reduces the pressure.
  • Preventing that news blow out quickly
    Soaking up news passively leads to fast forgetting. Immediate, active application of new knowledge in discussions and/or the written summary of new insights lead to the fact that it can be better recalled.
  • Using the senses for oneself
    Information is at best remembered, if it enters on the one hand via several sensory channels and on the other hand our preferred sense channel is supplied. Who knows, with which sense channel he/she learns best – visually, auditory, kinesthetically?

Bottom line: The fatal is the missing awareness of the existing knowledge and the invisibility of the unknown. This deficiency cannot be overcome with efforts but by coming loose the documented knowledge and by using the existing always more actively. It functions well, if we change our convictions, as mentioned above, so that the need for more and more documented cluelessness dissolves.