Nuclear Power
Ming
confesses to being a workaholic:
"I'm tired of being a hard worker, rather than a smart operator. I don't
know where I picked it up, but I've for years had the strategy of a workaholic
in denial. If I just work harder, and put in more hours, and I try to keep
up with everything that is thrown at me, I'll be alright. And that worked
fine for a long time. At some jobs I've had, people were puzzled that I
could
get so much done. But my secret was sometimes not much more than that I
worked 80 hours per week, and they only worked 50. They slept 7 hours per
night,
and I managed with 5."
As I've often noted, Flemming Funch, the human behind ming.tv,
has something instructive for us on most days. Today he describes the secret
nuclear force
that powers every enterprise of any consequence: the amazing commitment and
output of a few individuals that is the key to even the biggest projects.
Call them the productive few or key employees or the secret sauce. What's
amazing is not that most work
is done by so few, but that it takes so few to make our economy
as big as it is. It's a cause for despair and hope.
The Project-centric Enterprise
Frank Patrick calls
them "multiple-project companies." They are
the innovative organizations that seem to get more done than others, probably
because they see their business as a series of projects that produce
the individual products or service sets their customers want. At the core
of each project you'll find just a few people—maybe just one—who produce
as much and
are
as overworked
as Ming's description.
These projects are big revenue producers. Just a few of them may be responsible
for most of a company's income—the 80-20 rule says that 80% of your income
is from 20% of your products. And projects don't seem to work unless driven
by a small core of dedicated people. It's well known that most big software
projects' code is written by
about a half dozen people—sorry to be fuzzy about that important data
point, but it's true in my limited experience. The reliance on concentrated
productivity
is what allows the remainder of most organizations to be laughable in their
low productivity. This is such a disconnect with industrial age thinking that
we
can't imagine
it's true:
Can our
economy be the work of, like, 1% of us?!
Once we have some hard data, I believe that will be our conclusion. What are
these people like? From observing and, in the best of times, being one of them,
here's what I think I've learned:
The Top 10 Characteristics of the Productive
Few
- They put their head around the entire problem.
- They find it easier to do something than to describe it.
- They master many skills.
- They're not interested in the periphery of productivity—reports, regulations,
politics.
- They resent superficial thinking—the denial that God is in
the details.
- They think that results matter, so they admit and fix mistakes.
- They're not usually impressive to others nor do they try to impress.
- They're a little mystified by the pecking order and most people's dedication
to it.
- They want a quiet place with good tools to do their work.
- They usually work for, and enrich, people who are precise opposites of
these traits.
There's more, but ten's my limit. What's amazing is that the Productive
Few are here at all.
Through most human history, we've not had the means to even remember what
preceded us, beyond myth and propaganda. The dominant male, the type that
has none of
those 10 characteristics, directed all activity but in a vague way, and no
one considered alternative actions, cause and effect, etc. With the Atomic
Age,
TV and, of course, the Internet, we believe that mistakes can be both deadly
and avoided, and we see the results of our deliberations in the newly shared
archive. This has triggered a more fundamental instinct than most: the fear
of embarrassment.
Being "found out" may be our most basic fear, because it can lower
you on the pecking order, so it's now vital to not only be in charge of your
organization,
but to have it do the right things.
Products are Software
Most products and services depend on algorithms, and the nature of algorithms
is that they expose error.
As a USAF line pilot, it seemed to me that one of
the great
things
about the Air Force was that it had to deal with physics and Murphy. The
Air Force is no smarter than any large bureaucracy—we used to discuss
the undocumented bugs and stupid
procedures
that put as at risk, often a directive generated by a "Light" Colonel
trying to get promoted to Full Bird. Sure enough, eventually some poor
bastard would die trying to conform to bad code, or run afoul of an obscure
combination of circumstances that
had never been quite catastrophic, and everyone ran out to puzzle over
the hole in the ground. Before the 20th century, there wouldn't be an investigation,
there'd
be an epic poem.
That's what we're seeing this week. NASA and everyone else is actually
interested in the truth. Sure, anyone who feels they might be to blame
is taking cover,
but the predominant motive is to find the truth and a fix. That is both A
Good Thing and a new thing.
No wonder the Flight Recorder "Black Box" has become an icon of a kind
of truth we all yearn for.
Most products are services, and even hardware has a lot of code in it or enabling
it. That means that we learn right away when things don't work, and we're forced
to learn why.
So we've built an economy based on hard facts and that imperative is creeping
into the culture. (Obviously it's not even close to penetrating
politics). But
only a few are able to produce the magic code that makes a product profitable.
How long will organizations be able to ghettoize their most productive people?
Like trolls hanging on to their precious bridge franchise, management will
hold on as long as it can.
The Transparent Economy
The means of transparency seem to be accumulating slowly but the adoption
is pretty dramatic. It may even be straightforward to accelerate the transition.
Naturally,
we hope that our microeconomy can
make a difference, by publishing promises and outcomes based on quality as
well as price. Unlike the larger economy, the Xpertweb protocols are designed
so high-quality goods and services will have the kind of economic advantage
now
enjoyed by low-cost
goods and services.
I imagine a day, soon, when Ming is one of the productive few and has
the means to coordinate the elusive C++ contractor, the lack of whom may have
cost him seven figures. Given the right protocols, the Productive Few
can connect
with each other in ways impossible under the current system, since it's hard
for them to find each other and collaborate outside of the enterprises they're
often buried within. Increasingly, it's the lack of nuclear material—one
of the Productive Few—that's the great risk. As Bill Joy famously said, more
or less, "The
best expert for your most important project doesn't work for you."
Our collective hope should be that most of us join
the Productive Few who deliver the goods, rather than remain among the slacker
many, smug in our cluelessness. Certainly we will so aspire if our promises
and our productivity are visible.
The Transparent Culture
Even though I think Xpertweb is the greatest thing since sliced bread served
with canned beer, a more important watershed is looming which will further
prod us to
be
among the Productive Few. This change is inevitable, imminent, obvious,
and requires no one's
permission.
It
is the ubiquity
of what
we might call the PFR - The Personal Flight Recorder. If
all of the following statements are true, then the conclusion is also true.
Just because
it's
so dramatic does not make it unlikely:
- Picture Phones will become Video Phones.
- Video Phones will be connected into the wireless mesh.
- Audio/Video capture will not be obvious to others, being separated
from the phone as the microphone is today. We'll be stealthy without being
sneaky.
- Copyright holders won't like it, but we will have the right to capture
anything we witness.
- We will replay and share any part of our personal history we
choose to.
- Within n years, more people will have PFRs than not.
That inevitable sequence means that ours is
fated to be a pervasively shared culture. Every action by the police
will
be
captured
(by their and others' PFRs) and subject to public review. Any transgression,
real or imagined, will be shared and, probably, published. The most noteworthy
exceptions to "conventional" mores will receive the most attention.
This will have a chilling effect on a wide range of activities:
- Crime
Victims' and witnesses' records, subject to subpoena, will
probably be published spontaneously.
Physiological stress indicators will generate a video 911.
Evidentiary proceedings and their procedural whores will fade away.
- Media absurdity
Who needs a traffic reporter when the I-5 webcam is a
click away?
Who needs a talking head when the aggregated record is a click away?
- Assholes
Aggressive drivers, Drama kings & queens, Sports fans, Busybodies, Condo
Board martinets.
Everyone knows one when they see one.
Most people are not jerks if
they can help it.
- Politics
The radical right thought sunshine laws and the FOIA were
tough!
We each will have a perfect record of our voting and of irksome political
hacks.
- The non-productive Many.
Peer Brother is Watching You
That inevitable future may seem bleak, but perhaps only because
we haven't got our head around the effect of decentralized peer-based
surveillance. Intermediaries always act
contrary to the interests of those for whom they intermediate, so we assume
that a video-archived future is through corporate and government surveillance
serving the interests of those powerful enough to control the "public" record.
That is not what Peer Surveillance will be like.
We cannot predict what shape the Peer Surveillance culture will take, but
there's ample precedent. It will probably be like a small village where
everyone knows everyone else's business and gossips about what's most aberrant.
Historically, the intrusiveness of busybodies varied inversely with the population
of
the village. With the whole world capturing
the activities
of, well, the whole world, maybe we'll become more tolerant of our peccadilloes
as
they
become
so common that they'll be uninteresting, like chair-throwing on Jerry Springer
or hot-tubbing on reality TV.
Perhaps the most chilling effect of the Peer Surveillance culture will be
on guilt and whining. We may find that the sins and guilt we carry with us
are simply not that rare, outrageous
or, worst of all, interesting. Perhaps then we'll learn to be of real use to
each other, and productivity will be the norm rather than the burden of the
overtaxed few.
3:10:31 PM 
|
|
