      |
|
Copyright © 2000 FleetWatch magazine and FleetWatch On-Line. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior written permission from the publishers. Views published are not necessarily those of the publishers. |
|
|
| Past Issues |
February
2000
|
|
|
|
||
|
Re-inventing the Wheel of Wisdom
The world’s biggest truck rolls out of the world’s biggest maintenance warehouse on what must be the world’s hottest and most humid day, ever. Squinting against the sun that is pounding the coastline of Florida like a flaming sledgehammer, my hands slippery on the binoculars, it occurs to me that the John F Kennedy Space Centre in August is like my health club steambath at naked rush hour - only I would not choose to go in there for a lesson in science and engineering. The public information officer, a pert woman with a big NASA badge, notices the heat only to remark that "It’s haart aut ear, ain’tit?" and steadily reels off the awesome statistics. The Crawler Transporter now inching the Space Shuttle towards the launch area is the largest tracked vehicle known. It has 16 traction motors powered with four 1000kw generators, driven in turn by two 2 750hp diesel engines which burn 10 litres of diesel oil per second. It’s no speedster. Weighing 2 721 metric tons and measuring out at 3 metres high and 40 metres long, it can manage a bare 1.6km per hour when loaded with the space vehicle. The top deck of this 8 metre high vehicle is about the size of a baseball infield between the mats. Time to get your asks in gear, I say to myself. Time to make sense of this thing. Questions, questions, so many questions but instead of asking them, I remain dumb while an even dumber man next to me says "Uh…unnhhuu" and we all look at him expectantly. It is not clear whether he means to put a query or just agree with everything, his mind totally blown by the deluge of information, but he adds: "Yoooweee!" and we turn away to gaze at the mighty payload that is trundling slowly, slowly along at its top speed. It takes five hours for the crawler to reach the launch site, following a road specially strengthened with deep substrate. NASA chose to build a road transporter over the other option of a load-carrying barge, which would have required a canal. The vehicle itself was built by the Marion Power Shovel company of Ohio, a company with experience in heavy earth-moving equipment, at a cost of $14-million as long ago as 1967. Size isn’t everything but it does count. In answer to my questions, the tour guide reassures us that all space technology translates into new developments for industry and that road transport, like office technology and home conveniences, carries many electronic and mechanical parts that had their origins in the Apollo, Saturn and Space Shuttle programmes. The gargantuan scale of everything blows the mind but I am left with the feeling: Well, so what? as I trudge back to the air-conditioned comfort of my car. The world has turned the corner into that magical mystery land called Beyond 2000. Long anticipated by the media, it was blazoned across our TV screens as the ultimate promise of technologies to come. Real issues are managerial When I proposed to write an article for FleetWatch entitled "Trucking Beyond 2000", I set out optimistically to chart all the areas in which futuristic gadgetry would affect this industry for the better. And you know what – I came to the conclusion that, despite the enormous range of R&D which has a continual impact on trucking, the real issues are not technological at root but managerial. In the Age of Information we tend to think that technology will solve everything and so it is applied as a substitute for thought. I remembered my visit to the Kennedy Space Centre and began to ponder the meaning of that mighty demonstration of machine power. We were told so much but we learnt so little. Ultimately I was left wondering why the space programme had taken the route it had and what the other possible options were – not the choice between a road and a canal, but the real, social choices. America has two million of its citizens in jail – one in 100 – and a vast, growing underclass of the unemployed who fester in the inner-city ghettoes of the richest nation on earth. The outburst of protest in Seattle recently against the World Trade Organisation was a sign that many Americans feel cast out by the system. Age of useless information As a professor of communication and freelance writer on popular science and technology, I love technology and would be heartbroken if America abandoned its space programme – what’s life without a little romance? – but I am no technogeek. One thing I do know from academic work in the field of communication is that the so-called Age of Information is very largely an age of useless, irrelevant information. We are flooded with information garbage – call it exformation. Communication theorists have come up with that term in recent years. It is the beginning of a new critique of the Information Age. Exformation is the stuff we do not need - that does not belong in meaningful messages. It interferes with sensible decision-making because it crowds out the truly important signals that we should be attending to. The issues facing most businesses in Southern Africa today have to do with social relations and the legal system, crime and insecurity, empowerment and company restructuring, choosing the right people to work with the right information for the right goals. We need to increase profitability and enhance quality of life. These issues involve human values and choices and as much as they do technology and efficiency. Information is not wisdom Unfortunately, we live in a culture that worships information for its own sake and we tend to think that the more of it we have, the better. We mistake exformation for true information. This is understandable because computers have become central to everything we do. But managements need to be reminded (more than occasionally) that information does not equate with knowledge, and knowledge should form the basis of wise choices. Information is not wisdom. It is time to re-invent the wheel of wisdom, otherwise the wheels fall off our information systems. Almost every industrial advance today rests on electronics, making use of information technology (IT) on an increasing scale. In trucking, every one of the following areas of safety, machine performance and command and control, depends today on computer chips and IT processing:
Of course, there are some purely mechanical devices that do not make use of chip technology:
Next to the Space programmes, the Gulf War and other modern conflicts have inspired numerous high-tech advances, most of them coming out of America. Trucking, in particular, has benefited. The most sophisticated vehicles coming off production lines today are literally like Star Wars battleships with weaponry systems adapted and applied to peaceful, profitable purposes. The Japanese and Europeans are responsible for integrating many of the new electronic marvels into our vehicles, factories and homes. Where does that leave Southern Africans? A truck may be a marvel of engineering but that in itself gets us no closer to the ideal of a well-run business in a stable employment context. In my role as a consultant to businesses on internal communication, I often come across situations where managements buy into a technology because they think it will resolve problems in the broader context of the business. The most typical example, with which we are all familiar, is vehicle tracking technology. Hijacking and other problems of driver discipline and trustworthiness have impelled managements to support what is probably the most intensive system of electronic surveillance in any middle-income country in the world today. We have seen tracking outfits come and go and most those who are still standing have built up a well-deserved reputation for reliability. Enormous communication gap No-can deny that the surveillance is necessary - managements cannot control the corruption and criminality of the larger society. They must take defensive action to protect drivers and company assets. But, in terms of industrial relations, there is an enormous communication gap between managements, with their technical solutions, and drivers who are actually out there on the road facing very human situations. Bribery, temptation, threats and intimidation are real facts of life. If you spend any time chatting to drivers at truck stops, as I sometimes do, one learns that many drivers are disheartened. I drive thousands of kilometres a month on research and training trips and I make a point of stopping where the trucks stop to observe and ask questions. All sorts of subjects come up. On the topic of tracking, many drivers feel reassured for their personal security but they shake their heads in dismay over the tendency of the industry to substitute technology for discussion. You can’t generalise about this with regard to every company, of course. My point is not to start an argument about how exactly to shield drivers from external pressures but to highlight the fact that technology in itself does not solve problems. Only human communication can do that. One of the features of the Information Age is that having access to computers empowers everyone by placing information tools in their hands. This has the effect of flattening out the corporate structure, since those near the bottom and those near the top begin to share the same sources of information. Pooling of knowledge In real terms, empowerment means recognising that people in the system have information that is vital for decision making. They should be encouraged to pool it rather than keep it to themselves and opportunities must be created on a regular basis for consultation to take place – both across departments and vertically within the organisation. An amusing example of how the management of a transport company lacked knowledge of vital facts is given by this little anecdote – call it a fanciful illustration, perhaps. A company decided to install a satellite tracking system which, so the salesman said, would fit nicely together with the fleet management and logistics packages already in use. Assurances that the systems were "modular" were accepted on the strength of a simple demonstration, attended by the in-house IT manager, who listened but did not say anything. When the salesman talked about "flexibility" being required to fit the system to other systems, this was a coded way of warning management that they had better be pretty damn flexible in their attitude towards escalating costs. The tracking system was a new version of software piggy-backed onto an older set of modules. It turned out there were all kinds of bug-ridden problems with the interface. In fact, the system was finally put to use as a stand-alone network from which data had to be laboriously transferred back and forth from the fleet scheduling system. In this fanciful example, the IT manager came in for criticism because he did not warn the company what it was in for. He knew, of course, all about the software add-ons but had not raised the issue at the sales demonstration. He could, of course, have used a famous-last-words quote like: "Don’t look at me, I just work here," but he said something far more priceless. "When I was taken on it was to handle the company’s information requirements. I was not expected to advise management about their business decisions." This is a classic and sadly, happens all the time. To put it in a nutshell, the IT manager could not see that management lacked certain important INformation because he was used to dealing with EXformation There was a quite fundamental breakdown of communication since management was not provided with a knowledge of the facts to crucially influence its choice. When hiring IT workers of any kind, it would be wise for management to state at the outset that part of their job is to think and give sound advice, meaning that they must send their knowledge of the facts up the decision tree. Because of my academic background I have a specialised interest in managing knowledge resources. I don’t do computers. I don’t do IT systems. What I do, with the tools of the sociologist and the instincts of a journalist, is take a look at organisational communication up and down, sideways and across, from person to person and office to office. Then I make suggestions as to how to focus on the messages that really matter, discarding the rest. Unfortunately many managers assume that the information that piles up on their desks, spat out by number-crunching computers, is real information. But it is mostly exformation - inessential data that should be discarded as quickly as possible. The true nature of information should be that it is fresh, surprising and truly changes our understanding of something. Exformation, on the other hand, is everything we know or suspect or take for granted but that does not belong in our thinking when a decision is to be made. In the complex world of modern business, we depend heavily on information technologies to keep us informed about sales, inventory, operations, finances, personnel, and so on. Much of this is routine information that is essentially unsurprising. Where change registers, thrusting itself out of the expected figures quite unexpectedly, we must ask why? – what’s changed, where’s the information we need to make sense of this? In the media, the unusual is what makes news. The Gee Whiz! factor drives journalistic curiosity. In corporate affairs, it is the spike of unusual information in a set of figures that should drive management’s curiosity to find out, take charge and execute wise, well-informed actions. Management can only do this if its human communication networks work in sync with its technologies of information. Most companies today are like the man in the crowd at NASA who muttered "Uh…unnhhuu…". He knew that he wanted to know something but did not know what that was. So he shut up and muddled along. There was no communication and hence no answer to his questions. Wisdom versus information Wisdom is three big steps up from information. First there is data, the raw stuff of information systems which is collected in such vast quantities on a daily basis in every company that no-one should ever feel they lack information. What they may lack is the proper information, and for this the data has to be interpreted and sifted in terms of some sensible criteria. Step two, then, is the process of turning information into knowledge. For many years, management author Peter Drucker has been telling firms that they must employ knowledge workers – but what do they do? They go on employing information workers, smart IT guys and smarter consultant researchers and compilers who go out there and find more information to add to the load the company already has! This neglects the vital job of applying criteria of selection and interpretation to the data that is already on hand. Sure, there are dozens of professionals out there in the marketplace who will offer to do the sifting and sense-making for management. Ultimately, though, it is only those who have a direct interest in the firm’s growth and profitability who can decide where to draw the line between useless information and the kind of information that is germane to decision-making – that is, knowledge of the facts. Wisdom – the third step up the information pyramid – is the power of knowledge applied to life’s choices. Only someone who cares about the eventual outcome can develop the wisdom to make real and lasting choices to which they will remain committed. They don’t just work there, they believe in what they do, and do what they believe in. |
||
The
world has blasted off into the space age Beyond 2000. As the Age of
Information gathers momentum, wonderful electronic technologies are
providing the tools for improved command and control of fleet operations.
But is technology the real solution to transport inefficiency and chaos?
FleetWatch correspondent Graeme Addison argues that managements often
place their trust in information gadgets when what they should be doing
is developing better internal communications to take advantage of new
information resources. The real meaning of empowerment in Southern Africa
today is that employees from top to bottom in any business have increasing
access to information and their insights should contribute to the "wisdom"
of the company. In today’s world, the wheels of fortune are oiled with
collective knowledge.