sherri@maloufinc.com (Sherri Malouf) makes the observation:
>... How do you hold the small pieces (ie:
>two digits of a date) and the larger picture (whatever the larger
>programming project is) and the future??? Most of us don't think this way
>but we need to be doing it now! We seem to be able to generalize -- oops
>we blew it -- but we don't seem to be able to apply the learning...
My experience is that people in general have difficulty with time horizons
that are beyond a certain limit (which varies by person). If we look at
the design problem in our telephone system, for example, we used to have a
name and 4 numbers like RUssell 1087 then RU 3-1087 and finally 783-1087.
The second digit in an area code had to be a 0 or 1 and the systems then
determined it was a long distance call. Now we are moving to 10 digit
local calling. Each of these changes would satisfy the needs for "a little
longer". We were subjected to all these changes because the designers
could not imagine/justify making the fundamental changes that would deal
with the problem for a significant period of time.
So from a LO perspective, how can we mobilize a genuine focus on problems
that are 3 years out before they enter crisis mode? Cheers....Keith
--Keith Cowan <72212.51@CompuServe.COM>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>