Positioning organizations to meet the unprecedented
challenges of the 1990's and beyond will require sweeping changes
in every facet of organizational life. It will not be a simple
matter of replacing our existing work structures, procedures,
and technologies. What is required is a strategy for organizational
fitness, including leveraging limited resources to effect
dramatic, rapid, and continuous improvement.
The following outlines a comprehensive strategic
framework for bootstrapping organizations into the 21st century,
and an explicit proposal for launching an exploratory pilot implementation
of this strategy.
Given the shifting nature of organizations, the increasingly
complex and urgent global market forces, and the virtual bombardment
of end users by vendors and consultants, organizations must keep
getting faster and smarter at identifying and integrating
improvements into their every day life. Improving this improvement
capability should be a key element in every organization's
improvement strategy:
As a minimum, organizations must adopt a permanent
and highly-coordinated B Activity, responsible for continuously
identifying and implementing candidate improvements to the core
business activity.
But the current means of developing and transferring
improvements are not adequate for the scale and rate of change
faced today. Organizations need to learn more effective ways
of assimilating dramatic improvements on a continuing basis.
They need to get better at understanding requirements, surveying,
evaluating, selecting, integrating, developing, testing, and applying
the improvements. And they need to get better and better at deploying
the improvements into rapidly shifting organizational targets
-- identifying suitable pilot groups, planning the training program,
running and evaluating the pilot results, learning how much to
introduce, how quickly, how to overcome cultural barriers, and
how to quickly incorporate lessons learned.
To improve this B Activity improvement capability, organizations will need to invest in an explicit on-going C Activity. A key to the long-term vitality and competitive edge for an organization will be to get better and better at improving itself.
Ideally the C Activity should focus on improving
generic capabilities which boost all three Activities (A, B, and
C). For example, a key strategic target early on would be to
improve how an organization:
Since these basic knowledge-work capabilities are
central to effective A, B, and C work, improving them would
boost both the job capability and the improvement capability
simultaneously, thus providing extra compounded investment leverage,
or bootstrapping leverage.
As complexity and urgency increase, the need for
highly effective knowledge-work capabilities will become increasingly
urgent. Increasing pressure for reduced product cycle time, and
for more and more work to be done concurrently, is forcing unprecedented
coordination across project functions and organizational boundaries.
Yet most organizations do not have a comprehensive picture of
what knowledge work is, and which aspects would be most profitable
to improve.
The objective of most knowledge work is to determine and describe what needs to be done, and how and when it will be accomplished -- i.e. to identify needs and opportunities, plan and deploy solutions, and incorporate lessons learned.
Identifying Needs and Opportunities:
An alert project group, whether classified as an A, B, or C Activity,
always keeps a watchful eye on its external environment, actively
surveying, ingesting, and interacting with it. The resulting
intelligence is integrated with other project knowledge
on an ongoing basis to identify problems, needs, and opportunities
which might require attention or action.
Planning and Deploying Solutions:
Responding effectively to needs and opportunities involves a
high degree of coordination and dialog within and across
project groups. The resulting plans provide a comprehensive picture
of the project at hand -- e.g. new products and services, improvements
to existing products and services, or solutions to a specific
problem situation. These plans, which are iteratively and collaboratively
developed, represent the knowledge products of the project
team, and constitute a roadmap for implementation and deployment.
Incorporating Lessons Learned:
The planning process is rarely a one-shot effort. Lessons learned,
as well as intelligence and dialog, must be constantly analyzed,
digested, and integrated into the planning documents throughout
the life cycle of the project.
For lack of a better term, I call this basic knowledge-work
process a CODIAK process, for the Concurrent Development,
Integration, and Application of Knowledge. The resulting operational
knowledge base, consisting of intelligence, dialog records, and
knowledge products, is continuously updated, used, and re-used
by many players, concurrently and over time:
This knowledge base represents a valuable corporate asset. And yet, many of its crucial elements, such as decision trails and intelligence collections, are generally not recorded. Even minor inadequacies in the CODIAK process can be extremely costly in terms of:
Almost every effort in the organization is immersed
in, or impacted by, an ongoing CODIAK process. And each organizational
unit's knowledge process and knowledge products -- whether individual,
project team, functional unit, program, department, division,
task force -- are part of a larger effort within and even outside
of the organization:
This nested web of concurrent knowledge-work is especially
evident in complex R&D and manufacturing environments, where
close coordination via concurrent engineering, or total quality
management, is increasingly critical. And in the case of joint
ventures, each knowledge domain must integrate its CODIAK work
within, and also across, organizations.
The CODIAK process is the driving force of the organization, providing direction and momentum for new or renewed organizational efforts. Giving knowledge workers new capabilities for coordinating their work concurrently, with instant access to the correct document, and all the supporting intelligence and dialog trails which led to key decisions, could dramatically reduce product-cycle time and improve first-time quality. Significantly improved CODIAK capabilities, applied within the C, B, and A Activities of an organization, offer powerful bootstrapping leverage for improving overall effectiveness, productivity, and fitness.
As more and more of the CODIAK process work moves
online, and more of the work is done concurrently using
a hodgepodge of workstations, networks, application packages,
and utilities, organizations will be faced with a whole new set
of challenges for coordinating the enterprise knowledge work.
A strategic solution to these challenges begins with
a hyperdocument system. The hyperdocument refers
to multimedia files which support many object types, including
hypertext links, hyperdocument e-mail, and online hyperdocument
publishing (library) with automated cataloging and version control.
Links should be easily created, human-readable, and printable.
Files should have structure, and objects should be independently
addressable within a file, with zooming in and out and other on-the-fly
custom views. Personal signature encryption and suitable privacy
provisions should also be supported.
A hyperdocument system should enable flexible collaborative
development, integration, application, study, and re-use of CODIAK
knowledge online:
Ultimately, the hyperdocument system will need to
be an open hyperdocument system (OHS), allowing
for an integrated "seamless" multi-vendor architecture
where distributed diverse knowledge workers can share hyperdocument
files, and share screens, regardless of each worker's particular
hardware/software configuration.
This interoperability must extend across departments and across organizations to include customers, suppliers, and joint-venture partners. Furthermore, within the integrated enterprise of tomorrow, standard provisions must exist for links between OHS documents and objects within other enterprise data forms (e..g. data bases, CAD models). An OHS should provide totally interoperable CODIAK support for a truly concurrent, integrated enterprise.
An OHS would go a long way toward providing much
needed improvements to the CODIAK process. However, most capabilities
are improved, or augmented, by many interdependent technical
and non-technical elements, of which tools make up only a small
part:
Until recently, we got by with improving selected
elements of the Augmentation System in isolation, assuming that
the other elements would eventually adapt "on their own".
But with the recent computer revolution, many organizations'
Augmentation Systems are now heavily weighted with point-solution
technology, seriously overpowering the human-system elements.
Tools are being introduced to automate methods that evolved around
now-obsolete tools, and vice versa. Many tools are not being
harnessed effectively for lack of appropriate, well-evolved methods.
As the complexity and urgency of our improvement
programs increase, this tactically-limited trend will prove to
be very costly. Until we significantly stretch our perception
of the scale and pervasiveness of change-opportunities in the
human-system side of the equation, the organizational stresses
from unbalanced Augmentation Systems will worsen, and the truly
significant improvements in organizational capability will be
forestalled.
The OHS requirements described above are based on 20 years of experience with an early OHS prototype used in large pilot trials in government and aerospace organizations. These requirements are recommended as a baseline starting point only. There is much more to be learned about the rigorous use of an OHS in a wide-area, distributed CODIAK process. The human-system elements -- all the methods, procedures, conventions, skills, etc. -- must be highly developed, in close association with the continuing evolution of OHS requirements.
To intensify and accelerate the human-tool
co-evolution process, intensive pilot environments must be established
by the C and B Activities. The C Activity should operate as the
first pilot outpost of the organization, evolving the advanced
methods and system prototypes to support its own intensive CODIAK
process, and paving the way for subsequent pilot operations.
Flexibly evolving OHS research prototypes will be required to
support the advanced pilot exploration in a wide variety of application
areas (e.g. CASE, concurrent engineering, total quality, CSCW).
The resulting experience will feed the requirements definition
for future prototypes, for products and services, and for the
standards that will ultimately be required to support a truly
integrated and interoperable OHS architecture. The experience
will also serve to maximize the relevance, applicability, and
transferability of the resulting products and services, rendering
increased cost-effectiveness for end-user organizations and vendors
alike.
Now, who will be responsible for this exploratory
work? Vendors? End-user organizations? Universities? Government?
Ultimately, C Activities from a wide range of enterprises
will need to join forces in a cooperative
C Community to collaborate on common activities. This
is feasible because most C Activity is generic, not proprietary.
It is highly desirable because creating a vibrant pilot environment
to support this work will be very costly. By pooling resources,
members can spread the risk and spend less to get more -- including
attracting resources that would otherwise not be available --
thus freeing up more internal resources to further invest in their
proprietary B and A Activities.
Joining forces is also necessary for dealing
appropriately with the increasingly complex interoperability requirements
between enterprises. For instance, understanding the requirements
for an OHS, developing a procurement approach for OHS prototypes
to support planned pilot usage among Community Mem-bers, coordinating
the planning and operation of such pilots, and integrating the
lessons learned seems the most promising way to yield the desired
results. And coordinating the standards requirements for interfacing
or integrating applications software and utilities can only be
accomplished by extensive cooperation among user organizations
and vendors.
Such a Bootstrap Initiative would provide
a common focus for user organizations, vendors, consultants, government
agencies, and universities. Operating as an advanced pilot, or
living prototype of its work, its results would be directly transferable
to member organizations:
A Bootstrap Initiative offers the most direct,
high-leverage, cost-effective path for bootstrapping organizations.
But individual organizations can get started on their
own, even before an Initiative is formally launched. They can
begin by forming an explicit C Activity, headed by a responsible
high-level executive, and staffed and advised by stakeholders
from representative B Activities, to integrate the bootstrap strategy
with their own strategic planning efforts. They can start planning
for selected exploratory pilots, using off-the-shelf hyperdocument
systems, and begin to test out the concepts and strategies described
here.
The sooner organizations launch on a strategic path
toward high-performance organizational fitness, the sooner the
benefits can be achieved. Where does your organization
stand?
-Patricia Seybold, PS, April '90
About the Author . Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart has a 30-year track record as a visionary and pioneer of integrated information systems and organizational augmentation. Well-known contributions include the mouse, display editing, windows, outline/idea processing, hypermedia, and groupware, with early prototypes in full operation under the NLS/AUGMENT system by 1968. In the last decade, thousands of industrial knowledge workers have benefited from its unique team support capabilities, more recently in internal pilots within McDonnell Douglas. Dr. Engelbart is currently Director of the Bootstrap Institute in Palo Alto, CA, dedicated to launching the Bootstrap Initiative. He is also an associate at Stanford University's Center for Design Research, where he runs the 3-day management seminar "Bootstrapping Organizations into the 21st Century". Engelbart has received several awards for outstanding lifetime achievement and ingenuity.