• a page of notes summarizing the week’s issues and events.
- generated two levels below
• If an employee found a problem, “they were to solve it, find someone who could solve it, or bring it to management’s attention, whether or not the problem was in their normal area of responsibility. This intentional blurring of organizational lines helped create an organization more interested in solving problems than in fighting for bureaucratic turf.”
Wernher von Braun was one of the luminaries in rocketry who resisted Concurrency. Von Braun’s style was coordinated and sequential, with all technicians arriving at a consensus and each launch providing data for its successor. At the Marshall Space Flight Center he utilized a disciplined system of weekly reporting which required workers two levels below him to supply a page of notes summarizing the week’s issues and events. Johnson explains von Braun’s skill. By having notes generated two levels below, the managers directly under him could not edit the news he received, and by making the notes a weekly requirement, staff had to form their own information-gathering mechanisms. Von Braun would write comments in the margins of these notes, copy the entire set and distribute them for everyone to read, creating what today would be called transparency. This open flow moved information vertically through the chain of command as well as horizontally from department to department. If an employee found a problem, Johnson writes, “they were to solve it, find someone who could solve it, or bring it to management’s attention, whether or not the problem was in their normal area of responsibility. This intentional blurring of organizational lines helped create an organization more interested in solving problems than in fighting for bureaucratic turf.”
source:
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/727/1
Review: The Secret of Apollo
by Eve Lichtgarn
Monday, October 23, 2006
The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs
By Stephen B. Johnson
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006 (new edition)
softcover, 290 pp., illus.
ISBN 0-8018-8542-6
US$25
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Chistopher R. Hill, Outpost, 2014 [ ]
p.357
Soon after I arrived in Iraq, I was asked to produce a weekly memo for the president to update him on what was going on in Iraq. This request turned into a month long tug of war between the NSC staff and the State Department, because if I was to write a regular memo, surely it should be addressed to the secretary first. Finally, in a decision worthy of King Solomon, it was decided that the memo would go to both the president and the secretary, but it would first make its way to the State Department, addressed "Madam Secretary," so that the secretary could read and reflect on it, then forward it on to the president with her own cover note.
On May 27, 2009, I began the series of memos that gave further details about the loss of our three colleagues two days before, discussed the Iraqi efforts to invite international oil companies for tenders and addressed some of the Iraqi challenges in normalizing relations with neighboring Kuwait (Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait almost 20 years before, and yet sanctions on contemporary Iraq were still in place). I also weighed in on discussions with the interagency committee on what kind of Iraq election law we should support (whether closed-list candidates or open list, though I thought this was a subject more appropriately discussed in Iraq by Iraqis, rather than among well-meaning micro-managers in Washington), explained the state-of-play on developing a mechanism for dealing with the Kurdish-Arab internal boundary disputes, and concluded with some thoughts about the upcoming visit to Washington of Prime Minister Maliki.
The State Department had put up a ferocious fight to make sure these memos did not go directly to the White House, but in 15 months of writing them, I never received a single comment from anyone in the State Department. President Obama was the only person I ever heard from on the weekly memo. During a briefing Odierno and I gave to him in the Oval Office, he noticed the content of the briefing overlapped with that week's memo. "You covered that in last week's memo," he said. <skip last sentence>
(Outpost, a memoir by chistopher r. hill, copyright © 2014, simon & schuster )
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• The problem is not to restrict information, but to ensure that relevant information gets to all the people who need it.
p.75, p.77, pp.77-78, p.78
p.75
The Project Workbook
What. The project workbook is not so much a separate document as it is a structure imposed on the documents that the project will be producing anyway.
All the documents of the project need to be part of this structure. This includes objectives, external specification, interface specifications, technical standards, internal specifications, and administrative memoranda.
... [...] ...
The second reason for the project workbook is control of the distribution of information. The problem is not to restrict information, but to ensure that relevant information gets to all the people who need it.
p.77
... The recipient of all these updates pages has an assimilation problem, however. When he first receives a changed page, he wants to know, "What has been changed?" When he later consults it, he wants to know, "What is the definition today?"
... Second, one needs to distribute with the new pages a short, separately written change summary that lists the changes and remarks on their significance.
... Microfiche has its drawbacks. From the manager's point of view the awkward interfiling of paper pages ensured that the changes were READ, which was the purpose of the workbook.
pp.77-78
Also, a microfiche cannot readily be highlighted, marked, and commented by the reader. Documents with which the reader has interacted are more effective for the author and more useful for the reader.
p.78
How would one do it today? With today's system technology available, I think the technique of choice is to keep the workbook on the direct-access file, marked with change bars and revision dates. Each user would consult it from a display terminal (typewriters are too slow). A change summary, prepared daily, would be stored in LIFO (last-in, first-out) fashion at a fixed access point. The programmer would probably read that daily, but he missed a day he would need only read longer the next day. As he read the change summary, he could interrupt to consult the changed text itself.
Notice that the workbook itself is not changed. It is still the assemblage of all project documentation, structured according to a careful design. The only change is the mechanics of distribution and consultation. D. C. Engelbart and his colleagues at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) have built such a system and are using it to build and maintain documentation for the ARPA network.
D. L. Parnas of Carnegie-Mellon University has proposed a still more radical solution.1 His thesis is that the programmer is more effective if shielded from, rather than exposed to the details of construction of system parts other than his own. This presupposes that all interfaces are completely and precisely defined. While that is definitely sound design, dependence upon its perfect accomplishment is a recipe for disaster. A good information system both exposes interface errors and stimulates their correction.
1. Parnas, D. L., "Information distribution aspects of design methodology," Carnegie-Mellon University, Department of Computer Science Technical Report, February, 1971.
(The mythical man-month : essays on software engineering, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. -- Anniversary ed., © 1985, Software engineering, )
(p.75, p.77, pp.77-78, p.78)
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• One manager expressed the common complaint this way: "I sit there for two hours wishing I weren't there and thinking about all the things I have to get done. What I'm really waiting for are the two or three minutes of information that I have to have in order to stay out of trouble in my operation."
The biggest problem is the failure to define and to specify to enough detail what the problems actually were before ... .
Analysis of problems was strictly forbidden during the meeting.
The Rational Manager
A Systematic Approach to Problem Solving and Decision Making
Charles H. KEPNER
Benjamin B. TREGOE
pp.149-154
Case of the Stultified Staff Meetings
Let us now turn to the "Case of the Stultified Staff Meeting" and see how one group of managers is putting the concepts and procedures of problem analysis to work every single day. This example shows how problem analysis can become a continuous part of managerial thinking. This application took place in one division of a major company where the plant manager runs a twenty-four hour, seven day a week operation. For years this manager has been meeting with eight or nine of his key superintendents every weekday morning at 9 A.M. and sometimes on weekend. The average length of these meetings was two hours; they should have taken far less time. Everybody involved agreed on two points:
(1) the meeting were frustrating and time wasting, and
(2) none of the managers could get along without them.
One manager expressed the common complaint this way: "I sit there for two hours wishing I weren't there and thinking about all the things I have to get done. What I'm really waiting for are the two or three minutes of information that I have to have in order to stay out of trouble in my operation."
After the plant manager had been trained in systematic problem analysis, he took a long hard look at this meeting system and identified the problem as "too much time spent in meetings." He recognized that this problem could be broken into three parts, because the daily meeting performed three separate functions:
(1) it was used to pass on general information;
(2) it was used to report the current status of operation in each department;
(3) and it was used to report and discuss particular problem such as the breakdown of equipment, unsatisfactory performance of men or groups, faulty manufacturing process, etc.
Analyzing each separately, he saw no loss of time in the first function, since very little time was normally devoted to passing out general information. He saw the second function (reporting on current status of operations) was redundant, and no time should be spent on this; he decided to eliminate this function entirely since such information was already available on a wall chart, which department head could consult as they chose. Eliminating this function alone cut about twenty-five minutes off the average meeting time.
Now the plant manager concentrated on the third function of the staff meetings. He recognized his real problem was "too much time spent on reporting and discussing the hot problems in the plant." Too many problems, he realized, were being mixed together and talked about simultaneously, and there was too much complex analysis of a particular problem by two or three managers while the others sat around and waited. Then he recognized that there was a great deal of time spent in talking about possible causes and very little, if any, time devoted to specifying what the problems actually were. The plant manager was satisfied he had spotted the major cause of his lost-time problem, and he promptly made a decision. He established a new ground rule whereby the daily meeting would, henceforth, be used only to identify problem clearly, to set priorities, and to make assignments for working on specific problems or for reporting on problems previously assigned. Analysis of problems was strictly forbidden during the meeting.
Under this new rule, the meeting procedure calls for each superintendents to report the major current problems and potential problems in his area, and to identify each as to whether its cause is known or unknown. Each man also states whatever interim or corrective action may have already been taken on each problem. If the plant manager or his assistant or the division manager, who also lead these meetings, think that more details on a problem are needed, the superintendent involved will be asked to come into the plant manager's office after the meeting. A problem may be dropped with no further discussion if a superintendent says that the cause of a problem is known and corrective action has been taken. But the plant manager, his assistant, and the division manager have all had training in systematic problem analysis, and they usually question the superintendents closely about "known" causes to find out to what extent the problem has been analyzed. If the cause of the problem is conceded to be unknown, the analysis of it is assigned and a report-back date is set. Sometimes the plant manager will set the priority at once by saying, "Let's take care of this immediately."
To help keep track of the problems and actions a chart was devised with room for only ten problems listed according to priorities. A sample of this chart appears in Figure 21. If more than ten problems are accumulated, those with the lowest priority are dropped from the list. ([ All problems are recorded in the problem log book (database). To deal with daily problems, when problem shows up someone write it on a post-it note and put it on the community board. ]) The chart provides information under seven headings:
(1) the problem,
(2) responsibility,
(3) date recognized,
(4) interim action,
(5) cause,
(6) corrective action, and
(7) follow-up.
This daily staff meeting procedure has succeeded in cutting as much as an hour and a half from the time such meetings formerly consumed. The managers have, on the chart before them, the record of the priorities and the assignments and actions to be taken, and thus they are not bothered with any elaborate system for handling these things. In addition, this procedure enables these managers to make visible to themselves and the different things they may do in handling problems.
They can keep separate the jobs of recognizing problems, specifying them, and finding cause; they see the differences between a general discussion of problems, and the analysis of problems; they can separate problems whose cause is known from problems whose cause is unknown; they are aware of the different purpose of interim action and corrective action.
In short, these daily staff meetings now tend to impress on these managers the usefulness of building systematic problem analysis concepts and procedures into their own everyday thinking.
(The Rational Manager : A Systematic Approach to Problem Solving and Decision Making, Charles H. KEPNER, Benjamin B. TREGOE, © 1965, pp.149-154)
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TNAM
pp.183-184
They Never Asked Me
In the early 1980s I participated in the introduction of a quality-of-work-life program at Alcoa's Tennessee Operations. Managers at all levels were asked to establish boards consisting of themselves, their immediate superiors, and their immediate subordinates. There boards were empowered to do anything they could with the resources available to them that would improve the quality of work life of their members, provided that what they did did not prevent any other units from doing what they wanted. A procedure was set up to handle possible differences between units.
Very shortly after the boards were established, two participating unionized workers who took the rolls of sheet aluminum coming off the end of the mill that produced them did something that saved the Operations a very significant amount of money. The rolls of aluminum coming off the end of the mill were cylinders about five feet long, hollow in the middle. These were set on end near the end of the mill, where they remained until a forklift moved them to a storage area. The forklift was often delayed because of such things as an obstruction in the access aisle, mechanical failure of the truck, a run-down battery, and so on.
When the truck was delayed for a relatively long time, which happened frequently, the space in which the cylinders were temporarily stored filled up, leaving no room for others coming off the end of the mill. Then the two men unloading the mill would move some of the cylinders back by placing a foot against the bottom of the upright cylinder, pulling the top so as to tip it slightly, and rolling it to a new location farther from the end of the mill. Rolling the cylinder on the concrete floor crimped the edge of the sheet on the outside of the cylinder. This was a defect many purchasers would not accept. They returned many of these rolls. Reworking these rolls was very costly to the Operations.
Shortly after the quality-of-work-life program had been initiated, the two men who unloaded the mill acquired from the shipping room a number of sheets of very heavy quilted paper in which the rolls were wrapped when shipped. They laid several layers of this paper on the floor where the cylinders were normally stored temporarily. When they rolled cylinders over this softer surface, their edges were less damaged than previously. This saved the company a significant amount of money.
When I was told what these men had done, I went down to the shop floor to congratulate them. They were proud of their accomplishment and pleased with the congratulations. While chatting with them I asked how long they had known of the solution they had just implemented. Blushing, one of them mumbled, “About 15 years.”
Surprised, I then asked the obvious question: “Why did you wait so long to implement it?” I will never forget their answer: “Because those son of the bitches never asked us before.”
(Ackoff's best : his classic writings on management, Russell L. Ackoff., © 1999, pp.183-184.)
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Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets : a memoir of vietnam and the pentagon papers, 2002
p.39
NoDis, referring to an office or offices specified, corresponded to eyes only for an individual or a set of individuals, supposed to be seen “only by the eyes of” the addressees named. The point was to control and direct who knew ── and shouldn't know ── in an elaborate hierarchy of responsibility and secrecy.
I was never a person named in the list of addressees of an eyes only message, nor, for that matter, was John McNaughton usually on the list. When I saw that stamp or heading, I was looking at a copy of a document that in principle, according to the designator, wasn't supposed to be copied at all, or to be seen by me or my boss. Nor was International Security Affairs or its assistant secretary (let alone his special assistant) very often among the addressess of a NoDis State dispatch. Usually no one in the Pentagon, even the secretary, was listed for receiving one of these relatively infrequent messages, which tended to be addressed to the secretary of state or the president. But there it was, in front of me, from the message center. Obviously, NoDis and eyes only were, in practice, relative terms, intended (one had to assume that the senders knew this, from their own experience) to cut the number of people who saw a particular secret or top secret message from thousands or hundreds down to scores or even dozens (apart from secretaries or couriers or special assistants).
To get below even that, senders sometimes put rather desperate warnings in the heading, in capitals, “Literally eyes only of the secretary” or “the President”. I was aware of this of course because I was reading it, and I hadn't stolen it, nor had I made the copy that I was reading.
p.45
McNaughton, who as a law school professor had written a standard textbook on evidence, had extreme powers of concentration. So did I, for that matter, but I was used to focusing for long periods, not just hours but days and months, on a particular subject area.
p.45
He had a ritual that I saw him do hundreds of times; I think it was not just a joke but a self-focusing device that was more than symbolic. After taking the 35 minutes he had explicitly allotted to look a pile of papers on a particular problem that had been “staffed out” for his attention and decision ── tabbed for background papers, relevant cables and estimates, and alternative options and analyses of them for choice ── signing off on an option or checking off an “Agree” or “No” box listed for him by a deputy or bureau head, or asking for more work or information, he would look up at the clock and push that pile away from him on the desk. Next he would put his hands, fingers extended, on either side of his head, pause for a moment, then with a decisive motion of his forearms swivel his head to face another pile on which he had to concentrate next, on another part of the desk. Sometimes he would look up and grin at me after he did this, but I often saw him doing it, through the doorway, when there was no one else in the office.
It was his way of deleting from his mind, his short-term storage, what he had just been focusing on and turning his full attention to an entirely different subject that demanded the next 27 minutes.
pp.79─81
McNaughton kept next to his desk a bookstand with a row of his most frequently referred to and most sensitive directives, cables, estimates, and memoranda compiled into separate binders and three-ring notebooks. It was on rollers, so that when he left late each evening it could be easily moved from his desk into the closet-size, floor-to-ceiling safe that lined the outer wall of his room, along with the library shelves of classified documents stored there. Each morning before he arrived, his military aide unlocked the safe, which had a top secret combination lock, and wheeled his stand of personal reading materials over to his desk, so that he could reach a reference file easily from his chair.
I had access to the materials on this shelf, as I did to anything in the piles of paper on John's desk. But since he wanted instant access to these when he was at his desk, I rarely, if ever, took one of these binders out of his office into my cubbyhole a few steps away. I had copies of most of these same materials in my own safe. But if I needed to refer to something on his personal shelf, I would walk into his office ── if he didn't have a red light showing in the row of lights above his door ── pull it out, and look at it, standing next to his desk, while he worked away. His power of concentration was such that this didn't bother him, if it was carried out quietly and without my saying anything to him. Even so, I generally did that when he wasn't in the office. Since I often worked later than he did, I had the combination to his closet safe, so I could wheel the stand back into it when I was ready to leave the office. As far as I knew, the only others who had that combination, apart from John, were his military aides.
One day in the late spring his chief military aide abruptly left the office. I never heard an explanation for his apparent firing, but the first sign was that his assistant, the junior military aide, gave me a new combination to McNaughton's office safe. It had been changed that morning, the day of the colonel's departure. Sometime before that, though I hadn't made any connection at the time, John had pointed out to me a large binder at the lefthand end of his personal shelf that he asked me not to look in. The label on it was something to the effect of “Vietnam, McNaughton eyes only”. I could use anything else on the stand or in his files, but these were really for his eyes only. He told me it held papers that he had been directed not to share with anyone else at all, and in this case that included me.
pp.141─142
In October I returned to the States for leave. But in Washington I was ordered to turn around to accompany Nicholas Katzenbach, just made undersecretary of state, on an orientation trip to Vietnam. On McNamara's windowless KC-137, a converted tanker that could fly to Vietnam nonstop, I had the opportunity to show all the memos I'd brought from Saigon to my old boss, John McNaughton. I had the intense satisfaction of seeing John hand each one to McNamara as he finished it and watching them read it page by page. It was a long trip, and they didn't seem to have brought anything else to read. I always thought of that as high point of my bureaucratic career. Normally you never know if a boss had really read what you've written, let alone shown it to his boss. At one point McNaughton took me aside and made two requests, for himself and the secretary: Could I give him an extra copy of my trip report from Nau Nghia, and would I mind refraining from showing that and certain others to General Wheeler, in the interest of civilian-military relations?
On the return flight to Washington a week later, as we got near the end of the journey, McNamara called me to the rear of the plane, where he was standing with Bob Komer, who was still special assistant to the president coordinating Washington efforts on pacification. McNamara said, “Dan, you're the one who can settle this. Komer here is saying that we've made a lot of progress in pacification. I say things are worse than they were a year ago. WHat do you say?”
I said, “Well, Mr. Secretary, I'm most impressed with how much the same things are as they were a year ago. They were pretty bad then, but I wouldn't say it was worse now, just about the same.”
McNamara said triumphantly, “That proves what I'm saying! We've put more than a hundred thousand more troops into the country over the last year, and there's been no improvement. Things aren't any better at all. That means the underlying situation is really worse! Isn't that right?”
I said, “Well, you could say that. It's an interesting way of seeing it.”
Just then the plane began to go into a turn and the pilot announced, “Gentlemen, we are approaching Andrews Air Force Base. Please take your seats and fasten your seat belts.”
Ten minutes later we were on the ground, and McNamara was descending the ladder with us behind him. It was a foggy morning, and there was an arc of television lights and cameras set up at the spot the plane had taxied to. In the center of the arc there was a podium covered with microphones. McNamara strode over the mikes and said to the crowd of reporters, “Gentlemen, I've just come back from Vietnam, and I'm glad to be able to tell you that we're showing great progress in every dimension of our effort. I'm very encouraged by everything I've seen and heard on my trip ....”
(Secrets : a memoir of vietnam and the pentagon papers / daniel ellsberg., 1. vietnamese conflict, 1961─1975──unitd states., 2. pentagon papers., 3. ellsberg, daniel., DS558 .E44 2002, 959.704'3373──dc21, 2002, )
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