RDMillner’s Weblog

Before I step on my soapbox about this weeks readings, you need to know a bit about my background. I have leadership and project managment experience. I grew up in the Boy Scouts where I led other scouts on camping trips and hikes all over New York. For the project to become an Eagle Scout I had to manage people to complete my chosen project: building a bridge and natural trail in my hometown. One summer between college semesters I was a canoe guide in Northern Minnesota. People would come to my base, where I would lead them through places I had never been for up to two week trips. I also have never been in an ofice setting before, so my experiences may differ from things that occur in corporate America. Since all these roles involved direct, personal contact with people I feel more qualified to discuss Verzuh’s chapter on building high perfomance project teams than Lipnack and Stamps material on virtual teambuilding.

First of all, I feel that Verzuh is far too basic. I felt that things like posting a set of ground rules on the wall and the “active listening tips” are unnecessary if the involved people are past college. This is geared for corporate America, if these people don’t know how to listen or know the basic rules of office conduct why are they still employed? A specialized set of rules for the group I can understand, but “be prepared,” respect each other, “begin and end on time” are things that everyone should be following anyway. The list of decision modes at the end also falls into this category of too basic, by the time you’re a professional anything you should have a grasp on decision making methods.

I also disagree with how Verzuh described conflict. He seems to paint it as a completely negative thing. Sometimes conflict can be a good thing: it can motivate people to work harder it, motivate them to learn more and alert leaders to issues that the group is facing. I think that Verzuh glossed over this aspect to get to his conflict management strategies. Even good conflict needs to be dealt with, but first it needs to be recognized as a driving, creative force.

I felt that the rest of the article was a good overview of how to guide a team to success for the project. Verzuh was able to articulate a lot of things that I’ve internalized and don’t think about anymore. Reading them (this is actually one of the first leadership articles I’ve read outside of my Boy Scout Handbook) made me stop and think if I’ve done/do those things. I consider that a sucess of his article.

The single biggest thing I took away from Verzuh’s chapter is the box titled “Problem Analysis Steps.” I’ve never seen this particular methodology before. Usually, my problem solving strategy is something along the lines of this: run into problem, brainstorm solutions/ask an expert, rank solutions based on probabiliy of success/ease of implementation, try solutions until the problem is solved. While this kida-sorta mirrors Verzuh’s steps, the fact that he has developed an actual methodology is something I will probably refer to again.

Towards the end of her article “Sociable Media,” Judith Donath brings up the idea that new communication technologies enable people to keep in touch with more people. This topic is summed up with the sentence: “It is much less costly (in money, time and effort) to maintain personal ties via email than by paying personal visits.” Donath goes on to point out the challenge of staying in touch with more people is a challange that that the goal of sociable media is “to build tools to help people manage this complex personal social world.”

If thats the goal of sociable media I think it’s failing.

Technology allows me to keep in touch with more people, but it also allows me to avoid people just as easily. If I see an email and I don’t want to respond to it, I don’t have to. My cell phone (the only phone I use) has caller ID so I can choose who to talk to. I can hide behind an away message in AOL Instant Messenger. I have a Facebook account, but once I’ve accepted someone as a friend I never have to acknowledge them again. Theoretically, I’m in touch with hundreds of people. I regularily communicate (call, text, im, email) five people, that number includes my family.

So we have all this technology to keep in touch that nobody uses to keep in touch with. Why is this? Why does each new cell phone allow me to store more contacts if I don’t use them? And this isn’t just me being anti-social, only a few friends stay in contact from me. Ask yourselves this: out of all the people you can contact, how many do you stay in touch with?

Despite all this technology, we seem to have reverted to an older style of communication. In olden times, I understand that news traveled in gossip. When people got together they would pass around news about other people they knew. That news would then spiderweb out from that initial group of friends when those people gossiped to new people. Thats what I do. I call a friend who tells me about her best friend and her fiancee. I have half a dozen ways to contact both the fiancee and the best friend, I choose to get all my news from one source. I’m willing to bet this happens with everyone.

We’ve consolidated information enough that everything is in one place so we all save time. When did time become more important than actual communication between people?

Instead of making me thinking about the future, Ronfeldt and Arquilla’s article on networks and netwar made me think about the past. I like history enough to have minored in world history as an undergrad (I blame my father for this because he took the family to all sorts of historical places on vacations). What would have happened if network technologies had existed in the past?

Take Al Capone for example. This man ran the Chicago underworld and everyone knew it, it was just a matter of the police could gather enough proof to arrest him. He was the top of a pyramid of lieutenants, enforcers and minions. There was a clear chain of command. What if the Chicago underworld had known about Ronfeldt and Arquilla’s netwar organization? Then there would have been no figurehead, no central organization, nothing to bust.

Instead of a crime boss with a chain of command, Capone would have been a leader because he was the best at organizing people and evading police. The organization would not have been aimed at waging war with the police, instead it would have used the loose organizational structure to evade police and disrupt the lives of law abiding citizens. An an arrest been made, the criminal would not necessarily known of anyone else in the organization because the isn’t traditional chain of command to follow.

Ronfeldt and Arquilla point out that internet access is not essential. They point out that, especially in crimininal organizations, human messengers and couriers are essential. Internet access just provides another channel of communication. Feasibly, the Chicago underworld could have used this system to rise to success instead of being lead by Capone.

But we have the Internet and that changes things. Now every group, both good and bad, can have a global reach with a little bit of effort. This is happening in a time when America has lost popularity with the rest of the world. How will initiatives like the $100 laptop project, which aims to give computing power and net access to everyone in the world however poor, use Ronfeldt and Arquilla’s organizational structure? Will we see more good or bad groups?

I spent a lot V. Bush’s article, “As We May Think”, confused. I read the introduction and it talked about changing war science into peacetime science, since we are in a war I understood how this could be a problem. Then I read about the the specialization of science and the ability to retrieve quickly retrieve data, and again I understood the need for this. Then the article continued on about the need for smaller cameras, untethering researchers from their labs using radios and putting documents on microfilms and I became confused. Hadn’t we solved these issues with computers? Surely the idea that an entire library can fit into a matchbook isn’t new. Then I checked the date. Writing from 1946, Bush forecasted the technologies of the future incredibly well. But modern technologies have dwarfed even his wildest dreams.
After my experience with Bush, the first part of Engelbart’s “Augmented Human Intellect Study, Conceptual Framework” the first thing I looked at was the date. Knowing that this was proposed in 1962 gave me an immediate reference to the technology he was discussing. Engelbart’s idea is that the human memory is just like any other system. Therefore a logical approach to designing a way to improve it will pay off. Engelbart thinks that by rethinking the way we use learned language, artifacts and methodologies, the elements of communication, we can make human being more intellectually efficient.
Starting the third reading, Licklidder’s “Man-Computer Symbiosis”, I immediately checked the date. Then I laughed at his last name (it may be immature, but this material is rather dry and I’m doing whatever I can to make it more interesting). Licklidder wants humans and computers to depend on each other. He strives to point out that this is different than computers enhancing human’s natural features and artificial intelligence, where a computer thinks for itself. Licklidder’s ideas are limited by the 60′s technology, his technological hurdles of speed, ease of use and cost have been limited.
Each of these articles talks about future technologies. I originally thought we were closest to Licklidder’s view on the future. People depend on there technologies. Cell phones, Blackberry’s, email accounts, Facebook, Myspace, people need these things. But I’m not sure these things need use. Facebook and Myspace depend on people to grow while people depend on these things to keep in touch with friends. Then I realized that Bush’s ideas are pretty close too. We have achieved the miniaturization of data storage that he perceived.
But then I think we’re using Englebart’s ideas too. Internet usage has changed language. We’ve simplified it and, the computer generation, has made it their own. Aside from that these changes to language were created as more of a grass-roots progress as opposed to an engineers logical system, I think we’re closest to Englebart’s ideas.