Mike Oliker wrote:
...
> A diverse organization would only be a virtue if everyone understands
> that it will only be partially coherent. What is that optimal
> coherence? If we make everyone know and agree to what everyone else
> is doing, we use up the bandwidth. If we have no internal
> communication or structure, why be one organization at all? One
> intuits a fractal, edge of chaos optimum in there, but where?
You've just given me an Aha! moment. For all the years working at
Sandia, I've been amazed at the ignorance displayed by people in one
department of things happening in other departments. Folks go their
entire careers without knowing what most other Sandians do. This
concept of sharing limited bandwidth to achieve optimum coherence is
exactly why these situations exist.
--
Ray Parks
[hidden email]
IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024
IORTA Department Fax:505-844-9641
<
http://www.sandia.gov/idart>
http://www.sandia.gov/idartPager:800-690-5288
Thanks, Ray. I used to consult for Alcoa, and found that my sponsors were
astonished by what I could get done. I just sat in my apartment and wrote
simulations, they spent nearly all their time in meetings, usually internal.
Maybe the thing about democracy and free enterprise is that they punish that
tendency. Maybe all organizations tend to become more and more inward
looking as time goes on unless threatened with death from outside. Perhaps
that explains the fate of the Soviet Union.
-Mike Oliker
PS: How do Sandia and Los Alamos avoid that fate? Is it the secrecy? I
used to work for a small company (Adaptive Optics Associates) which had been
acquired by United Technologies. Most of us took no interest in UT, and
knew nothing about what was going on there. Our boss did; he was groomed to
be a UT executive. When we were later spun off, he stayed with them -- he
knew more about UT than about AOA by then.
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