So this is part five of our analysis archeological dig into things we take for granted. As I like to say at the beginning of each of these videos, I recommend you view this set of videos in order as they do build on each other. However, they can be viewed independently. I found another artifact, a bunch of human design systems. These are everywhere, of course, some systems being used by millions of people. Here's the system many of us are familiar with.
But before I get into this example, I want to emphasize that I'm not making a political statement here. This is just a system design issue that can apply to many established systems. I came to the states many years ago and to become a citizen, I had to take a test. It was a very important test to me. So I started biting my nails and I think my face broke out in acne. I was given a booklet that describe the political system in the United States of America.
The booklet says In the form of government in the USA, is a representative democracy, a representative democracy having the principle of an elected person representing a group of people, as opposed to a direct democracy where the people vote on and policy initiatives directly. I can understand the reason for implementing a representative democracy in the 1700s. Because the implementation of a true democracy, one person, one direct vote, would have been quite difficult to design for such a large country. I mean, what implementation technology was available back then, because there wasn't a computer internet or public telephones or fax devices. There wasn't any public air transportation system, no freeways or good roads to travel to a location to vote on an initiative directly. Of course, they could have designed that direct democracy with what was available at the time.
For example, designing a federal Pony Express system. Each town could have had a reputable designated rider who carried the government initiative votes back and forth in a steel satchel? We could have had special government black horses with a dedicated lane, say with a diamond payday and a penalty if you used it for any other purpose. Maybe we could have called it the Federal Express lane or something. Okay, maybe that design could easily have been corrupted by robbers stealing votes along the way. Well, how about a design using trained carrier pigeons, where each person attaining adulthood was given two replaceable homing pigeons?
One died blue and the other died red of otter would release the one that represented their vote on a specific day of a vote, then a government official would count the pigeons as they arrived home in Philadelphia or Washington DC. Of course, then we would need laws against shooting political pigeons. We could have pigeon action committees to feed the pigeons with goodies on the journey to support democracy. Everyone would also be given free umbrellas. Guess Okay, maybe pigeons would not be a great design either. Of course the designers of the voting system could perpetuate an existing design of the dastardly crowd over the sea and create an equivalent of the Houses of Parliament House of Commons and the House of Lords.
The people of each community could send some Porsche let to live in the wonderful climate of Philly or Washington DC. But then that would be a representative democracy not really a true direct democracy. Of course, we would only need that design until better implementation technology came along, where everyone could make the non directly. Heck, as an ex programmer, I could write the code for the voting computer program. I think it boils down to one line of pseudocode an if statement. If this social security number or acceptable ID has already voted on the initiative, issue an error and investigate the problem.
Otherwise use the votes of selection to add one to for or against initiative. You can even easily write it in HTML Hypertext Markup Language. Notice I even know what the acronym means. There's also a special handshake that goes with it. Unfortunately, all systems tend to grow and become more complex as the years pass. I moved from San Francisco to another town in California, and then went to vote on the day of the general election.
They wouldn't let me vote something about I'd move to a different district. But I had a social security number and I was a citizen. Apparently not good enough. Oh, well, I'm sure it was for some good reason that I wouldn't understand. I walked away wondering who would go with the gods. So human systems get perpetuated?
Of course, all systems can be a significant problem for us as customers, especially form doesn't understand the politics behind the development of the system. Again, be careful of what you perpetuate. I'm going to go more into our human system archeological dig and how it relates to business issues, but we Before I do, I'll show you that I have a keen grasp of the obvious by stating some concepts that I want to use as a basic for the rest of the videos. The shortest distance between two points the straight line related that I want to adapt Newton's first law of motion to apply to a customer request flowing through an organization. the customer's request or impetus, like a body emotion wants to stay in motion through an organization until impeded by some resistance, ie a natural boundary. Next in a hierarchy, any high level partitioning or grouping will govern everything below it.
That's a quote from Robert perceives books. Next, historical boundaries will perpetuate themselves unless actively change as a quote from me, but I'm probably not the first to say it. And finally one of my favorite quotes, especially when talking about analysis and historical thinking, no problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world new data from Albert Einstein. Let's see how these obvious notions manifest themselves in the real world. tied in with human design systems.
I also found a human business work structure, which was founded many years ago, in fact developed and followed during the Industrial Age. There was this Scottish philosopher and author called Adam Smith, who wrote a book titled The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. Quite a significant date in the USA. In book one chapter one he wrote on the concept of the division of labor. English Bollinger, the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor seem to have been the effects of the division of labor, the separation of different trades and employments from one another. He then stated in countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improvement, what is the work of one man in a rude state of society, being generally that several in an improved one, I always like it when evocative adjectives like rude To use to make one's point, such as Do you like this terrible, disgusting car?
Or this fantastic streamline? Well, of course no one would want to live in a rude state? I don't think so. So Mr. Smith recommended creating many separate skilled jobs rather than one person with many skills. Of course, consider the typical workforce at the time as farm workers from the agricultural age. And what was the work day or week during the agricultural revolution.
I don't think it was a regular fixed time schedule. Remember the phrase make hay while the sun shines? I bet even the farm owner was out getting in the crops when they were ready to harvest and during the cold weather. If it was a stormy day, they probably use the other skills and worked in the barn or repair the equipment until the sun went down and they couldn't see anymore. We couldn't have that flexible schedule in a factory where the machines have to be operated in a workflow. People being at machines were now important in the industrial revolution.
Also, these things There was a vice president of the bomb or a senior VP at the pigsty, I don't think so. He was probably quite a flat management hierarchy on the farm. So coupled with the separation of skills in an industry, the flat hierarchy needed changing. Years later, along comes Frederick Winslow Taylor and his work the principles of scientific management, published in 1911. He was an American and called himself a human productivity consultant. He recommended the separation of management from workers and recommended multiple levels of management.
He conducted detailed time and motion studies on the work which was overseen by different managers. He is even repeated to a died with a stopwatch in his hand. So these two theories advocated the separation of jobs by scale and the formation of a management structure to match. At least that's what we should do in an industrial age. Of course, we wouldn't perpetuate Industrial Age concepts into an information age, right. Again, be careful what you perpetuate Lo and behold, on my dig, I found a computer system.
Lots of them actually. Following on from the ending of our previous topic. Let me ask a similar rhetorical question. Of course, we wouldn't perpetuate an industrial age human structure into information age computer systems, right? Remember, my keen grasp of the obvious statement, historical boundaries will perpetuate themselves unless actively changed. I'd like to extend that statement and that they can become historical boundaries.
To explain what I mean. I'm going to use one of my favorite slides from my business process analysis seminar. This example is taken from my own information systems career. If you're in the business world, you should relate to the example I'm going to use here. Otherwise, please view this example from what you experience sometimes as a customer. Here's what is thought to be a functional area in just about every organization is the accounting department.
People in this department get their jobs based on their accounting skill and experience. seem to be picking on the accounting department a lot in these videos. It's not intentional, as you'll see later. Anyway, his bill, he has an accounting degree and years of experience in his field. Now back in the 70s, the old data processing department looking for work say, we can automate this and help you do your job with a computer system will write a big batch computer system, batch all transactions up during the day and process them with the computer system in the middle of the night. By the way, these early batch computer programs tended to be in calcitonin monsters.
I wrote one that turned out to be the biggest program in the company I worked for a left the company to get away from maintaining it. So now I guess the batch computer system knows accounting logic and has accounting experience just as the accountant did. Wait a minute. That's not right. Any computer program can do accounting logic. And the longer a computer system runs doesn't mean it gets more experience.
Oh well. The age has arrived and online technology gets cheaper. So the computer Department says, we should put this online with an integrated network of terminals. But we don't have a big budget. So we'll just do a line for line conversion of the existing big batch programs to online programs. You won't know it's an old program structure, and you'll get fast response from the computer terminals.
Over there. The 90s arrive with a chance to bring in a new structure, but we have the year 2000 problem looming y2k. All resources get channeled into replacing the hardware and buying software packages to match the existing systems. So there won't be too much disruption. No new radical structures this time, please. Well, great.
The new millennium arrives, the internet takes off business department managers take control of their own information system needs. They say we've got to put all systems on the net, but I'm only using my department's budget for just my systems. Now customers get told they'll see strange messages like not on the server when trying to To accomplish in need with the systems on the internet worse when trying to sort out a problem, customers get told that's our policy and it's in our billing system now, so you can't change that. Now, you can replace this example of how human to computer structures get perpetuated with any classical department boundaries, such as order entry in new accounts, stock control, accounts receivable, or payables, general ledger, shipping and billing systems, etc, not just accounting. So historically, the introduction of new computer technology helped, but in the wrong way, they produce faster disjoint Industrial Age computer systems.
By the way, if you know someone starting a business, tell them not to fall into this trap of using old human and computer system structures. The point is that historical boundaries will perpetuate themselves unless actively change and can become what I call historical boundaries. Again, be careful what you perpetuate. Follow me on to the last video in this series, Part Six To continue our archeological dig, we'll see how we can change ourselves from industrial age systems, and how organizations can become customer focus with information systems. Or you can find out more about what I teach professionally by going to my website at www dot logical conclusions inc.com