Reconciling our analog nature with our digital desires
I'm trying to reconcile our analog nature with our desire for order. I'll call it our digital desires, how we want things to be simple. Its described in some great books
Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order, , Being Human: the Search for Order and John L. Casti's "Searching For Certainty: What Science Can Tell Us about the future" though as Nicholas Nassim Taleb points out we are "Fooled by Randomness"http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com (review to follow)
Donald Norman points out
The world is not neat and tidy. Things not only don't always work as planned, but the notion of "plan" itself is suspect. Organizations spend a lot of time planning their future activities, but although the act of doing the planning is useful, the actual plans themselves are often obsolete even before their final printing.
and illustrates with a practical example
The United States Navy has a formal, rigid hierarchy of command and control, with two classes of workers -- enlisted crew and officers -- and a rigid layer of formal rank and assignment. There are extensive procedures for all tasks. Yet in their work habits, especially in critical operations, rank seems to be ignored and crew members frequently question the actions. Sometimes they even debate the appropriate action to be taken. The crew, moreover, is always changing. There are always new people who have not learned the ship's procedures, and even the veterans often don't have more than two or three year's experience with the ship: the Navy has a policy of rotating assignment. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? Isn't the military supposed to be the model of order and structure? But wait. Look at the outcomes: the crew functions safely and expertly in dangerous, high-stress conditions. What is happening here?
So why does drives for process efficiency come from. If Druckers idea that it ain't the people that are broken its the process is true then we improve the process, but processes are limited without smart people. So how do we build adaptable processes and systems relying on smart systems. In our drive to build better processes have we missed much of the point?