Nothing new under the sun or fresh challenges?
My first job after graduating was as a project engineer supporting a large machine shop. My longer serving colleagues had a habit of glorifying the old days. One such remark ran something like this: ‘We used to have much more skilled machinists in the old days. Old Fred - now he knew all the tricks. Use cigarette paper as a shim - that’s a tenth of a thou (thousandth of an inch); use the cardboard from a cigarette packet - that’s a thou. He knew ‘em all.’ What my colleague failed to appreciate was the problems this caused. Firstly, Fred might know how to machine some complex part, but what if the supervisor gave the same part to a different machinist to make - how do you ensure consistency given that Fred might not share his knowledge. Secondly, even if Fred did share his knowledge, it is probably not good for customer confidence to have management create process documentation listing such thinks as ‘how to use cigarette paper to do a better job’.
As a project engineer, I was helping deploy computer aided systems. These came with the promise that you could incorporate the skills of your best machinist into every repeat job. Was this an early example in the use of computers to help with understanding that has specific knowledge and allowing it to have wider use in the organisation?
These computer systems made substantial improvements in quality and efficiency. There was an unintended consequence, however. The machinists stopped thinking like machinists and became operators. They simply loaded the job into the machine and waited for it to finish. They stopped thinking about things like wear and tear on the cutter, was this machine performing correctly - in short they behaved in a dumbed down fashion. They suspended their critical faculties and did what the computer told them, even if something unexpected happened which could have disastrous consequences. Think sat-navs sending you the wrong way down a one way street and you get the picture.
The core philosophy behind Web 2.0 is peer review and approval of knowledge. So here’s the management challenge. When your organisation has got used to a Web 2.0 way of working, and has the best current knowledge and expertise merely a click away, how do you ensure your staff continue to think for themselves and don’t just follow their peer’s advice uncritically?
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