{"id":4820,"date":"2016-07-16T13:47:58","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T12:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=4820"},"modified":"2016-07-16T13:47:58","modified_gmt":"2016-07-16T12:47:58","slug":"fragmentation-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=4820","title":{"rendered":"Fragmentation Cost"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"figure_falling_with_arrow_17621\"<\/a>The late Russell Ackoff used to tell a great story. It goes like this:<\/p>\n

“A team set themselves the stretch goal of building the World’s Best Car. \u00a0So the put their heads together and came up with a plan.<\/em><\/p>\n

First they talked to drivers and drew up a list of all the things that the World’s Best Car would need to have. Safety, speed, low fuel consumption, comfort, good looks, low emissions and so on.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then they drew up a list of all the components that go into building a car. The engine, the wheels, the bodywork, the seats, and so on.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then they set out on a quest … to search the world for the best components … and to bring the best one of each back.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then they could build the World’s Best Car.<\/em><\/p>\n

Or could they?<\/p>\n

No. \u00a0All they built was a pile of incompatible parts. The WBC did not work. It was a futile exercise.<\/p>\n

\n

Then the penny dropped. The features in their wish-list were not associated with any of the separate parts. Their desired performance emerged from the way the parts worked together<\/em>. The working relationships between the parts were as necessary as the parts themselves.<\/p>\n

And a pile of average parts that work together will deliver a better performance than a pile of best parts that do not.<\/p>\n

So the relationships were more important than the parts<\/em>!<\/p>\n

\n

From this they learned that the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to degrade performance is to make working-well-together a bit more difficult. \u00a0Irrespective of the quality of the parts.<\/p>\n

\n

Q: So how do we reverse this degradation of performance?<\/p>\n

A: Add more failure-avoidance targets of course!<\/em><\/p>\n

But we just discovered that the performance is the effect of how the parts work well together? \u00a0Will another failure-metric-fueled performance target help? How will each part know what it needs to do differently – if anything? \u00a0How will each part know if the changes they have made are having the intended impact?<\/p>\n

Fragmentation has a cost. \u00a0Fear, frustration, futility and ultimately financial failure.<\/p>\n

So if performance is fading … the quality of the working relationships is a good place to look for opportunities for improvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The late Russell Ackoff used to tell a great story. It goes like this: “A team set themselves the stretch goal of building the World’s Best Car. \u00a0So the put their heads together and came up with a plan. First they talked to drivers and drew up a list of all the things that the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Fragmentation Cost”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15,17,23,28,35,38,40,41,42,43,45,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4n-chart","category-design","category-examples","category-history","category-metaphors","category-reflections","category-safety","category-sfqp","category-stories","category-how","category-why","category-what","category-teach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}