appropriate technology & right sizing

In his TED talk, Steven Johnson talked about using appropriate technology for your target user.  He talked about using technology that people were familiar with and could fix, operate, teach about, and the like.

Plunking a machine built for one company in a specific city or country, won’t necessarily work somewhere else. Remove to a second world country and it’s another ball of wax. I love that phrase, my grandfather used to use it.

Steven specifically cites an example in Africa about medical x-ray equipment built with car parts.  Why car parts?  He says it’s because Africans are really good at keeping their old cars running.  If the x-ray machine had parts like a car, it’d be familiar enough to encourage their fixing, right?  It’s true.

Where else are they really good at keeping their cars running?

Mexico.

I visited Mexico for the first time in 1998.  Right away I noticed all the old model cars on the road. I actually recall saying out loud, “they really know how to keep their cars running.”  Are you designing equipment for Mexico?  Maybe listen to Steven’s talk again before your next design review.

Organizational systems can be similarly designed to fit the culture and size of a company.  What works for a 500 person organization will be a tad cumbersome for a 12 person operation.  I’m working on right-sizing a Quality Management System currently.  While it’s always a goal to minimize paperwork, it will be especially critical to minimize control and documentation for a team where each member wears many hats. 

This right sizing will start with leaner processes and combining of tasks to keep it as simple as possible.  That acronym didn’t catch on for nothing.

What in your job is really painful - paperwork or process wise?

Why it's so hard to do new things

Continuing my review of the 2007 MIT Management Conference, I listened to educator, Rebecca Henderson talk about why it's so difficult to make changes in a company.

Her words rang all too clear relative to a recent project I'm working on. If your company is bleeding, there are two things you can do:

1. blame the lazy people who work for you - after all, the last time you pushed them, they came through for you. (so the problem must be with them)
2. work really really hard so there isn't time to make decisions

There are really two theories Rebecca talks about and she's spot on:

The first one is: "There's a problem let's fix it"

The second says, "We have a problem, someone is screwing up, let's go beat them up"

The funny thing about the second theory is that (if it were even appropriate to use this option!) the wrong person is beat up.

If the problem is to be truly solved, we have to start looking at the first theory and make long lasting change.

I have two steps for you:

NUMBER ONE
Spend a very worthwhile hour listening:



NUMBER TWO:
Call me.

Down in Mexico

Down in Mexico things are different.

Down in Mexico, people are genuinely interested in who you are. It's also good to know that while extremely hard working, time means much less than it does in the midwest.

What does this mean to you?

Your Mexican colleagues might not show up to the meeting at the same time as you, nor complete that project as you requested - at the same time, alternatives to your expectations might be caused by how you've communicated such timing and information.

Maybe it's you.

Cultural differences run both ways and it's important to understand how to say something as much as what to say.