Automated Detachment?

An acquaintance of mine just bought one of those heavy-duty slide rules in a leather case. I've not seen it but it sounds like the slide rules I always wanted when I was in high school. The TI 30 had just come out about that time and had fast, accurate calculations for addition, subtraction, multiplication AND division!

But I still wanted a really good slide rule in a leather case. Really. Mine were always the plastic kind. I still have one or two. But, that $130 calculator we bought my daughter last week for “integrated math” in high school blows the darn thing away. That said, though, there's something, well, stable or reassuring about "mechanically" manipulating the log scales as opposed to the impersonal and detached button-pushing on a calculator. It seems as more of an art in which you become engaged and actually participate. You have to put some of yourself into the answer. It requires you to understand the logic and to use some piece of your brain to get your answer. It's engaging. "Eyes attached to a brain" as one of my colleagues has said. The calculator though fast, accurate and convenient, somehow cheapens the process.

That seems to be the problem with so much of the work I do today. Infrastructure managers are looking to take the thought out of building and maintaining and improving the processes used to manage the infrastructure and support business needs. They are looking for easy templates, quick hits that will yield drastic improvements with minimal investment, planning or even a modicum of thought. This is the reason we use a RACI chart for all our project plans, implementation roadmaps and process architecture designs. We need to force managers to think through what they want to accomplish, to take ownership and responsibility and to be accountable for the results. There’s a problem with accountability and a resistance to taking the time to understand the drivers of good performance. Managers often take actions that impact the productivity and efficiency of their operations with no more thought than they might use when they enter variables into a calculator. Just as we push the buttons on our calculators and wait for the “correct response to an infinite level of accuracy” infrastructure managers detach themselves from the structures, drivers and variables that make up their operations and look outside for a solution that will magically transform their environment. We only ask that they engage themselves in the process and actively participate in the results. I miss the power and satisfaction I felt as I manipulated the scales on my slide rule.