Much of the necessary knowledge to complete tasks is not written down but ‘stored’ in the organisation completing the tasks explicitly including the people actually doing it. If you’d remove all people from any larger project—ignoring that the machinery might decay in the meantime—no outsider could find out the proper way to get the project running in any meaningful time.
The question is if this phenomenon is a necessity out of some kind of principle or if it is a lack of discipline or something I haven’t thought of yet. I hope it is not the first because that is bad news for catastrophic events and restoring the former, more prosperous state.
Much of the necessary knowledge to complete tasks is not written down but ‘stored’ in the organisation completing the tasks explicitly including the people actually doing it.
I think this is a common case but not the only one.
The counter-example that came to mind is franchises. When you buy a franchise (e.g. a McDonalds) you do not only get a brand name, suppliers, etc. You get an explicit set of written-down business processes (the “three-ring binder” in Snowcrash terms). Part of the whole point of franchises is that you can “complete tasks” in a reasonable manner when starting from scratch, without any intangible institutional memory or knowledge in the heads of long-term workers.
I don’t know how explicit running a McDonalds is but this is a very interesting point. This lends credence to my belief that it is not out of some fundamental principle that necessary knowledge to run a plant is not written down.
I think it has to do with complexity limits. Running things by the book and solely by the book is possible only as long as the overall complexity is manageable.
I hope it is not the first because that is bad news for catastrophic events and restoring the former, more prosperous state.
Depends on the catastrophic event. One that destroyed the machinery but left most of the people alive isn’t hard to rebuild from, e.g., how Europe and Japan managed to rebuild after WWII.
Much of the necessary knowledge to complete tasks is not written down but ‘stored’ in the organisation completing the tasks explicitly including the people actually doing it. If you’d remove all people from any larger project—ignoring that the machinery might decay in the meantime—no outsider could find out the proper way to get the project running in any meaningful time.
The question is if this phenomenon is a necessity out of some kind of principle or if it is a lack of discipline or something I haven’t thought of yet. I hope it is not the first because that is bad news for catastrophic events and restoring the former, more prosperous state.
I think this is a common case but not the only one.
The counter-example that came to mind is franchises. When you buy a franchise (e.g. a McDonalds) you do not only get a brand name, suppliers, etc. You get an explicit set of written-down business processes (the “three-ring binder” in Snowcrash terms). Part of the whole point of franchises is that you can “complete tasks” in a reasonable manner when starting from scratch, without any intangible institutional memory or knowledge in the heads of long-term workers.
I don’t know how explicit running a McDonalds is but this is a very interesting point. This lends credence to my belief that it is not out of some fundamental principle that necessary knowledge to run a plant is not written down.
I think it has to do with complexity limits. Running things by the book and solely by the book is possible only as long as the overall complexity is manageable.
Depends on the catastrophic event. One that destroyed the machinery but left most of the people alive isn’t hard to rebuild from, e.g., how Europe and Japan managed to rebuild after WWII.