Information, Inventory and Knowledge
Toyota made the just-in-time style of
inventory management world famous: all the pieces came together exactly when
they were needed. Which sounds like common sense at first: after all, if the
pieces came earlier than they were needed, you had to find a place to store
them (that costs money and could lead to excess inventory); and if they came
later, well, you were going to be late. What Toyota really gets the credit for
is for having devised (and executed) a system that managed to achieve this in
real life.
Shane Parrish
points out that we’ve now taken the same just-in-time approach towards
information:
“We really seek out signal is when we
need it the most: right before we make a decision.”
Which of course can be very dangerous:
you act based on what you get your hands on instead of trying to get the big
picture. And you don’t have the time to reflect or analyze thoroughly.
On the positive
side, Parrish points out that:
“If we can’t connect the current
situation to something we already understand, we might reason that it is not in
our circle of competence and thus we shouldn’t be drawing conclusions. If we
can, however, connect it to something we previously understood then we’re less
likely to draw conclusions on the basis of “this time is different.”
To which I would
add: just-in-time information is the easy (lazy?) way. Or as Nick Carr’s put it:
“Knowledge seems such a drab thing beside
the fireworks of its simulation.”
When I read your mentioning Toyota which implemented "all the pieces came together exactly when they were needed", I appreciated it. Toyota could do it in Japan, where people have a mindset which ensures such things can be done. I don't thing other nations would dare to venture into that kind of thing - if at all, Germany may be able to work it out that way, but even they would not prefer it.
ReplyDeleteI pondered over your point, “We really seek out signal is when we need it the most: right before we make a decision”. For decision making data/information are no doubt required. Strangely it is not the whole thing. I know about people who zero in on decisions, often right and sometimes wrong too, fairly quickly (what I mean is without going on vacillating). They are of course not the same as those who take rash and not-contemplated decisions. I also know people who are better at vacillating than decision making. And, for all their checking, re-checking and demanding more data and all, their decisions taken after all the hullo-bullo are not any wiser than those taken by "decisive" people. There is something intuitive about the decision making process for one thing, there is also a factor of inner strength (courage or whatever you other term one may think of) which guides for another.
Finally, even vacillating people are not such a poor lot. Really pitiable people are those who cannot quit worrying after decisions are made, or, who cannot come out of the rut of non-stop-regrets when some decisions go wrong. Poise is all about facing the consequence of one's decisions. It requires "manliness" (I mean by that word 'the ability of accepting oneself and facing the outcomes of one's decisions without going into blame game' I do not mean any gender orientation when I use the word. Women are equally capable of the same quality of inner strength).
These kind of things cannot be supplied by data and information.