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The use of tools
brings with it a whole series of other issues. A hammer, a
screwdriver, a glue gun, a biscuit joiner, and a dovetail jig are all tools
that address the problem of joining pieces of wood together. Each has an
approach to the problem (a method, or even a philosophy), and mixing the tools
an methods doesn’t work (a biscuit joiner will not drive screws, and a hammer
doesn’t glue things). Thus, whether I choose an approach and then the tool, or
a tool and then the approach, the decisions are not independent. Sometimes
tools can be used for purposes other than that for which they were designed – a
screwdriver makes a useful pry bar at times, and I have some tools that *look* like screwdrivers that are really
paint stirrers. The amount of time,
effort, energy, and money that I am willing to invest in finding, acquiring,
and learning to use a tool involves many issues related to the task that I am
trying to accomplish – how many times do I need to repeat the task, am I doing
this for fun or for profit, how important is the specific task at hand, how
soon does it need to be done, etc. It also involves some issues that are not
directly related to the task – pride of workmanship, craftsmanship, degree of
elegance, desire to learn specific techniques, interest in the methods for
their own sake, etc. A tool that helps
accomplish a task that has no interest for me is an uninteresting tool, no
matter how well suited it might be to the task it addresses. I am not
interested in tools for making violins unless I am engaged in making violins. Once I decide upon
an approach to a task, and that I do want to do the task, the tools that I
choose can make a difference. A good screwdriver is usually better than a cheap
one, and powered screwdriver is great for those tasks for which it is suited.
The suitability of a tool is then measured by the degree to which it
facilitates the task I want to accomplish. It is possible for a tool to be so
ill-suited that it actually makes the task more difficult than not using it. Powered
screwdrivers have to be of a certain quality and power before they become
useful at all compared to an unpowered screwdriver. Some normal screwdrivers
are of such poor quality as to be nearly useless for their intended purpose. Sometimes a tool
makes it possible to do things that I have never been able to do before in any
way, and I sometimes don’t know whether the task is even worth doing much less
having a tool for – digital cameras and color printers come to mind. We never
used to take pictures, and my wife has several rolls of undeveloped film that
are so old that the technology needed to develop them exists only is specialty
photo labs. Since we had never been able to print in color, we had no idea
whether it was anything we cared to do. When the cost of ink jet printers
dropped low enough to make one worthwhile as an experiment, we were able to do
color printing, and found out that it was very nice to have, sometimes. We
still print far more black and whit than color. There are perhaps
hundreds programs to manage todo lists I do not use them because none of them
solves any of my problems with todo lists, and my interest in actually using
todo lists is low enough that there will have to be better tools and approaches
than any I have seen before I thing that the tools is useful to me. Much of
what I do doesn’t require anything fancy for lists. Mostly we just remember
what we want to do. Sometimes we write a list on paper, and when things get
tight enough we will put a list into a PDA. None of the tools do a good job of
managing tasks the way I want to manage them, and I haven’t felt enough need
for a support tool to invest the time in writing one. Tools for knowledge
management are no different than any other tools in this regard. Most
explanations of what knowledge management is do not connect with any task that
people recognize that they want to accomplish. As with me and todo lists, the
task is not important enough to warrant doing anything special to accomplish it.
As with color printing, most will not know how valuable the tool can be until
they try it. However, the suitability of a tool depends on the degree of
interest in the task, so many people are not willing to invest much effort in
doing knowledge management under any definition, since there is no apparent
demand for it – they have no screws to drive and so they see no benefit to
having a really excellent screwdriver that they would then have to learn how to
use. Tools for
collaboration have another hurdle in that they require several people to agree
to use them. A telephone or a fax machine is of little use if you have the only
one in town. A word processor can produce printed documents better than using a
typewriter (sometimes), so it doesn’t matter which one I use. If I wish to
exchange documents electronically, however, having a technologically superior
tool that produces superb documents that nobody else can read doesn’t benefit
me. If the way I work
currently satisfies my employer (I get paid, I get raises), and is that same as
the way everybody else around me works, changing that is of very low priority.
Nearly everyone knows that there are better ways of working than the ones they
are using, but the incentive to use them has got to become greater than the
tendency toward inertia by enough to make the expenditure of energy worthwhile.
If I were to decide that I *really*
needed and wanted to use todo lists, I would find some way to use some tool or
tools to help with the task, but until then, the tools will have to become a
lot closer to the way I would like them to work before they interest me. As the maxim goes,
some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, some people
wonder what happened, and other people are unaware that anything has happened. With good tools it
may be possible to move a few people near the top of each group into the bottom
of the group above. Barriers to participation can move people down in the list. So far as a OHS /
DKR is concerned, we have the same sort of spread. Some people will work hard
to make any tool work for them, others will try and give up while wondering at
those who learn to use the tools successfully, and others will never become
aware that there are such tool, nor care because the tools address tasks in
which they have no interest. Everyone who
attempts to institute a new order of things is faced with the problem of
getting others to realize that there is any merit in the new order. When the
fax machine was first introduced, it flopped because people simply couldn’t
understand why they should want messages delivered faster than the next day. When we discuss the
building of tools for knowledge management, collaboration, and mass
participation, we cannot discuss the tools or their features apart from the
methods that those tools or features use to address the problem, and the views
of those who may be willing to use the tools. Every set of features, methods,
and investment levels (time, effort, energy, learning) affects which people
will be interested in the tool. Some early adopters will use anything just
because it is there, enthusiasts will make use of complex tools, but in order
to bring the mass of late adopters on board, the tools must be sufficiently low
in entry cost and ease of use to justify what is only a casual interest in the
uses of the tool itself. Look at such things as radio, which went from nearly
requiring an engineering degree to being an appliance that can be used by
anybody. Not only do we need
to build tools, we need to evolve the methods and approaches on which to base
those tools. We then need to convey to people why the problem is important (to
them), and how the tools can make it easier, or in some cases even possible. Thanks, Garold
(Gary) L. Johnson |