Alexander Koptyakov
Applied Love
Engineer: So come on next time and tell us. I will remind you.
Writer: See you again, my friends!
06 Organization
Consultant: I think all the time about the ultimate foundations, how the World is really organized.
Engineer: An inquisitive mind…
Consultant: This is not only an idle interest. Only at the end of my life I don’t want to understand that I was going in the wrong direction, that I missed something important, when it’s too late.
Writer: How do you imagine this moment? The moment when you understand how the World works. A second before that you did not understand, and suddenly … You discovered the main law, you stood in the middle of the World and understood everything about it. The clock froze for a moment and… moved on. And the World went on. World didn’t even stop, World didn’t even notice that you understood something about it! And now you also have to live on.
Consultant: But I will already become different. And I am a part of the World, which means that at this moment the World will also change. The moment that separates “before” and “after”. For me and for the World. And if I change, then I will begin to change the World with greater awareness. As if I had been in a dark room before and moved slowly, bumping into objects, and then they turned on the light – and now I can quickly go where I need to, take what I need, rearrange things neatly.
Writer: The World is not a room. Imagine that the light was not turned on, but the sun rose. And you found yourself in the morning spring forest, or high in the mountains sparkling with snow, or on the shore of the endless ocean. What are you going to change there? And most importantly – why?
Engineer: He will start collecting garbage left there before him by other people :)
Consultant: Maybe I'll start. If I really see it, with all my being. You know how it happens: you look and do not see, you listen and do not hear. You get used to your little world, and the World passes by unnoticed. That is why our conversations are invaluable to me. You mark some important facets that I did not pay attention to before. Now, if I asked you to name one thing really important in this World from your point of view?
Writer: A human … "A human needs a human" as in Tarkovsky's "Solaris". Yes, you yourself are talking about this, about our communication and disputes. “Communication” – do you feel the semantics? Connecting into a community, into something in common. Well, or at least finding something in common. Without other people, without other parts, one cannot be either whole or happy. This is where I gradually begin to agree with the definition on the whiteboard, because people show love in communication. Why did Dostoevsky write a century and a half ago, but reads as if he were our contemporary? Because he wrote about humans! Many things change quickly and lose their relevance, but a human remains a human. It is important.
Engineer: Yes, many of our classics wrote about man and love. Maybe because in their time there were no "classics" and they read mainly biblical texts? After reading the Bible, I begin to see references to stories from the Testaments, analogies and paraphrases. I didn't notice this layer at all before, I missed it. It's like going to museums and looking at paintings, knowing nothing about the authors, about their life stories, about the time in which they worked. Yes, you will see the form, you will see the content, but the context will be completely absent. Try to go to the exhibition just like that, and then repeat the review with a guide and you will catch the difference. So, I am very grateful to the Writer for the recommendation to read the Bible. It was as if I received a bunch of keys from a thousand doors. But, returning to the important question. What do I see in the World when I look at it? Systems. Not even just systems, but cybernetic systems. Sorry, it is a professional deformation. Just don't confuse “cyber” with something related only to the Internet. I ran into this when we started working on the cybersecurity of industrial information systems. It was believed that a cyberattack was when the “bad guys” stole money from cards used to pay on the Internet. The very concept of "cyber" was introduced in the middle of the XX century by Norbert Wiener, the father of automation and cybernetics. The word “cyber” is Greek, meaning steering a sailing ship towards its intended goal in a situation where the wind and currents are constantly changing. Cyber is about control and communication, about control using feedback. Here you are driving, for example, on the road in a modern car, stuffed with electronics. Someone can intercept control remotely and that's it – the brakes do not work, the steering wheel does not obey, the speed is displayed incorrectly. This is not money from the card, here you would stay alive! Or another interesting example from a completely different area. Remember, we talked a lot about the cyberattack of Russian hackers in the US elections. Why a cyberattack? Just imagine: someone breaks into a computer and copies secret documents of one of the parties or a presidential candidate running in the elections. It would seem – a common theft. But if these documents are published, become widely publicized and, thanks to this, another candidate becomes president – this is already an influence on the management of a system the size of a country for several years! That is, a cyberattack is an attack on communication and control systems, whether it be control of a country, a car or a pacemaker. Do you remember the fire experiment? You can turn on the fire alarm and people will obediently leave the building. Isn't it a cyberattack? In general, in our modern world, it is no longer important who built the system, it is important who took over control of it! We have not been in direct contact with nature for a long time, with rare exceptions. In most cases, between us and nature, us and other people, there are various systems created by other people. And humans themselves are open dynamic cybernetic systems.
Consultant: So, what we have: humans and communication, cybernetic systems as prisms through which you can look at the World. My view is close to both of yours, but still different. I see organizational development everywhere.
During my twenty years of experience, I have worked in different organizations. First there was an organization with only three people. Then there was the regional organization. Then the national one. In the meantime, my wife and I started a family business with a dozen employees, which existed for five years before we sold it to our own employees. Now I work for a multinational company, a world leader in my field. That is, the experience is rich and varied, I have seen and felt a lot with my skin. Just before moving from a national company to a multinational one, I wrote that very book "Management for Dummies". Now is the right time to start writing "Management for Dummies 2".
Writer: Well, is there really a fundamental difference? People are working everywhere. It’s hard to believe that someone, simply by moving to a larger company, will start to perform twice as well.
Consultant: Yes and no. On the one hand, of course, it is not the size that matters, but the level of organization of Organization. A person with the same talents and dedication, moving to a more efficient company and doing the same as in the previous one, can receive much more compensation only due to the fact that the company as a whole has higher profits. On the other hand, it is the size of the organization that dictates the demand for the level of organization. In my book, I have listed various management theories, from Taylor's scientific to “system” and “process” approaches, and even “management by values”. Then I believed that all methods work, you just need to choose a specific method for a specific situation. But then I wondered why over the last couple of hundred years about a dozen management theories lost their effectiveness and gave way to new approaches? The answer lay on the surface – the size of the company. Organizations have grown and continue to grow in terms of coverage of the territory and, accordingly, number of employees. The XX century has become the century of mergers and acquisitions. And an organization of one hundred thousand people, distributed all over the world, cannot be managed in the same way as a company of one hundred people working in one building. Most organizations, once born, begin their journey of growth. They absorb other organizations or, failing to cope, collapse or are absorbed by others, more powerful. It is difficult for a kiosk to compete with a supermarket – a supermarket is better able to withstand the blow of any crisis than a kiosk. Plus, at large volumes, the cost of goods and services decreases, and efficiency increases.
Engineer: The strong eat the weak…
Consultant: The former youthful communist maximalism speaks in you! What can you do with reality? But, in fact, I have something to please you, not everything is so sad. To begin with, I would paraphrase – instead of "The strong eat the weak" it would be more accurate to say: "The more organized transforms the less organized." I will say more. From the height to which I climbed, absolutely amazing views of reality opened up. If you look at any global market segment, any industry represented globally, then you will see only a few large companies that have already acquired everything that could be acquired and rested against each other. Now they have similar services, and they compete with each other around the world, unable, as in the past, to simply absorb the competitor. Small local shopkeepers are not counted, and all more or less large local competitors have long been absorbed. And this is where miracles begin! The struggle for internal efficiency begins. And if earlier they demanded from employees – “Be the strongest, the fastest, the most powerful”. But now such leadership does more harm than good. And modern requirements look like the ten commandments “Respect corporate culture, do not steal, do not testify, love your colleague, but first love the Client!”. And these are not empty words. Without this, everything will fall apart to the extent that the old school management skills of leadership still work. Imagine two large companies A and B preparing to merge. Who from the old management of both companies will run the new company? Obviously, those who can manage an entire company of A + B size. I like the formula for organizational success from one of the management gurus, Ichak Adizes:
More and more companies are focusing on internal disintegration, which wastes resources and wastes energy on internal conflict and inefficiency. And if the increase in external integration, Dr.Adizes associates with the ability to realize the emerging opportunities, then the decrease in internal disintegration he associates with mutual trust and respect for each other in the organization. At the same time, Adizes calls ultimate integration as love. Doesn't it look like anything? :)
Engineer: It is very similar to my definition, if you take the organization as a whole, and people as living entities that interact with each other.
Writer: What does it mean to take people as living entities? And what else are they?
Consultant: Oh, believe me, this is not the case in organizations. Do you know what HR – Human Resources? Although in fact people, with the help of technology, of course, are not resources themselves, but transform resources into goods and services. For making a stick of sausage, a cow or a pig is a resource!
Engineer: Well, maybe when providing services, when people are wasting their time and energy, they are wasting themselves as a resource?
Consultant: In any case, the time of loners is long gone. Look around you, it is already impossible to find anything that would have been created by one person “inside and out”. Everything is the result of organized work. We live in a World of Organizations. I still found a moment when tolerance was in trend. And this is understandable – transnational companies expanded to more and more countries, which sometimes in the past or present had interstate or interethnic conflicts. How to remove internal corporate conflicts that increase internal disintegration? Tolerance was the answer. But tolerance is a passive state of suppression of aggression, rejection of the other. This is necessary, but not sufficient. It is more effective when employees not only do not conflict, but, on the contrary, care and help each other. Therefore, paradoxically, having overcome the stage of aggressive capitalism, large global corporations create almost “Heaven on the Earth”, simply because at this size of organizations, shareholders benefit from an increase in the level of love within the company and outside it.
Engineer: Don't you find your conclusions too romantic? Get out of yours and go to any other, not so global, organization in the neighborhood and I guarantee you will see a completely different picture.
Consultant: Change doesn't happen all at once. But for me the trend is obvious. Evolution, if you like. More organized organizations survive, their number decreases within one of the segments of the global division of labor, and these organizations become global, competing for the consumer, by and large, with several other equally large companies. The division of labor itself, that is, specialization, is, of course, growing. But this is not a division as a complete separation, but a division into effective parts that interact within the framework of an even more effective whole, thereby increasing the total degree of love, according to your definition! :)
Engineer: How he turned everything out. We went to “capitalist hell”, but will we come to “capitalist paradise”? How do you like that? Where is the world rolling? …
Consultant: It rolls because it has the shape of a ball :) And you can't do anything about it.
Writer: I'm not worried at all. There must be an Apocalypse according to the Scriptures, so we are rolling towards it. Before the second coming of Christ, there will be an Antichrist who will unite the World, but not with love, but with anti-love, since he is the “Anti-Christ”.
Consultant: On this positive note, I propose to stop today.
Engineer: I agree.
Writer: See you again, my friends!
07 Revolutions
Engineer: Last time you talked about the evolution of organizations, and I want to tell you on my fingers about the industrial evolution and about current technologies. Since you want to get to the bottom of the world order, you cannot do without understanding the current state of affairs in information technology.
Consultant: Just simpler, please, so that I can not only understand, but also retell to someone else.
Writer: I will, of course, listen. But not more. Where am I, and where is the industry…
Engineer: Do not worry, I will try to tell you simply and clearly. One could start from the moment when a person became erect, freed his hands and took a stick in them, but let's immediately move to the end of the eighteenth century, let's start with the so-called first industrial revolution.
Consultant: You're incorrigible. You promised to talk about evolution and immediately started with the revolution! :)
Engineer: Well, first of all, we are talking about the industrial revolution. And secondly, I believe that each of the four industrial revolutions that I will talk about is just a step in industrial evolution. It's just that evolutionary changes are happening slowly, but there are some areas where changes are happening quickly and on a large scale – these are revolutionary changes. So, the first industrial revolution is associated with the foundation of the first factories and plants in Great Britain and the transition from manual labor to machine labor, the use of the power of water and steam.
Writer: Was it then that “Luddites” appeared who broke machines, fearing that they would take all jobs away from people?
Engineer: Yes sir. But the machines were not abandoned. Tell me, are you ready to break your washing machine and go back to hand washing? I’m sure not. By the way, the washing machine is a good example to illustrate. It's like a small, well-automated plant in your home. The washing machine is supplied with electricity and water, and there is a drainage system. Chemicals are being loaded. Raw materials in the form of dirty raw materials are transformed into a product in the form of clean linen. Inside there are water level and temperature sensors. Some factories are not much more complex than washing machines.
Consultant: The analogy is clear. It turns out that progress has come and millions of women laundresses have lost their jobs. My wife will definitely not go on strike over this. :)
Engineer: A hundred years later, the next one happened – the second industrial revolution. Factories came to power, conveyors, division of labor, specialization and mass production.
Consultant: With the division of labor and its specialization, the quality and speed of each stage of production increases, but at the same time it becomes necessary to coordinate these stages. The sunrise of management comes at a time when divided labor needs to be combined!
Engineer: The third industrial revolution is already from the middle of the twentieth century, computerization and industrial automation. And now we have industrial revolution 4.0 – cyber-physical systems, smart factories.
Writer: I apologize, but it all looks like a marketing ploy. Of course, computers have become faster and smaller. “Wi-fi” has appeared. But somehow this does not attract a revolution. What is the fundamental difference between the third and the fourth revolution?
Consultant: Well, what's not clear here? Take a look at the whiteboard! Human cognized himself, as he realized he embodied himself in machines and moved on. He transferred muscles first – the first revolution. Then the beginnings of the nervous system appeared, the coordination of various organs – the second revolution. The third is that the person has transferred the computing brain to the machine. And now the fourth revolution – machines are already communicating with each other without a human, that is, they have consciousness! But do not worry about the fifth revolution happening, a human must understand his soul, but it is difficult to understand it… Especially the “Russian soul”! :)
Engineer: Nice. I can agree with the first three, but I would say that the distinguishing feature of the fourth industrial revolution is intelligence. Artificial intelligence, of course, is like artificial muscles, nerves and brains before that.
Writer: We have already gone through this. First, nanotechnology, now here is artificial intelligence! Smart everywhere! Smart refrigerator, smart home, smart city…
Consultant: Smart washing machine, smart factory…
Engineer: Well enough, enough already! Let me explain everything to you. I hope you still remember how we programmed for five years at the university? Listen to how everything changed over the next twenty years. With the beginning of the third industrial revolution, the first computer, the first controller, did indeed appear. And the profession of a programmer was very promising. Programs began to be used everywhere. But by a certain point, it became clear that it was ineffective to write a program from scratch every time. Working blocks accumulated, they were collected into libraries and, instead of programming, they were configured with blocks.
Consultant: I agree that in the past it took a lot of work to create a website. Now, in ten minutes, you can drag and drop frames, type in text, and voila – a great website!
Engineer: Of course, there is still room for programming, but the most interesting thing began with the advent of artificial intelligence! Someone wrote a program. From that moment on, it does not change. Wrote with an error – it will work with an error. Or the situation has changed – you need to rewrite the program, update. It is as if a person was born with only innate reflexes.
Consultant: But what about conditioned reflexes?
Engineer: Exactly! Man, and many other living beings, are not limited to innate reflexes. They learn from their experience, and action in each new situation is determined not only by what was “programmed” initially, but also taking into account the experience of previous situations. This is intelligence – changing behavior after learning from experience. Now, in the fourth industrial revolution, we have entered the era of adaptive machines. In this case Writer is right – if a technology over a hundred nanometers is not nanotechnology, and if the system is not adaptive, it does not learn from its own experience, it is not a “smart” system. But the product with the image of the brain sells for more!
Consultant: In short, the Writer! The doomsday of the machine uprising is approaching and leads us to your beloved Apocalypse! :)
Engineer: Fortunately, not everything is so fast. Why are pilots still sitting on airplanes, and operators in factories? Because man is still the most adaptive element of man-machine systems! Let's take the same washing machine. Who really washes – you or the programmer who put the program into the automatic machine?
Consultant: My wife washes.
Engineer: But I’ll argue here. Your wife loads laundry, powder and chooses the mode. So, the washing machine program does not yet understand what kind of laundry is loaded into it – linen, synthetics or cotton and, therefore, uses a person as an intelligent sensor that can determine this and transfers this information to the program by pressing buttons or turning knobs.
Writer: As I understand you, a person with his natural intelligence is still necessary for machines, but this is not for long?
Engineer: Yes, that is right. And, although the process is not fast, it is still. And the prospects can become scary. Here you should be afraid of not smart teapots. If you do not just remove a person from the machine, but replace natural intelligence with an artificial one, without prejudice to adaptability, then all restrictions on size, speed and environment of movement will go away with the person. Imagine for a second a combat military aircraft that can maneuver completely ignoring overloads!
Consultant: I warned you! But listen, did they come up with something like that to make the programs adaptive? Put another program inside that periodically overwrites the original?
Engineer: Not. Exactly as you said – they tried to copy a human. They made algorithms that learn when data passes through them. In fact, the ideas and algorithms have been ready for a long time. The required amount of data was not available. There was a computer, and the data was entered by the people manually.
Consultant: Human is the weak link!
Engineer: In this case, it turns out like this. But as soon as the Internet of Things appeared, that is, when machines began to communicate with each other without human participation, huge amounts of information began to accumulate, the so-called "Big Data", and it became possible to run this data through models and train them…