Part 6 (2/2)

Let's look at the recent work of Jeff Hawkins, an engineer who invented the Palm Pilot and founded Handspring, and who has spent the last several years becoming an expert in the study of the human brain, especially the neocortex.

While his new company, Numenta, focuses on mimicking the behavior of the neocortex with software, Jeff spends much of his time on the road discussing his views on how the brain works. He presents to audiences as diverse as high schoolage students at New York's Juilliard School and neuroscience professors at the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology.

Regardless of who he is talking to, Jeff gives essentially the same speech, but how he succeeds in getting his various audiences engaged is that he varies the level of simplicity versus elaboration to match the expertise of his listeners. Jeff begins his talks by showing one of two drawings of how the brain works, one for lay audiences and one for the experts. The simple picture is composed of two boxes, thirteen arrows, and eleven words, and describes conceptually how our brains process incoming information.

Hawkins's second drawing is also composed of boxes, arrows, and text... just a lot more of them. This version is the one that Jeff shows when talking to neuroscientists, PhD's, and other experts. Although conceptually the same as the first drawing-the same components, the same relations.h.i.+ps, even the same shapes-this drawing scares off anyone not already an expert in brain science. At the same time, Jeff needs this drawing as his introduction when addressing the experts because if he doesn't show something this elaborate, they won't believe that he knows what he's talking about.

The amazing one- sided Mobius strip: a perfect example of something simultaneously simple and complex.

How the Brain Works: This is the picture Jeff Hawkins uses to introduce general audiences to his ideas.

The most interesting part of this whole story is that by the time his presentation is over, Jeff has shown both audiences-experts and newbies-both pictures. For the lay audience, seeing the wildly complex drawing after they understand the basics of how the brain works is amazing. And the neurobiologists and PhD's get really excited by Jeff's simple drawing because once they believe he knows what he is talking about, they find the drawing refres.h.i.+ng.

How the Brain Works: This is the drawing Hawkins shows to scientists and PhD's.

QUESTION 2: QUALITY OR QUANt.i.tY?.

Pilots come in two types: those who fly by the seat of their pants and those who fly by the numbers. The early days of aviation were dominated by the first type-pilots feeling their aircraft's position and orientation through their b.u.t.ts' contact with the seat. We can think of them as ”qualitative” aviators, experts at guiding their aircraft by experience, instinct, and intuition.

The second type of pilot flies in a completely different way. By-the-numbers pilots know that facts, data, and the monitoring of multiple precise measurements keep them in the air. Because these pilots know that the continuous interpretation of measured alt.i.tude, heading, airspeed, position, and orientation is what keeps them alive, we can think of them as ”quant.i.tative” aviators.

It's a rare pilot who can fly both ways, but when Apollo 11 made the first landing on the moon in 1969, that's exactly what Commander Neil Armstrong had to do. Just above the lunar surface and with only seconds of fuel remaining for him to land, Armstrong-considered among the most by-the-numbers astronauts in NASA-saw a pile of boulders littering the planned landing spot. He did what any wide-awake driver would do when a pothole appears just ahead. He stomped on the gas and drove by the seat of his pants. After finally touching down safely on the moon's surface, Apollo 11 Mission Control could only say, ”You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

The next time we land on the moon, Mary ”Missy” c.u.mmings is going to make sure it won't be anywhere near that exciting. Not that Missy isn't used to exciting landings. As one of the first women naval aviators to be cleared for combat flight, Missy has landed her A-4 Skyhawk countless times on tossing aircraft carrier decks. Now that she runs MIT's Humans and Automation Lab, she gets the chance to put her academic background in systems engineering and her firsthand piloting experience into practice: Her lab is designing the visual displays that the next lunar astronauts will use when they land on the moon, tentatively scheduled for 2013.

The eyes of astronauts in the 1960s had to move quickly across several differently configured instruments, burning through many ”cognitive cycles” just to figure out which way they were going.

As Missy puts it, ”As instrumentation designers, our biggest challenge is deciding how much information not to show, and how to trick people into perceiving what we most want them to see. We do this through multivariate instrument optimization, which is a fancy way of describing the process of layering many numeric visual inputs together to create a single, rapidly perceived qualitative display.” In other words, Missy's challenge is to find a visual way to merge seat-of-the-pants and by-the-numbers flying.

While 1960s-era Apollo astronauts' eyes had to jump repeatedly across many instruments to get a sense of situational awareness, the goal of Missy's team's new VAVI (Vertical Alt.i.tude and Velocity Indicator) is to provide immediate visual cues that are both numerically precise and convey directional information. Her solution was a completely new instrument with ”waving arms” that help make astronauts feel visually whether they are going up or down while simultaneously providing the critical numeric readouts necessary for pilots to know exactly where they are and how fast they are going.

Her team has tested their VAVI in a U.S. Marine Corps Harrier Jump Jet with great success, and is looking forward to pus.h.i.+ng it out into the commercial aviation market. Even if NASA doesn't end up heading back to the moon for a long time, Missy is pleased with what her team has accomplished. By creating a working prototype of a single dashboard instrument that provides both qualitative and quant.i.tative information, they have learned much that can be applied toward the design of business management control panels that make today's digital dashboards look like leftovers from the early days of flight.

Missy's team's new VAVI design relies on ”waving arms” to help astronauts visually feel their rate of ascent or descent.

QUESTION 3: VISION OR EXECUTION?.

Sometimes the most important message a business audience can hear from its leaders is that ”we know where we're going.” Other times, all the audience needs to hear is that ”we know exactly how we're going to get there.” This is the difference between vision and execution, and whichever message is more important, it is often best heard through the eyes.

In 1992, when the soon-to-be-appointed chairman of the consulting giant Bain & Company needed to deliver a rousing message to the foundering company she was about to take over, she knew that unless she was able to immediately articulate and share a new vision for the company, poor morale would bring the once-proud firm to its knees. It was clear-eyed-vision time, and Orit Gadiesh believed she had the right vision to share.

Orit's husband was an avid sailor and frequently spoke with her about the joys and terrors of sailing solo. Among other stories of the sea, he told her about the earth's two north poles-something unknown to most people but a matter of life and death to sailors. There is magnetic north-which is easy to find because the needle on a compa.s.s always points toward it-and then there is true north, which is the actual point around which the earth spins. While the position of true north never varies, magnetic north moves over time and s.h.i.+fts position as you sail around the globe, which means that if a sailor follows only his compa.s.s, he will sooner or later get lost and wreck.

Orit saw parallels in that story with her own company, and realized that in the world of business consulting-a world influenced by short-term market changes and faddish business thinking-this model of two norths also held true: Consultants who steered only by the s.h.i.+fting compa.s.s of the market and fads would founder, while those who tacked to the true north of their fundamental business beliefs and culture would succeed.

As she prepared for the speech of her lifetime, this image kept coming to her mind, and she decided to gamble on it. So in August 1992, at the worst of the firm's woes, Orit got up to give her ”no numbers” speech, a no-bull talk intended to establish pride and direction through the clear articulation of clear ideas. Using the simple visual of a compa.s.s pointing not straight up at magnetic north, but slightly toward the side-toward true north-Orit spoke about the need to not be swayed from the firm's founding principles.

Orit received a standing ovation and became the only woman ever to head a major consulting company. Under her direction, the company grew 25 percent in the next five years, doubling its geographic reach. Today Bain is again considered the most innovative of the major consulting firms, and the dedication of the company's consultants is legend-and the company's logo is a compa.s.s pointing to true north.

The opposite of the ”where we are going” statement of vision is the ”how we are going to get there, step-by-step process” chart. Bain & Company, like any business that plans and delivers complex projects, lives by timelines and Gantt charts. Designed in the 1920s by Henry Laurence Gantt, a mechanical engineer who became one of the first of a new breed of business thinkers called management consultants, the Gantt chart is often considered one of the most important project management breakthroughs of the twentieth century.

The Bain & Company prototype logo: a compa.s.s pointing not to magnetic north, but to true north.

A Gantt chart is really nothing more than a bar chart laid on its side, with the length of each bar representing how long a specific task will take to complete. What makes a Gantt chart useful in showing how to get to a successful project outcome is that it visually shows the steps that need to take place, represents those steps in order, and clearly ill.u.s.trates how any one step is dependent upon others.

Today, business software packages generate Gantt charts so easily that it is difficult for the modern consultant, project manager, technical architect, or builder to imagine a time when such visual representations didn't exist. Used on every sort of project from the Hoover Dam construction in the 1930s to the moon-landing program of the 1960s to virtually any major technology project today, the Gantt chart has stood the test of time as the way to show not where we're going, but how we're going to get there.

QUESTION 4: INDIVIDUAL OR A COMPARISON?.

Herb Kelleher was a lawyer from New Jersey who decided that the big open s.p.a.ces of his wife's native Texas looked like a good place to set up business, so he packed up the family and headed to San Antonio.

One afternoon in 1967, Kelleher was sitting at the prestigious St. Anthony Club, helping his client Rollin King finish up the paperwork that would close Rollin's failed regional airline. But Rollin wasn't through with the airline business: He picked up a napkin and sketched a triangle on it. As he wrote SAN ANTONIO, HOUSTON, and DALLAS on one of each of three points, Rollin explained another crazy airline idea to Herb-an idea that four years later became Southwest Airlines.

Rather than running a small airline that serviced small towns, why not run a small airline that serviced big cities-the three biggest boomtowns in Texas, in fact? Because it flew to only three cities, the airline would not come under the regulation of the Texas Civil Aeronautics Board, thus freeing it to financially operate pretty much as it pleased. And by flying to Dallas's otherwise deserted Love Field, it would offer a far easier commute for Dallas-based business travelers.

Texas's most famous napkin: Herb Kelleher and Rollin King's sketch that started Southwest Airlines.

Southwest legend says that Herb agreed with Rollin on two things: first, that the idea was crazy, and second, that the idea was brilliant. On its own, their simple map ill.u.s.trated the fundamental operating principles of the company that Herb and Rollin agreed to start that evening: fly short routes between busy cities, avoid hubs, and where possible fly into smaller, secondary airfields. One napkin; one good idea; one profitable airline.

But where that napkin really made an impression was when it was compared to the route maps of the big airlines of the day-American, Continental, and Braniff. Seeing them now side by side shows even more clearly why this plan was destined to succeed.

Perhaps it's not surprising why Southwest's plan worked: When compared to its compet.i.tors' routes, it looks like three strokes of genius.

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