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changing it according to functional capabilities-and vice versa. Deciding that the company is wasting too much money on dupli- cated efforts and thus moving to a more centralized mode. Ten years later, we want to encourage entrepreneurship and we move back to decentralization. Almost every big company is oscillating, every five to ten years from centralization to decentralization, and then back again."
"Yeah," says Bob. "As a president of a company, when you don't know what to do, when things are not going well, you can always shuffle the cards-reorganize." Mockingly he continues, "That will do it! This reorganization will solve all our problems!"
We stare at each other. If it weren't so painfully true, we might laugh.
"Bob," I say at last. "This isn't funny. The only somewhat practical ideas I had in mind for what I should do as the new division manager were all based on reorganizing the division."
"Oh, no," they all groan.
"O.K. then," and I turn back to the white board, which is not so white any more. "What is one supposed to do with this pile of colored shapes, except to arrange them in some order? Dealing directly with the pile is obviously totally impractical. Arranging the facts according to some order, classification, must be the first step. Maybe we can proceed from there in a different way than writing reports or rearranging the company, but the first step definitely must be to put some order into the mess."
As I continue to look at the board, a new question starts to bother me; "In how many ways can one arrange the assembled facts?"
"Obviously, we can arrange them by color," Lou answers.
"Or by size," Stacey adds.
"Or by shape." Bob doesn't give up on his suggestion.
"Any other possibilities?" I ask.
"Yes, of course," Ralph says. "We can divide the board by an imaginary grid and arrange the shapes according to their coordi- nates." When he sees our puzzled looks he clarifies, "It'll give us the ability to construct many different arrangements based on the shapes' relative position on the board."
"What a great idea," Bob says sarcastically. "You know what, I'd rather use the dart technique-throw a dart and start arrang- ing the shapes according to the order in which we nail 'em. All
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these methods have just as much meaning. At least my last sug- gestion offers some satisfaction."
"O.K. fellows," I say firmly. "Bob's last suggestion has really clarified what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with the fact that we haven't got any idea of what we're doing. If we're just looking for some arbitrary order, and we can choose among so many possibilities, then what's the point in putting so much effort in collecting so much data? What do we gain from it, except the ability to impress people with some thick reports or to throw the company into another reorganization in order to hide from the fact that we don't really understand what we're doing? This ave- nue of first collecting data, getting familiar with the facts, seems to lead us nowhere. It's nothing more than an exercise in futility. Come on, we need another way to attack the issue. Any sugges- tions?"
When nobody answers, I say, "Enough for today. We'll con- tinue tomorrow-same time, same place."
"Well, anybody got anything good, any breakthroughs?" I try to start the meeting off as cheerfully as possible. It's not ex- actly how I feel; I spent the whole night tossing in my bed, searching for any opening, which I never did find.
"I think that I have one," Stacey speaks up. "Not exactly a breakthrough, but..."
"Wait," says Ralph.
Ralph interrupting. That's new.
In an apologetic tone he explains, "Before we go off on a different angle, I'd like to return to where we were yesterday. I think we were too hasty in our decision that classification of data can't lead to something good. May I?"
"Sure," Stacey says, almost in relief.
"Well," Ralph fidgets, apparently uncomfortable, "as you know, or maybe you don't, I minored in chemistry in college. I don't know much about it, but one story stuck in my mind. Last night I looked back at my notes from class and I think you'll find it interesting as well. It's a story about a remarkable Russian named Mendeleev, and it happened less than one hundred fifty years ago."
Noticing that he grabbed our attention, he becomes more confident. Ralph is a family man and has three little children, so he's probably used to telling stories.
"Right from the start, in the days of ancient Greece, people postulated that underlying the phenomenal variety of materials there must be a simple set of elements from which all other sub- stances are composed."
As he gets into his story his voice becomes rich with under- tones.
"The Greeks naively assumed that the elements were air, earth, water and..."
"Fire," Bob completes the list.
"Correct," says Ralph.
What a wasted talent. He's a real story teller, I think to my- self. Who would have suspected it?
"Since then, as you know, people have proven that earth is
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not a basic element but actually composed of many different more basic minerals. Air is composed of different types of gases, and even water is a composition of more basic elements, hydro- gen and oxygen. The kiss of death to the naive Greece approach came at the end of the eighteenth century, when Lavoisier showed that fire is not a substance but rather a process, the pro- cess of attachment to oxygen."
"Over many years, out of the chemists' mammoth work, the more basic elements emerged and by the middle of the nine- teenth century, sixty-three elements had been identified. The sit- uation actually resembled our colored board. Many circles, rec- tangles, stars, and other shapes, in many colors and sizes filled the area with no apparent order. A real mess."
"Many tried to organize the elements but no one succeeded in offering anything that was not immediately dismissed as a fu- tile arbitrary exercise. It got to the point that most chemists gave up on the possibility of finding any generic order and concen- trated their efforts on finding more hard facts regarding the com- bination of the elements to create other, more complicated mate- rials."
"Makes sense," Bob remarks. "I like practical people."
"Yes Bob," Ralph smiles at him, "But there was one profes- sor who claimed that in his eyes it resembled dealing with the leaves while nobody had found yet the trunk."
"Good point," says Lou.
"So this peculiar Russian professor who, by the way, taught in Paris, decided to concentrate on revealing the underlying or- der governing the elements. How would you go about it?"
"Shape is out of the question," Stacey says, looking at Bob.
"Why? What do you have against shapes?" Bob demands.
"Out of the question," she repeats. "Some of the elements are gases, some are liquids."
"Yeah, you're right." Being Bob he continues, "But what about color? You like colors, don't you? Some gases have colors, like green chlorine, and we can say that the others have transpar- ent colors."
"Nice try," Ralph says, ignoring their apparent attempt to ridicule his story. "Unfortunately some elements do not have a decisive color. Take pure carbon, for example. It appears as black graphite, or more rarely as a sparkling diamond."