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."
"I prefer diamonds," Stacey jokes.
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We all laugh, then responding to Ralph's gesture I give it a
try. "We probably have to look for a more numerical measure.
This way we'll be able to arrange the elements without being
criticized for subjective preferences."
"Very good," says Ralph. He's probably mistaken us for his
kids. "What do you suggest as a suitable measure?" he asks me.
"I didn't take chemistry," I reply, "not even as a minor. How would I know?" But since I don't want to offend Ralph I continue, "Maybe something like specific gravity, electrical conduc-
tivity, or something more fancy like the number of calories ab-
sorbed or released when the element is combining with a
reference element like oxygen."
"Not bad, not bad at all. Mendeleev took basically the same
approach. He chose to use a quantitative measurement that was
known for each element and which didn't change as a function of
the temperature or the state of the substance. It was the quantity
known as atomic weight, which represents the ratio between the
weight of one atom of the given element and the weight of one
atom of the lightest element, hydrogen. This number provided
Mendeleev with a unique numerical identifier for each element."
"Big deal," Bob can't hold himself. "Exactly as I suspected, now he could organize all the elements according to their ascending atomic weights, like soldiers in a line. But what good does it
do? What practical things can possibly come out of it? Like I said,
children playing with lead soldiers, pretending that they do very
important work."
"Not so fast," Ralph responds. "If Mendeleev had stopped
here, I would accept your criticism, but he took it a step further.
He didn't arrange the elements in a line. He had noticed that
each seventh soldier represents basically the same chemical be-
havior, though with increased intensity. Thus he organized the
elements in a table with seven columns.
"In this way all the elements were displayed according to
ascending atomic weight, and in each column you find elements
with the same chemical behavior in ascending intensity. For ex-
ample, in the first column of his table stood lithium, which is the
lightest of all metals, and which, when put into water, becomes
warm. Right below it is sodium, which when put into water,
flames. Then the next one in the same column is potassium,
which reacts even more violently to water. The last one is cesium
which flames even in regular air."
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"Very nice, but as I suspected it's nothing more than child's
play. What are the practical implications?" Down-to-earth Bob.
"There were practical ramifications," Ralph answers. "You
see, when Mendeleev constructed his table, not all the elements
were already found. This caused some holes in his table that he
reacted to by 'inventing' the appropriate missing elements. His
classification gave him the ability to predict their weight and
other properties. You must agree that's a real achievement."
"How was it accepted by the other scientists of his time?" I
ask, curious. "Inventing new elements must have been received
with some skepticism."
"Skepticism is an understatement. Mendeleev became the
laughing stock of the entire community. Especially when his table
was not as neatly arranged as I described it to you. Hydrogen was
floating there above the table, not actually in any column, and
some rows didn't have one element in their seventh column, but
a hodgepodge of several elements crowded into one spot."
"So what happened at the end?" Stacey impatiently asks.
"Did his predictions come true?"
"Yes," says Ralph, "and with surprising accuracy. It took
some years, but while he was still alive all the elements that
Mendeleev predicted were found. The last of the elements that
he 'invented' was found sixteen years later. He had predicted it
would be a dark gray metal. It was. He predicted that its atomic
weight would be about 72; in reality it was 72.32. Its specific
gravity he thought would be about 5.5, and it was 5.47."
"I bet nobody laughed at him then."
"Certainly not. The attitude switched to admiration and his
periodic table is regarded by students of chemistry today as basic
as the ten commandments."
"I'm still not impressed," my stubborn replacement says.
I feel obliged to remark, "The biggest benefit was probably
the fact that due to Mendeleev's table people didn't have to waste
time looking for more elements." And turning to Bob
I say "You
see, the classification helped in determining, once and for all,
how many elements do exist. Putting any new element in the
table would have upset the clear order."
Ralph coughs in embarrassment, "Sorry Alex but that's not
the case. Only ten years after the table was fully accepted, several
new elements were discovered, the noble gases. It turned out that
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the table should have been constructed to have eight columns,
not seven."
"Just as I've said," Bob jumps in a triumphant voice. "Even when it works you still can't trust it."
"Calm down, Bob. You must admit that Ralph's story has a
lot of merit for us. I suggest that we ask ourselves what's the
difference between Mendeleev's classification of the chemical ele-
ments and our many attempts to arrange the colored shapes in
order? Why was his so powerful and ours so arbitrary?"
"That's just it," says Ralph, "Ours were arbitrary, and his was . . ."
"Was what? Not arbitrary?" Lou completes his sentence.
"Forget it." Ralph agrees. "That's not a serious answer. I'm just playing with words."
"What exactly do we mean by arbitrary, and not arbitrary?" I
raise the question.
Since nobody answers I continue, "Actually, what are we
looking for? We're looking to arrange the facts in some order.
What type of order are we seeking? An arbitrary order that we
superimpose externally on the facts, or are we trying to reveal an
intrinsic order, an order that already exists there?"
"You're absolutely right," Ralph is getting excited, "Mendeleev definitely revealed an intrinsic order. He didn't reveal the
reason for that order, that had to wait for another fifty years,
when the internal structure of the atoms was found, but he defi-
nitely revealed the intrinsic order. That's why his classification
was so powerful. Any other classification that just tries to super-
impose some order, any order, on the given facts is useful in only
one sense—it gives the ability to present the facts in a sequence,
tables, or graphs. In other words, helpful in preparing useless,
thick reports.
"You see," he continues enthusiastically, "we, in our attempts to arrange the colored shapes, didn't reveal any intrinsic order.
Simply because in that arbitrary collection there was no intrinsic
order to be revealed. That's why all our attempts were arbitrary,
all futile to the same extent."
"Yes, Ralph," Lou says in a cold tone, "But that doesn't mean that in other cases, where intrinsic order does exist, like in managing a division, we can't fool ourselves in the same way. We can
always procrastinate by wasting our time playing with some artifi-
cial, external order. Let's face it, what do you think Alex and I
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would have done with the pile of facts that we suggested he
gather. Judging by what we've done for so long here in the plant,
probably just that—playing a lot of games with numbers and
words. The question is what are we going to do differently now?
Anybody got an answer?"
Looking at Ralph sunk in his chair I say, "If we could reveal
the intrinsic order of the events in the division, that would cer-
tainly be of tremendous help."
"Yes," Lou says, "But how does one go about revealing the
intrinsic order?"
"How can one identify an intrinsic order even when he stum-
bles on it?" Bob adds.
After a while Lou says, "Probably in order to answer this
question we should ask a more basic one: What provides the in-
trinsic order among various facts? Looking at the elements that
Mendeleev had to deal with, they all seemed different. Some were
metals and some gases, some yellow and some black, no two were
identical. Yes, there were some that exhibited similarities, but
that's also the case for the arbitrary shapes that Alex drew on the
board."
They continue to argue but I'm not listening any more. I'm
stuck on Lou's question, "How does one go about revealing the
intrinsic order?" He asked it as if it were a rhetorical question, as if the obvious answer is that it is impossible. But scientists do
reveal the intrinsic order of things . . . and Jonah is a scientist.
"Suppose that it is possible," I break into the conversation,
"suppose that a technique to reveal the intrinsic order does exist?
Wouldn't such a technique be a powerful management tool?"
"Without a doubt," says Lou. "But what's the point in day-
dreaming?"
"And what happened to you today?" I ask Julie, after I've
told her the day's events in detail.
"I spent some time in the library. Do you know that Socrates
didn't write anything? Socrates' dialogues actually were written
by his pupil, Plato. The librarian here is a very pleasant woman, I
like her a lot. Anyhow, she recommended some of the dialogues
and I've started to read them."
I can't hold my surprise, "You read philosophy! What for,
isn't it boring?"
She grins at me, "You were talking about the Socratic
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method as a method to persuade other people. I wouldn't touch
philosophy with a ten foot pole, but to learn a method to per-
suade my stubborn husband and kids—for that I'm willing to
sweat."
"So you started to read philosophy," I'm still trying to digest it.
"You make it sound like a punishment," she laughs. "Alex,
did you ever read the dialogues of Socrates?"
"No."
"They're not too bad. They're actually written like stories.
They're quite interesting."
"How many have you read so far?" I ask,
"I'm still slaving on the first one, Protagoras."
"It'll be interesting to hear your opinion tomorrow." I say
skeptically. "If it's still positive, maybe I'll read it, too."
"Yeah, when pigs fly," she says. Before I can answer, she
stands up, "Let's hit the sack."
I yawn and join her.
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36
We're getting started a little late since Stacey and Bob have to
deal with some problematic orders. I wonder what's really hap-
pening; are we drifting back into trouble? Is Stacey's warning
about her Capacity Constraint Resources starting to materialize?
She was concerned about any increase in sales and, for sure, sales
are slowly but constantly on the rise. I dismiss these thoughts; it's
just the natural friction that should be expected when your mate-
rial manager moves her responsibilities to her replacement. I de-
cided not to interfere; if it evolves into something serious they
won't hesitate to tell me.
This is not going to be easy. We all are action-oriented and
searchin
g for basic procedures is almost against our nature, no
matter how much Bob tells me that he's been transformed.
So when, at last, they all take seats I remind them about the
issue on the table. If we want the same movement that we've
succeeded in starting here to happen in the entire division, we
have to clarify for ourselves what we actually have done—in a
generic sense. Repeating the specific actions won't work. Not only
are the plants very different from each other; how can one fight
local efficiencies in sales, or cut batches in product design?
Stacey is the only one who has something to offer and her
idea is simple. If Jonah forced us to start by asking, 'what is the
goal of the company', Stacey suggests that we start by asking,
'what is our goal'—not as individuals, but as managers.
We don't like it. It's too theoretical. Bob yawns, looks bored.
Lou responds to my unspoken request and volunteers to play the
game.
With a smile he says, "This is trivial. If the goal of our com-
pany is 'to make more money now as well as in the future,' then
our job is to try and move our division to achieve that goal."
"Can you do it?" Stacey asks. "If the goal includes the word
'more', can we achieve the goal?"
"I see what you mean," Lou responds, still smiling. "No, of course we can't achieve a goal that is open-ended. What we'll
have to do is to try and move the division toward that goal. And
you are right, Stacey, it's not a one-shot effort, we have to con-
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stantly strive toward it. Let me rephrase my initial answer." And
in his punctuating voice, emphasizing each word, he concludes,
"A good job will be to start our division on a process of on-going
improvement."
Turning to me, Stacey says, "You asked for an idea of how to
tackle the subject? I think that we should proceed from here."
"How?" Donovan echoes the question that everybody is
thinking.
"I don't know," is Stacey's answer. When she sees Bob's ex-
pression she says defensively, "I didn't claim to have a break-
through, just an idea."
"Thank you Stacey," I say, and turning to the rest I point to
the white board that nobody has bothered to erase yet. "We must
admit that it is a different angle from the one we had so far."
We are stuck. Donovan's question is certainly in place. So I
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