Narratives of life - thirties

When I was in my thirties just out from General Staff College and active student of telecommunications technology, I thought that if I just make sense of every technical detail and interface them properly I would be able to build better world. I spend hours in making sense of complex C4I systems, designing better information and telecommunications structures and defining better processes for telecommunications network operations. I drafted orders that gave very detailed instructions on how to install routers and modems in telco facilities. I thought that strict project management was key to success. People and systems would bend to my will if they were just managed in a strictest way and controlled all the time.

By collaborating with my peers and subordinates I was successful in building technical systems but almost all attempts to change people processes were failing. I tried to build bridges between telecommunications and information technology people by showing them designs where telephone and PC were combined and describing them use cases where both network and session engineering was needed to make whole OSI-stack functioning. I had no success in bringing them closer. Not even placing their rooms close to each other made any changes in their confrontation. I tried to introduce common processes to improve their combined service production with no results. I was doing my best in sense making and designing systems. I spend numerous night in drawing logical charts on how process should be running. Although all logic was speaking towards change, people were afraid, not sharing same language and not trusting to each other. And I was not able to take them in to forest to overcome some difficulties.

I threw myself into studies of change management and iterative development. There I found my first understanding and tools to lead changes by using my personality and human social behaviour. I withdrew my previous requirements for big, one time change and went on with little steps. I invited people in exercises to share their problems and define combined solutions. I spoke with people, visited their working sites, listened to them and gave my appreciation to their skills and achievements.

Later I realized that I was educated to approach all subjects in systematic way. All the time in General Staff College and in University of Technology was preparing me to understand and design material and immaterial systems, not more complex systems that are a mixture of people and machines interrelations. I was given a lot of tools to change technical systems but non to make human being to leave his/her area of comfort. My communication based only on analytical and logical facts and they were not enough to move people from their comfort zones they had built in their history. I did not touched their feelings nor was I able to help them to process their fears of new and unclear things. My education was taking human being just a piece of machinery that followed technical procedures. With my logical explanations and demands I was perceived more as a threat than a leader that would take everyone along a safe route towards better future.

To be continued...