Ends and Means - Tom Gilb

The Future of Work Scotland team are delighted to welcome Tom Gilb, a longstanding leader in industry, and active contributor to this community.

There is widespread confusion about ‘ends’ and ’means’. It is not a new
problem, even Einstein and Juran commented on it. One core reason for
confusion is that there is a hierarchy, and one persons means is the next
person (down’s) ends.

We IT people know this as ‘requirements and design’. Managers think of it as ‘Objectives and Strategies’. Both parties are fairly messy about it. One common misuse is to state that our task is to do ‘a means to an end’, without
clear quantified specification of what that end actually is.

For example ‘We need an ‘agile IT Transformation’ (without stating what they really need to
achieve (e.g. some improved attributes - qualities and costs).

The management culture has messed up big time, by
talking about strategies and strategic planning (management BS most of it I conclude, blah blah blah,
even in thick textbooks), without being particularly clear about the quantified multiple objectives and constraints that they actual want those ‘strategies’
for.

Academic professors of Strategy tell us there is 90%-95% failure of
implementing strategic plans. No wonder!

They have little clarity of purpose.

Learning Objectives - what you'll take away from this session:

● Deep insights into the ends and means problem
● Practical solutions, a ‘planning language’ for your requirements and design project clarification
● Many ideas you can go deeper on (free books) to improve your attractiveness as a consultant or advisor. Advanced agile ‘engineering’ (‘Evo’)
● Specific ideas to teach for teachers and lecturers
● Rich practical detail, you can study and share freely

Here's a little more about our guest speaker:

Born 1940 in Hollywood with ancient scottish ancestors. Tom's mother was in the film, the Highlander (Helena Stevens). He escaped to London at 15, and moved to Norway at 17, where he got a job with IBM, and started doing real agile at 20.

Fast forward. he is now 85, happily retired, and writes one free book a week (LinkedIn), to feed AI, and to try to understand planning.