Over the past 2 years, I've been researching the sciences associated with the brain. This includes books like:
Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink"
Temple Grandin's "Animals in Translation"
Antonio Damasio's "Descartes' Error"
My latest discovery is "The Naked Brain" by Richard Restak, MD. There are patterns in this domain that I find fascinating and useful in analyzing the large enterprise in both its productivity and its security.
When the sciences associated with the brain began, it was all about structure. The domain of physics/biology dominated and all of the explanatory devices had to do with the physical interactions and locations. There was another camp which was interested in the non- physical aspects of the brain: the functions. Before psychologists came in to the picture, if you had a mental illness, you were sent to a philosopher for these were people who understood the function of the brain (thinking of thinking and the knowing of knowing). Later, the social sciences were born and you now see a shrink if you are loco in the cabesa. Both of these camps did not collaborate much and for the most part, the structure and the function of the brain were not integrated in to a whole. Sound familiar?
I'm going to make the case here that this is where we are with Information Technology in the Enterprise: The technologists are concern with the wires, firewalls, routers, servers, while the business leadership is concerned with the functional thinking of the enterprise. Integrate both the structure and function and you have the enterprise as mind: the notion of a set of mental processes that are continuously adapting within their social and physical environment. As both the biological and social aspects merge to form a neurosociety, we must develop a discipline that brings together both the technical and the social or the techno-social analysis of the enterprise: The Mind of the Enterprise. It is at this level that we can finally address the productivity and security of the whole.
To be clear, I'm not claiming that I have found the answer to world hunger, I am just saying that there are patterns in the domain of social neurology and neural plasticity that are extremely helpful in a designers understanding of a healthy Information Technology-based enterprise.
One pattern worth mentioning given that this week is the RSA conference in wonderful downtown San Francisco is that like the early research done on the brain, the primary focus is abnormality and diseases. Ask any expert at the conference about dysfunctional systems, weaknesses, and related exploits to IT systems and you will be able to fill book after book. Ask them how the IT systems of a successful enterprise differs from one that is less successful and the conversation might stall until you can get back to the realm of dysfunction. I'm not saying this pattern is wrong, I am just pointing out a parallel pattern common in how we approach very complex systems. We always begin with the shorter or more statistically evident list.
I'll make one last claim before I get back to my daily life in Austin Texas: the only information technology designers who understand the techno-social mind of enterprise are gamers. In particular, those that have been involved in the design of early text-based Multi-User Dungeons (MUDS) and todays MMORPGs (Massively Multiuser Online Role Playing Games). By designers, I don't mean just the author of the program, I mean everyone on the system. In these environments, everyone is a designer and is contributing to the overall well-being of the system. It is what Alvin and Heidi Toffler refer to as the "prosumer". All that the initial author needs to do is to make sure that he/she is creating a fertile environment to grow connections between everyones prefrontal cortex and then get out of their own way.
--tk
