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Lessons For Managing Directors – Life, Knowledge, Computer Science and Ethics

„Innovative Entrepreneurs“ / Summer Semester 2010
Leadership in growth-oriented enterprises

Isabelle Kurth, who organized the lecture series, sent me the feedback she received after my lecture. Since most of it was positive, I was, first and foremost, truly delighted.

Let me reply to some of the important comments right away:

“The lecture was a little on the short side, there was not enough content”

It seems like I made a mistake! Assuming the audience would thank me for not keeping them in the lecture room too long at the current temperature, I thought it a good idea to make it short. Consequently, I cut down from the initially planned 60 minutes to a little less than 45 minutes. If I ever talk about the subject again, I promise to be more extensive.
“The speaker did not tell us enough about InterFace”

Correct! After the poor example of some lectures (I heard) that were overflowing with self-promotion, I hardly mentioned the InterFace AG in my presentation. However, the history of InterFace is described at great length in the IF blog. You can read the entire story from the foundation until today in three parts:

Part 1:: Die ersten 12 Jahre
Part 2: The Wind of Change
Part 3: Aufbruch zu neuen Ufern

“We would have liked to hear more about the foundation phase”

See to the aforesaid. You can read about the foundation of InterFace in three parts as I wrote  it down in a personalized way:

Part 1: Wie ich Dr. Peter Schnupp entdeckte
Part 2: Wie ich zu Softlab kam
Part 3: Die Gründung 1983 – 1984

If you want to know more about the history of InterFace and how it was founded, search the IF-Blog by typing “InterFace history” (InterFace-Geschichte) in the search field or by clicking “If history” on the categories. You will find many more anecdotes and true stories, always related to the foundation.

Reading the articles, you will get the impression that the history of InterFace is basically the sum of many special events, situations and happenings. I also know the stories of many other successful enterprises – and they are all a lot like ours. Conversely, I cannot think of a single successful “synthetic foundation”.

“The questions asked online by students before the lecture were not answered adequately”

Yes, many good questions reached me before the lecture through Isabella Kurth. I refrained from answering them, because they did not really fit with what I was talking about. To make up for it, I will now start replying to the most important questions by writing the answers here in irregular intervals.

If you want some backup and arguments for my “heretic opinion” that “growth must not be the highest priority for an enterprise” and that “being the market leader also has lots of risks and disadvantages”, read my entrepreneur’s diary. You will find it in the IF blog. Just click on the Drehscheibe.

RMD
(Translated by EG)

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The latest New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/) carries an article about injecting SO2 into the stratosphere. Observations of giant volcano eruptions have shown that this could reduce world temperature by 1 or 2 degrees for a year or two.

This was “seriously” proposed in USA a dozen years ago as the cheapest solution to the global warming problem. Groups which have been denying that there is a problem are now supporting this idea. Now the Russians are planning a large-scale test. New Scientist sadly predicts that it will happen.

Many countries are capable of doing it, and also large companies. There is no international agreement or law that prohibits it. Of course this treatment must then be repeated regularly, until a better solution is found.

I remember, in my school days, it was found that fish and other animals were dying in Scandinavia, because of SO2 being produced by British power stations. The rain was too acid. Since then, SO2 emissions have been greatly reduced. Stratospheric SO2 will come down into the oceans, and add to the acidification due to CO2.

cw

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That was the title of the presentation I delivered on July, 15th at Munich Technical University

It was a rather hot and humid day last Thursday when I made my appearance at 5.30 p.m. in lecture room number 1100 in order to speak as the last of the orators in the series „Innovative Entrepreneurs“ / Summer Semester 2010 – Leading Growth-Oriented Enterprises. To me, the room temperature felt like approximately 30 degrees Celsius. Consequently, seeing all those people in the audience made me quite happy.

The organizer had advised me to speak about “Relevance of IT in Enterprises”. Consequently, I started my lecture with a rather old but still quite suitable joke:

How do you ruin an enterprise?

There are three answers:

Women – that is the most strenuous approach.

Gambling – that is the most enjoyable approach.

IT – that is where success is guaranteed.

No. Talking about the relevance of IT in enterprises is a little like talking about IT in a car. And I am fairly hopeless when it comes to that.

So I was permitted to talk about life, knowledge, computer science and ethics.

Here are the milestones of my presentation:

First, I told the audience something of my own life, namely about my first few years in the IT sector. I was lucky enough to witness the pioneer time of a new technology. Consequently, I had a very rewarding time as an apprentice. To be sure, we were not exclusively hilarious, but an immense dynamics prevailed. For us, that meant great opportunities.

In addition, I talked about my entire life, relating the ups and downs of those 60 years of mine that, to me at least, seem to have been rather fulfilled.

I tried to make my audience aware of how privileged we are in the current situation, both with respect to myself and all those listening in the lecture hall. There is a huge gap between our life style and that of other people living at the same time but in other regions and social stratums, but also between our life style and that of people who lived in earlier times.

And I went so far as to wonder if, maybe, my generation is living a golden age. Unfortunately, however, we forget to remember our successors. We did (and do) almost everything possible to make life as hard as possible for future generations.

My next step was to talk about knowledge.  What do we know about life and how the human race evolved? Do we really know the evolutionary story of the human and our own history? To what extent do we understand evolution – and ourselves?

Last year, we celebrated the two-hundredth birthday of Darwin. That means that a lot more than 150 years ago, most people were “creativists”. All kinds of evolutionary theories were considered totally absurd by them. The concept of evolution was considered heretic and neither desired nor tolerated.

Language (perhaps 50,000 years old) and writing (maybe 15,000 years old) do not have a very long history, either. The ancestors of homo sapiens started walking upright around 5 to 10 million years ago. And that is how Pandora’s Box was opened. The way towards humans started and the first stages of thinking and knowledge were reached. Now just imagine how long the evolutionary process took until it reached even that stage!

Of course, this is only true if scientific research has not made any mistakes.

With this in mind, the time during which humans lived even anywhere close to what they (we) consider a matter of course today is extremely short. If you put this time span in relation with the long evolution of the earth and life thereon, it is even less than small: it has a limiting value of zero. I feel strongly about this and wanted to point it out to you.

I also took the opportunity to remind my audience of the excellent lectures on evolution organized by the Carl-von-Linde-Akademie (Prof. Dr. Mainzer) at TUM in 2009 because of the Darwin jubilee.

In my presentation, I continued by outlining the technological advances of the last 1,000/500 years, of modern times, of the last 50 years, and in particular of the last decade. In this respect, too, it was my intention to point out how the evolutionary process currently seems to be accelerating.
I tried to “cluster” the technologies developed by humans in a rational order. I structured cultural skills and technologies by separating those where information is processed (informatics) from those that realize physical processes.

As I see it, informatics will continue to be more and more dynamic in future decades, while the “physical” (old) technologies seem to have reached the end of their potential as far as “further, faster, higher” is concerned.

Cynically spoken, you can say that the sole purpose of those technologies was to burn oil and coal and use up resources. Now we are confronted with an irreparable pile of shards. The problem will certainly not be solved if we insist on technologically conservative ways of thinking and antiquated problem solving strategies.

The blind use of “old technologies” probably even created an irreversible situation. The best new concepts and a different approach to business can hope to achieve is a mild cushioning of the detrimental effects. As I talked about this, I also mentioned the great presentation given by Martin Lees (secretary general of the “Club of Rome”) in January 2010 at TUM.

Sociologically, the consequence of this economic development based on technology was the sprouting of great capital companies and enterprises in the late 19th and 20th centuries. This caused a strong concentration of economic power in the hands of anonymity and the rise of globally acting concerns that rule the world. As a consequence of this, we now no longer have any sustainability.

The next step would have to be us asking: what is an enterprise, no matter what size?

In my definition, an enterprise is an eco-social system with many stakeholders. We are talking systems with their own rules of communication, their own rituals and basic values. They develop their individual culture and will be judged by their external balance. And they are threatened internally by typically systemic dangers, for example system fascism, and externally by change.

Of course, the next milestone in my presentation had to be about leadership and ethics.

What is a decision? What requirements must be met in order to make a development in an enterprise a sustainable one? How can the employees themselves help to prevent the enterprise from drifting into perversion, thus keeping detrimental effects for the enterprise itself and its stakeholders, as well as for the environment, at bay?  I tried to make a few simple proposals.

Finally, I concluded that a sustainable and humane development of enterprises can only be achieved where many free and autonomous people cooperate. This can only work if people are prepared to build up their own consensus-oriented value system in a critical and enlightened way, and if they are also willing to apply it to everyday life. In order to realize this, freedom is absolutely necessary.

The only way to get anywhere near solving future problems and foreseeable catastrophes is for us to develop “new, just and free” social systems based on the consensus of many, such as enterprises and other communities. Simultaneously, a re-structuring of our society would also have to take place.

This is true both for major and minor aspects, as well as for the sustainable development of an enterprise and our global human community.

I finished my lecture with a citation of Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling:

Der ist beglückt,
der sein darf was er ist,
der Bahn und Ziel
mit eignem Auge misst.

Happy is – who is permitted to be what he is – who measures the way along with the end – with his own eyes)

Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling

Many thanks to the audience for your attention and the numerous questions!

RMD
(Translated by EG)

P.S.
Here is the graphical support of my lecture, prepared by Johannes Naumann:

P.S.1
TUM recorded my lecture on video tape. As soon as I get it, I will try to publish some of it on Youtube.

P.S.2
I took the pictures of TU München from the central media archive Wikimedia Commons. They were taken by Rufus46 (tower at Gabelsbergerstraße, July, 29th, 2006), Benson.by (TUM Audimax, July, 7th, 2005) and Martinroell (Parablen, March, 22nd, 2005).

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During his presentation, he described parallels between modern software development and building a cathedral that are quite obvious when you take a closer look. In medieval times, building cathedrals was an exceptional craft. Each cathedral was a true mammoth project with its respective challenges.

Indeed, we discover that there are quite a few things they have in common. Besides, we also discover surprising “philosophical” parallels between our self-perception as software developers and those courageous medieval builders and craftsmen.

For instance, it took a very long time to build a cathedral. Sometimes, this led to different architectural epochs being prevalent while a single building was constructed (for example Gothic and Romanesque). In practice, this meant that a cathedral that was still under construction suddenly looked old-fashioned and badly needed renovation.

Since people believed in agility, they changed plans while they were in the process of building. They also modified, demolished and/or re-built entire sections of a building. There is hardly any cathedral where this was not done.

And through the entire process of “development” (while the cathedral was built), the “operation” (that is the basic function of a Lord’s house) had to continue undisturbed.

Apart from that, many cathedrals also prove in an impressive way what the craftsmen concerned with the edifice considered their “professional honour”. For example, many figures on the facade of Notre Dame have been worked with the same degree of accuracy at the back of the building and high up, although the artist certainly must have known that there was hardly going to be another human who would see it in the near future.
Well, this was only for wetting your appetite. If you want to read something really exciting, here is the manuscript.

Thomas Vallon – Ist die Informatik ein Handwerk?

Do read it!

The background images used during the presentation (designed by Johannes Naumann) are also highly recommendable:

Hintergrundbilder zum Vortrag (6)

I was particularly moved when Thomas dedicated the presentation to me as a present for my sixtieth birthday.

Thank you, Thomas!

RMD
(Translated by EG)

P.S.
What a pity that we do not have a video or audio tape of the presentation. But maybe we will manage next time!

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I practiced the “ars construendi vexilla” a lot with my mentor Rupert Lay and appreciate the method very much. And I always gladly recommended it to others. But what is a modern manager supposed to do if he does not know the meaning of a word?

Lars Schmiedeberg - Wikipedia-Autor und IF-Kollege

Well, he does a Wikipedia search. And until recently, the term “ars construendi vexilla” could not be found therein, not even the German version. As I see it, methods and competence that are not described in Wikipedia have no value.

The same was true for “ars construendi vexilla”. Until Lars Schmiedeberg, who has been working for InterFace for 25 years now, took heart and meticulously researched the term. He published the results of his work in Wikipedia. Now you can find Fahnenbildung in Wikipedia and Lars is the person who knows about it like no other.

Incidentally, by now Lars has a lot of experience with Wikipedia. He is always willing to answer questions on Wikipedia. So if you have any questions about Wikipedia, do not hesitate to contact Lars.

RMD
(Translated  by EG)

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On the afternoon of June, 24th, (starting at 2 p.m.), we will have the first technological IF forum at InterFace. It is about agile methods. In many projects and over many years, our developers accumulated experience in agile software development. They have also contributed to various workshops with their experience.

“Agile software development” is a technological, methodical and cultural topic. We would like to share this experience with our customers and partners.

The chairman of our supervisory board, Professor Dr. Manfred Broy, will speak the introductory words. Here is the rest of the agenda IF-Forum Agile SW-Entwicklung (24. Juni 2010) (45).

Of course, I would be happy if many of you came, especially since you are also invited to drink my health because of the birthday I will have celebrated a few days earlier after the forum at 5 p.m.

All friends who cannot come to the forum but would still like to join in are very welcome at 5 p.m. – I will be happy about any guest who takes the time to come.

RMD

(Translated by EG)

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