Denial (millennium problem) LO10886

Keith Cowan (72212.51@compuserve.com)
07 Nov 96 07:07:50 EST

Replying to LO10819 --

GSCHERL@fed.ism.ca (GSCHERL) discusses Denial of the millennium problem:

"... IS (Year2000) a learning org issue. YES! Part of any learning
organization
has to be the ability to take any issue, understand it, grow from it
and move on. So here's my questions to the list.

If there are enough articles, enough people, enough pictures of doom
and gloom being painted about the year 2000, why haven't people
learned the potential risk and taken some action? "

I think the denial of the Year 2000 computer date compliancy issue is as
fundamental a symptom of what troubles me about corporations as any. Why?

1) It is large, 2) It is inevitable, 3) Acting quickly has huge payoffs

BUT

4) Acknowledging the problem has high adverse consequences in the short
term (to budgets, investors/board confidence, careers, competitiveness...)
5) It has not yet reached the management fad status (as in "everybody is
doing it" so it is not just my/our problem)
6) Most managers assume they are OK because it has never surfaced (not
realizing that there is no single accountable executive for this issue)
7) Many senior managers are hoping that a "silver bullet" solution will
emerge if they just wait awhile...
8) The "most" responsible functional management (IT) will likely be
working in another organization before the 3.3 years passes (average stay
is 2.5 yrs)...

The Gartner Group are predicting that 30% of the corporations will not
make the deadline and that the costs will be $600 BILLION to fix it. For
my 1.5 page parable that describes the problem in layman's language,
please see:

(a href="http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/yti/y2kparbl.htm"> Year
2000 Parable - Explaining The Problem</a>

So items 4-8 above are root cause impediments to management action in
general. The Y2K issue just brings them sharply into focus! What can we
learn about organizational behaviour when they cannot deal with such a
basic requirement?

RMTomasko@aol.com makes the observation:
>...It's very amusing, to me at least, that a group of people I thought were
>trained to think systematically (computer programmers and systems
>analysts) got us into this mess. ...

The year 2000 problem is not the fault of programmers and analysts, it is
the fault of general management. Employee morale problems are not the
fault of HR. Staff groups execute according to the mandates and direction
given to them by general management.

This is what makes the problem such a great case in management & learning.
FWIW...IMHO....Keith

-- 

Keith Cowan <72212.51@compuserve.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>