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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 29 2012 @ 10:29 AM EDT |
Agreed. Absolutely nothing wrong with that process. Run through and get the
simple questions (and those on which everyone already agrees) answered, and save
the trickier ones for the end. It's a pretty basic problem-solving technique,
and a good choice for this scenario.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: artp on Wednesday, August 29 2012 @ 11:41 AM EDT |
Well, it is hard to tell from this end, not having been
there. I'll have to play the interview again and pay
attention. I thought that skipping over the hard parts
happened more than once.
Someone else pointed out that the strategy is a good one for
an individual working on a project. But this wasn't an
individual. So you put an engineer (like me) in charge of a
group of people to work on a project, and they will use my
methodology.
If I am looking to control what the group comes up with
(consciously or subconsciously) then I will make sure that
I keep the group away from discussions that don't match my
expected result. The more times a group comes to agreement,
the harder it is for one member to not agree on the next
issue. So if you postpone the hard issues, it CAN result in
more agreement regardless of the individual members'
feelings. It takes one very nervy individual to break that
or two or three fairly nervy individuals to break the
agreement cycle.
Or, to put it in terms of this jury, it might be that
keeping the jury away from controversy trained them to
always be in agreement. When you have a group that can't
speak freely, then you have a group that can be manipulated.
I don't think that this was a conscious decision. But you
put an older engineer in charge of a group who thinks he
knows more than he does, and the results are predictable. He
may have overruled the jury instructions, the judge, the
patent process and a few other things because he thought
that he knew enough to direct the other jurors to a correct
solution. That's what we engineers do. We come up with an
answer, even when there aren't enough facts to support a
conclusion. We call that extrapolation, and acknowledge that
it is dangerous, but American industry is based on dangerous
practices. Nobody ever gives an engineer enough time, money
and resources to do the job, so we are experts at making the
impossible happen. Unfortunately, this time it resulted in a
miscarriage of justice.
This time, applying engineering principles to a legal issue
didn't work.
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Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: artp on Wednesday, August 29 2012 @ 11:58 AM EDT |
One company I worked for made a big point of differentiating
managers and leaders. While there are some management tasks
to do, if you really want to get your employees involved and
invested, then you need a leader, not a manager.
I just get the impression that Mr. Hogan presented himself
as an expert to his jury peers, and was elected foreman on
that basis. An expert is not a leader. An expert does not
gather the group consensus to determine which direction to
head. An expert is a manager, because he knows more than
anybody else on the team.
This may well have been the first point of agreement for the
jury that grew into an unstoppable force because they
elected an expert instead of a leader. There was too much
direction, and not enough group discussion and action. The
foreman made sure that there wasn't too much discussion. In
his mind, that was bad. It stopped them from getting to a
result, which was his number one goal.
Too much tech, not enough communication.
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Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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