Organizational Computational Architecture

Commentary:  This brief was originally written in Sep 2012 and was updated reposting on Dec 21 2013. Many people think of computational capabilities as something that a box full of silicon and circuits on their desk performs. Moreover, they tend to think of computations in linear steps. Rarely does anyone think about the human mind-brain as a processor.If thought in this way, professionals and industry may be able to take advantage of the combination of a mind-brain and machine processing in interesting ways.

Neural Agents: This posting discuss the use of agents to solve problems.

Human Centric Computing: This discusses the way human interface with computational machines.

Knowledge Management Brief: This brief discusses KM and its importance in an organization.

Chaos Strategy Part I A: This post looks at latency and how organizations got to get better at problem solving. 

Organizational Computational Architecture

Organizational computational power is the cumulative processing capability of an organization that includes both machines and - humans?  Machine computational power is well accepted. Determining machine computational power is related in terms of instructions processed per unit time such as cycles per second or Hz, MHz, GHz, and Millions of Instructions per Second, MIPS. But human computational power is something of a different genre or is it?

Human computational power has been somewhat awkward to pin down as study of the brian precedes computer and information science. Thus, the information science paradigms were never part of the early research. Historical attempts have centered on intelligence and emotional quotients. These are related to learning rates or adaptability rates of the mind-brain based on eight characteristic factors from the groundbreaking book 'Frames of Mind' by Howard Gardner. However, looking at the commonalities between the brian and machine base processing there are many interesting commonalities. The brain has up to 10 quadrillion synapsis or transistor like switches and processes at rates up to about 1,680 GHz. The brain storage capacity varies from 1TB to 10TB or on average is about 5TB of information. The brian serves function as in circuits. The mind has been an enigma until thought of as software or possessing method. Arguably the character on the mind or the essence of the mind is the individual human being or in some circles - the soul. Thus, the mind-brain combination parallels the software-hardware paradigm. 

Diet and exercise are key to optimizing performance of the brain. Brain food diets affect function of the brain and brain exercises affects the method of the mind. For the purpose of this discussion, all human’s process information at an average equal rate with equal storage capacity. Therefore, human computational power in organizations can also be determined similar to machines using a mathematical formula based on how the human brains are related to each other resulting in a throughput metric for the organization.

Organizational Throughput

A sage organization seeks to understand the full computational power on hand then seeks to align and enhance that power according to the operations. Approaches such as knowledge management have been employed but often have very different meanings to different organizations. In general, knowledge management has become more or less a catalogue of what is known and where to put or store the knowledge once it becomes known. Processing power on the other hand is the horsepower to solve problems and determine the knowledge. Thus, an operational view of processing power can be utilized to determine the horsepower on hand.

Elemental computational power is organized in various ways; parallel, series, arrayed, and/or distributed. Parallel processing improves throughput while processors in series improve dependent process performance. Arrayed processors are organized non-linearly in order to enhance complex decision making performance. Distributed processing is designed to offload processing demand to localized processors conserving bandwidth, time, and load. An organization must determine how to organize not only the computers but the human staff in order to achieve optimal throughput also known as the operational tempo.

Ideally, an organization should have a virtual backplane against which everything sits. In the ethereal space of this backplane staff and systems can be organized to achieve optimized throughput and adapt to emergent conditions without disrupting the physical plane. In the virtual backplane information exchanges occur and can be redirected and rearranged without causing disruptions in the physical realm. This has the effect of creating the stability necessary for humans to become self-actualizing and empowered. Humans who dynamically perform their work without interference are empowered. Self-actualization is the achievement of one's full potential through creativity, independence, spontaneity, and a grasp of the real world. In short, humans while acting like a processor are granted the freedom to utilize their talents in solving business problems.

Final Thoughts

Organizations have generally paid little attention to the human mind-brain in the past with the exception of human resource testing. This testing is generally not comprehensive and temporally bound to the hiring process. Human resources has generally sought people of specific character traits. For example, the US Postal exam is actual an IQ test in which they are seeking people who can perform repetitive tasks. Organization can benefit by better managing the human computational element.

Organizations should encourage better diets and offer brain exercises with incentives for heightened brain function. Employers should baseline then seek to improve staff brain function. Through tracked exercises and regular assessments organizations can observe the computational posture over time. This should feed the organizations ability to cope with and manage emergent conditions or change which results in organizational experience.

The formation of experience starts with data. Data becomes information with context, and complex information relationships become knowledge. Wisdom is an outgrowth of experience and results in quantum leaps of judgment when there is missing information and/or knowledge. Management of transforming data into knowledge is knowledge management which in turn seeks to convey the organizational experience to individuals without retraining. The computational architecture in which data is transformed ultimately into knowledge is based on the organization of computational elements; both human and machine. Dynamically organized computational elements are ideal when loosely coupled in the system and are easily re-organized with emergent conditions.This construct facilitates experiences which can be tracked and recorded.

As the organization conducts routine business, the experiential history can act as a pattern match and alert humans to experiential conditions emerging again. Humans can then assess the circumstances and avoid making errant decisions again or attempt an alternate solution to avoid a recursive trap that cost time and money. Two episodes of Star Trek lend well to this discussion; Cause and Effect and Time Squared.

In Cause and Effect, the Enterprise is trapped in a recursive time loop. For each iteration of the loop, the crew recalls more about the experience until they finally recall enough to break the loop. It takes them 17 days to break the pattern. In Time Squared, The Enterprise is destroyed 6 hours into the future and Captain Picard is cast back in time and out of phase. The Enterprise recursively experiences the same event until Captain Picard broke the loop by preventing his temporally displaced self from completing the recursive loop. He injected an alternative path in the form of surprise. In both episodes, the common theme of repeating the same experience occurred. However, in one episode a little something was retained until enough was learned to break the recursive experience. In the other episode little was retained but through evidence and observation a decision was made to choose an alternate path and prevent a repeat.

What if through a combination of machine and human processing recurrent events would not repeat in an organization. Classically, governmental organizations cycle people every 3 years and the same issues different people repeat every 3 years.  History repeats itself unless historical experience is known and recalled somehow. Perhaps machine and human computational systems can provide the experience and decision making combined if designed to recognize and act on experience. If not, create the circumstances in which surprise is possible breaking recurring trends.

References:

Gardner, H (1993). Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. (10th e.d.). Basic Books. New York.