Among the 12 Technidigm-2000 elements objectives are somewhat unique. The other 11 elements support the achievement of objectives. If all of the 11 supporting elements are in all place and properly applied, our ability to achieve objectives is greatly enhanced. On the other hand, if even one of the 11 supporting objectives has been neglected or misapplied, we can expect problems.
Objectives are achieved through systematic solution processes that require resources, active components, time, and the use of feedback to make midcourse corrections. Processes often need to be created and then modified over time to accommodate events and circumstances that can not be anticipated. Based on day-to-day successes or failures, feedback is generated that indicates how to modify the process so that progress is made toward the objectives. Plans to achieve objectives must include a schedule, a means of providing feedback, provisions for knowledgable management (level four) reassessment, and a mechanism for making needed adjustments in a timely manner.
Objectives are the least complicated of the 12 Technidigm-2000 elements since they are almost always quite clear and discrete targets that everyone can understand and either accept or reject. Even polarized political parties often have similar objectives, but they usually avoid discussing them publicly. All politicians are quite aware that their political power and government control objectives can not be achieved unless they win elections, and to win they must figure out and promote whatever objectives are important to the most voters. At least this is the case under the current political paradigm.
The primary difference between a good leader and a good manager is that a the leader, besides providing inspiration, is more likely to understand everything that is involved in reaching the objective. How else can one lead unless the direction is clear? Managers have a more obscure ability and role relative to achieving objectives, and they can easily become an obstacle to progress. Anyone can be a manager, but not everyone can be an experienced manager, a rather self-evident observation.
The primary role of managers is to set objectives and apply the capabilities and the skills of the organization to achieve those objectives. Once the objectives are set, managers should spend their time removing obstacles from the paths of the people tasked to achieve those objectives. Indeed, the most important task for managers in a technical society is to ensure that the workers are not held back in their efforts to achieve the objectives set by the managers. If President Kennedy had tried to micro-manage the space program, it would have failed. Likewise, if he had not been a good leader, the program could also have failed.
When managers or leaders give detailed guidance to workers, it is assumed that they know what they are doing simply because of their management position. Similarly, when politicians are looking for votes, attempting to appear to support all kinds of voter interests, they can easily make unrealistic commitments that eventuall might become top-down guidance in some government agency. Since they are neither good leader nor good manager, the political forces that shape their agenda appear to be corrupt, contradictory, and even foolish by most management standards. Foolish or not, resources are committed to high-priority but poorly considered objectives. While the best candidate wins aura of infallibility provided by the electoral process produces unwarranted notions of confidence in top-down guidance from elected leaders, the lack of basic principles to connect to the objectives weakens the agenda.
Political winner overconfidence results in false starts, which is really the process of repeatedly running into reality. This reduces efficiency, increases costs, and compromises project effectiveness for perhaps hundreds of different projects. Before long (about every four years), someone starts a new set of politically based programs intended to achieve the old objectives in a different way. The old programs are either cancelled or the associated resources are reduced making the older programs even more ineffective. Sadly, the new programs may be different but not any better than the old programs. Their only credential is often that they are different enough to make the political leader appear to different than the last guy.
Even if no changes are made in a program, false feedback is often provided to the political leader since no one really wants to admit to failure. When feedback is not assessed honestly relative to the right objectives, corrective actions are likely to be off-target and manager accountability is difficult to establish. Thus, it is important to identify a program's proper objectives and to use program feedback to achieve those objectives without becoming sidetracked by over reactions to needed changes. This sounds like it should be easy, but if it were easy we would have already achieved better results in our social programs. For example, it is only recently that welfare programs have been redirected based on feedback, and even then we had to wait until those programs were obviously failing in a ludicrous way just about everywhere.
Putting aside political mismanagement, it is important good leaders to establish a good culture that conveys a fundamental set of principles which managers can use to reach the desired objectives. The consistent use of basic principles lends great stability to a leader's overall agenda, even if it makes it difficult for honest political candidates to get elected. Under the current paradigm, good leaders need to be relatively unprincipled to get elected, and then become principled as elected officials. It is this paradox that makes this current paradigm unacceptable, even if it is exactly what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they created a check-and-balance based government. With this new form of government, they recognized that periodically unprincipled rogues would periodically gain power. They anticipated all of this mismanagement by laying out a Constitution full of principles and culture. Technidigm-2000 provides a framework for continuing the application of those principles in our technical world.
If a group is honestly and sincerely pursuing their objectives, chances are they will achieve them, assuming the objectives are realistic. If the group is not honestly and sincerely pursuing their objectives, chances are that they will not achieve them. It is much easier for a group of people to achieve objectives when everyone involved is on-the-level and working together with a common understanding. This means that off-the-level people should not be involved. Technidigm-2000 not only emphasizes the need for integrity, it also motivates everyone concerned to expect integrity in others and to improve themselves in this area as well, working together applying consistent principles to attain the desired objectives.
Even after eliminating off-the-level participants, there can still be problems achieving objectives. Some problems are due to the presence of competing or opposing objectives being pursued by the same group of people or by other groups. Even honest people often have to compete for the same resources to achieve diverse objectives.
Also, sometimes the achievement of one group's objectives directly contradicts the objectives of another group. In such cases the compatibilities need to be identified, the conflicts debated, and compromises reached. Where compromise is not feasible, then a vote is taken. One group wins and the other group loses. The expectation that everyone will always be perfectly happy is not realistic.
Purposes are more closely related to desires and wishes than they are objectives. We are not as likely to be organized to achieve a purpose as we are to achieve an objective. President Kennedy's purpose in challenging the United States to achieve a man on the moon was to inspire everyone involved to achieve that objective. He did this purposely.
If a politician's true purpose for promoting a specific welfare program might be better served with an inefficient welfare system, the politician's objective likely would change to meet this purpose. The tail wags the dog in this case. Keeping extra people in a welfare program might result in more votes, so the political game becomes one of vote-related tradeoffs, which often requires a lot of ofuscations. The purpose is to gain votes regardless of whether good principles are violated. An unprincipled politician avoids clarity, skillfully appearing to support both sides of an issue.
In large programs and large government organizations it is not very difficult to obscure what is going on, especially when it is possible to say one thing today and another tomorrow in a different context, focusing on and pleasing the audience in each case. The purpose of all this is sometimes simply to avoid taking responsibility for a failed program by not being committed to its success in the first place. Thus, under Technidigm-2000, we reserve the word objective for principled and proper efforts and relegate the word purpose to the secondary world of ambiguity and lack of principle.
Nevertheless, most people would agree that the U. S. space program in general represents a non-controversial example of a successful level four solution system, one that met its objectives and resulted in benefits, however limited they were in terms of lunar knowledge. As difficult as most space program objectives are, the space program successes also demonstrate that technical program objectives can be easier to achieve than social program objectives. One reason for this is that technical problems do not depend as much on level one opinions as do social issues. Opinions on technical issues are taken less seriously most often in the absence of supporting facts, while social issues thrive on a range of opinions and a limited number of facts.
Yet, social program benefits can be influenced greatly by facts. The hard part is getting people to face facts so that the social program can be constructed on rock rather than sand. Unless people are at least on-the-level, it is easy to appreciate how difficult it can be to unravel all the opinions and face the facts related to the program. Technidigm-2000 gets people on the level and also goes a long way toward defining and achieving a lasting objective.
Technical program issues and objectives require at least a level two or level three effort to gather facts, which quickly reduces the number of participants. Once a technical program's objectives are set or mandated, the systems engineering process at level four eventually leads quickly to the optimal approach. Where technical issues and objectives are controversial, it is often due to mixing information from levels two and three without the benefit of a level four perspective. Technical issues just have fewer opinions and more facts than social issues. Thus, it is often easier to achieve technical benefits than social benefits using the same amount of effort. This means that, since it took ten years to get to the moon, it might take many more years to turn around some social issues.
Reporters also can get into technical issues. But in the absence of a level four study or report that circumspectly addresses the ramifications of the technical issues involved in achieving the desired objectives, most technical issue controversies are simply level one entertainment. Likewise, if we carefully consider social controversies and issues in terms of Technidigm-2000 levels, it is easier to sort out what is entertainment and what is substantive.
In short, properly constituted level four analysis minimizes controversy and makes it possible to define a path forward to achieve the intended objectives whether they are technical objectives or social objectives. It just happens that applying Technidigm-2000 to achieving social objectives is far more likely to reduce the overall level of controversy reported in the news media.
Winning political elections means convincing as many categories of voters as possible that the candidate is "on their side." Since most organized special interest groups have a very narrow agenda, it is relatively easy for a political candidate to promise to support their agendas. The key difference between good candidates and bad candidates is the priority that they place on their different objectives.
Professional politicians usually place a high priority on getting elected, so they generally become off-the-level candidates. Since off-the-level candidates have an inherent advantage over on-the-level candidates, Technidigm-2000 serves to level the playing field and can even give the advantage to honest and forthright candidates.
In the current political arena, off-the-level political promises are made to special interest groups of all kinds, with the objective of obtaining campaign donations as well as group endorsements. It is then relatively easy for special interest groups to get their members to vote for certain candidates. Most voters have at least one special interest group in their life, and they are satisfied to know that there is a least one "reason" to vote for a particular candidate. Their own political and voting objectives are quite limited since it is very difficult to sort out the vague promises off-the-level politicians.
Technidigm-2000 provides a framework useful in filtering out vague political promises. It also can be used to expose ill-conceived or uncertain objectives and plans. If there is a level four plan and solution system available that supports the achievement of promised objectives, its details can be made available and reviewed by all interested parties. If a political candidate is not addressing the issue on-the-level and at level four, any false promises are immediately exposed.
Likewise, if a special interest group can produce a credible level four report and solution system that supports their organization's objectives, then their credibility and effectiveness are greatly enhanced. Without Technidigm-2000 and without a level four study and plan, we can expect to remain at the mercy of the most vociferous and well-funded special interest groups and politicians. It is easy to declare objectives that people want. It is far more difficult to achieve those objectives in a responsible manner.
In real life, this ideal debating approach is seldom achieved. For example, without honest debate each political party is constantly seeking and exaggerating the other's failures, taking facts out-of-context and using them simply as a means of pursuing their own goals or purposes. They avoid any explicit statement of their more self-serving intentions, but each party tries to convince the voters that their party is more able than the other party to do something for the voters. An off-the-level political environment frustrates the voters since the voters' interests are not being pursued honestly and efficiently.
Politicians themselves are often strongly convinced of their own sincerity and, just as strongly, of the insincerity and erroneous paths of their opponents. As part of the process of capturing votes, facts and figures are often taken out-of-context, introducing confusion that is very difficult for the voters to sort out. Few voters have enough time to deal with the high level of confusion, so many simply vote based on the candidates' personalities, on candidate name recognition, or based on a narrow special interest issue.
Depending on the true objectives of a project and those of competing special interests, each fact might be used or understood differently. Besides the political parties, there are several competing news organizations that have objectives of their own, and may see the facts entirely differently. It is difficult to imagine anything more out-of-context than a "ten-second sound bite" generated for the evening television news or even a more "in depth" item produced for television or for the print media by people who are competing for our limited time and attention. The news media are systems with objectives that may or may not be consistent with impartially informing the public.
There is a great need for integrity in politics and being on-the-level in all government activities. With Technidigm-2000 in place, everyone can start communicating within a clear and effective framework. In addition, since the 12 Technidigm-2000 elements can be applied to many constitutional, political, and government problems, there is no shortage of application opportunities. The next few chapters address many of these applications.