Who’s Captain Of This Enterprise?

 

There have been several iterations of programs in the Star Trek universe, as well as multiple movies based on two of them. They span centuries and vastly different galaxy locales, but the one thing they all have in common is: someone is the commander of the starship at the center of the epic, and, in three of those instances, the starship’s name was Enterprise.

Seein’ as how I’m a baby boomer, my personal preference is William Shatner as James Tiberius Kirk, from the original series (sorry, The Original Series, or TOS). He was insightful, courageous, and a full reading of his commendations received is so long that it would make a court martial prohibitively protracted. Kirk also had the advantage of having been created by writers who understood basic plot structure. As all us baby boomers know, having been taught basic plot structure by eighth grade, the most compelling stories and scripts have an introduction, rising action, a climax (where the protagonists overcome the central problem or antagonists through a combination of endurance, talent, and some luck), and then on to falling action and the denouement.

Jean-Luc Picard, played by the brilliant actor Patrick Stewart, was captain of the Enterprise in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG). Unfortunately for Jean-Luc, his writers would consistently (and infuriatingly) engage in the extraordinarily cheesy device of dues-ex-machina. Dues ex machina dates from ancient Greek theater, where a script would develop along classical lines but, at the climax, some Greek god would be literally craned onto the stage, and use his or her supernatural powers to resolve the plot’s central conflict. Even the ancient Greeks knew this was a singularly unsatisfying way to resolve a play, but Star Trek TNG’s writers were seemingly bereft of this millennia-old insight. Almost every week, TNG fans were presented with a central problem, rising action, and, at the climax, the “god” of superior understanding would be craned onto the sound stage. Oh, it was just all a big misunderstanding! We Federation officers failed to appreciate where you seemingly hostile aliens were coming from! We’re sorry!

Finally, the prequel series, Enterprise, featured captain Jonathon Archer, played by Scott Bakula. Sadly for Captain Archer, Enterprise also suffered from dismal writing. I would sum it up as an ongoing request for permission from all non-humans to be allowed to play in the galactic sandbox, and being okay with it when all the other players were mean to us, because, well, reasons.

Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…

Some years ago there was a big push from a few of the major Project Management-related software producers to introduce “enterprise” programs, or systems that could handle all of the information needs for a given organization’s executive management. It was, perhaps, one of the earliest attempts at developing a hybrid management system. Of course, if an organization could actually produce such a comprehensive and insightful information stream, it could expect profit margins in the same ball park as the current crop of tech giants. These initiatives usually crashed and burned, and I’m pretty sure I know the reason why – it’s because their writers didn’t follow the right plot structure.

As an example, I’m familiar with one producer of a Project Management-related software that launched an initiative to provide such an across-the-organization system by combining their already-established PM system with utilities that would normally belong to the general ledger. I actually had an opportunity to interact with this company’s senior management around this time, and attempted to tell them why I though this initiative was vulnerable, based on my opinion that all organizations had to have a working general ledger in order to pay taxes – in other words, to get into and stay in business in the first place. Since poaching various aspects of the general ledger in a bid to claim enterprise-wide utility would endanger the workings of the general ledger itself, I predicted that few would use the upgrade. Although I was ultimately proved right, at the time the execs didn’t want to hear it, and breezily dismissed me and my ideas.

The part of the structure they got wrong is familiar to my regular readers: management science deals with three very different arenas. Asset Management is about maximizing shareholder wealth, and its primary information base is the general ledger. Project Management is centered on delivering projects on-time, on-budget, and its primary information streams come from Critical Path Methodology (CPM) and Earned Value Methodology (EVM) systems. The often mis-understood Strategic Management is NOT simply a high-level conflation of the other two. Instead, its target is to maximize market share, either through advertising, improving the product or service, or by undermining the competition. Therefore, any software platform that can legitimately lay claim to “enterprise” management must be able to distill the timely, accurate, and relevant information streams from each area, and produce that information in a way that allows the organization’s top decision makers to understand the trade-offs among the three areas inherent in the high-level decisions they make. I discuss more precisely how to do exactly that in my second book, but for the sake of brevity in this blog post I’ll leave it with the notion that simply peeling off aspects of the systems from one area and attempting to tractor-beam it into another is doomed to fail. In other words, craning in a piece of data from another management arena and expecting that to resolve your organization’s central conflict is a truly cheesy approach to management.

I’ll leave my readers with one last observation on the value of valid management information system structures as analogous to science fiction naval architecture: the original series’ (sorry, The Original Series’) Enterprise has been expertly restored and is conspicuously placed in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. The other Enterprises, well, aren’t.