Hands and Feet

Christine Toms was on "New Dimensions" this weekend talking about her epiphany about pain leaving her body like a string coming unwound, and mentioned a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh about focusing on "Hands and Feet, hands and feet" as a way to keep centered and present. This is an interesting addition to the normal "breathe and smile" tactic.

NIMS epiphany

I just took a class in the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and thought - isn't this a model for running every human activity efficiently, not just incidents? What if we were to establish standard functions like planning, logistics, finance, etc. and build them up and break them down according to workload, using common terms, org charts, chartfields for accounting, etc? It would make the basis for a whole semantic web funcionality. For example, all products and services would be accessible to all "incidents" (or projects, or operations - whatever you want to call "stuff that people need to get done").

"projectizing the organization" has made sense to me for a long time, but this NIMS system's flexible work breakdown structure adds the benefit of continuous flexibility in how people are organized and who's doing what. In addition, the concept of "unified command" is how you make collaboration visible and create accountability.

I work in an organization with a lot of well-defined departments, but this is making me think that if we did away with all the departments and created a sea of resources, then the "command" structure could be much more flexible and responsible than it is today, with more efficiency and more accountability for both individuals and objectives.