The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives

Information Age Thinking - Notes on what we have done to change our organisation's rules over the years. - delivered By John D. Hughes at a Mt. Evelyn Meeting on Vision 20-20; the Shire of Yarra Ranges 20 year Strategic Plan - 21 June 1999.

Thank you for the opportunity to "enlighten you".

I hope to generate more light than heat.

In selling, you are told to start with a big fat claim.

This evening, as a representative of the most friendly and non racist agency in this Shire, I want to tell you how the effort, sustained thought and will-to-do tactics gave our organisation our 20 year plan.

Did you pick our claim up?

Are you to gather that some organisations in the Shire are not friendly and they are racist?

The 20-20 vision plan must address the culture of any persons who choose to have a narrow view of the value of good will in a community. When you get to the bottom line in tourism or business, visible goodwill will carry the day.

The final draft of our plan was completed in 1996.

A copy of our 20 year plan and other information on a special 3 year plan has been provided to Mr. Bryce Craggs, Manager Corporate Strategy.

If I was asked to name the most important thing about our plan I would say the major factor was determination to change our computer culture.

For years, I say to Members:

"You know don't you, if we don't get better computer systems today, we will regret it tomorrow!

Within the last 15 years, we have moved from being a seventh rate library to become a third rate world library.

By the end of the century, we are going to have the most useful library computer network in Australia".

We are planning to upgrade our library software this year.

Information access has been an issue with us for years.

We continue to impress on Members the need to change since we had our first major policy change worked through by our M.B.A.'s who ran our " Skunk Works" program a decade ago.

The content could be compared to the "Top Gun " programs.

For thousands of years, Buddha Dhamma practice stressed that mind cultivation giving flexibility of minds is desirable.

Buddha Dhamma has about 40 teaching methods, suitable for different persons, some of which give a good attitude, others give will power which is something like power walking, and yet others give meditation for healthy living.

Others stress training in useful social skills, such as loving kindness, so persons can develop such business minds that are like global thinking minds needed for planning.

To have heard much, meaning vast learning, is admired.

To highlight we were not risk adverse and needed flexibility and good causes not to be "old fashioned"; we would say to all Members:

"We stress that one third of you will leave us because in your heart you do not want to change to a new culture that gives equal value to five styles we specified.

These include friendliness, cultural adaptability, and so on listed on the handout.

We could see, without doubt, that the only way we could manage these five styles globally at the same time was to write down the learned culture that was our scattered heritage knowhow.

Such cultural knowhow that existed in the heads of our multicultural Members was written down.

We use our information age computer systems to help solve practical problems. We know lazy persons will leave our organisation, so we encourage them to study elsewhere.

We say (half jokingly): "If you say, it is too hot or too cold or too early or too late, we will ignore you, because like it or not like it, modern history shows Australia is about to be woken up and dragged screaming into the 21st.century information age!"

We are willing to compete for our place in the sun.

The only way to do this is to bring the computer systems we need on line as fast as possible. Little else matters.

Last week, when I was in Bangkok, Thailand, with my colleagues planning the next two year's action by the peak world body concerned with the teaching and maintenance of Buddha Dhamma in the world we were complimented on our efforts in supplying persons with and convincing persons about the need for the new technology.

Delegates from a dozen or so countries met in harmony to talk and agree on information age peak strategy for the World Fellowship of Buddhists organisation which, when worked through, alters the lives of over 600 million persons for the better.

You may wonder how an Australian organisation located in Upwey developed the know-how and credibility to engage globally?

Believe it or not, it is a matter of vision and the will to act to make it happen - the act of pure will power to get things done.

You must believe in yourself and your organisation.

Because our organisation started restructuring itself over 10 years ago, we have kept telling ourselves ever since "do not be too old-fashioned".

When you get serious about acting something out, the first thing you must do is improve your internal and external information systems.

We now have over 20 computer screens running on our local area network ( our LAN), a website, and an information culture with a data warehouse where each word can be found on our ISYS search engines having retrieval times that can produce hundreds of references in two seconds.

We are openhanded in information given to our Members.

About one document per thousand is classified not for publication.

Members can read e-mail and access the working files and reports on just about everything that has been done over the last decade or is being done.

Under Australian law, it is vital that you understand the extended equal opportunity laws open up the possibility of legal action against you if offensive material occurs in e-mails.

We avoid e-mail idle chatter and discourage Members entering information that defames other persons.

To avoid trouble, we train Members to enter only information that is well sourced before entering anything as true into our systems.

The content of our data warehouse is censored to prevent Member persons from entering sexist, racist or ageist comments into our systems.

Recently, we incline to the view that the recent adoption of the UN resolution on religious freedom into Australian law has extended remedies at law that prevent covert discrimination against activities of religious bodies.

Having just completed the long flight back from Thailand, I needed to prepare this document in a hurry.

I found 174 references having the words "old fashioned" in 64 of our documents in two seconds in our systems.

We are about to scan into our data warehouse systems the paper based good information we have archived from our friends in about 60 countries over the last two decades.

We are making transparent the good information on hundreds of local organisations on file.

Being one of the Vice-Presidents of the World Fellowship of Buddhists makes me a key player in a world system. I have to think things through for the sake of many persons.

We do not live in a mechanical universe - it is mind driven so human beings must develop themselves.

We are not powerless against nature once we see life is never simple and some of the things we need to change are non deterministic.

What is it all about? We call our present management culture "S5".
Roughly, S5 is a system that handles about a hundred times more good information as input to solving problems.

This means to perform to get a better solution set.

S5 is simply this - the world does not owe you a future living. We must act and go on a strong S5 learning curve about the information age this life if we are to deliver prosperity for our children.

Otherwise, we will be a fourth rate nation.

The challenge is there for all to see. We wish the Shire the best for their 20 year plan and can help them in areas of mutual concern.

PROBLEM QUALIFICATION FOR DETERMINISTIC CONTROL

A learning organisation needs to transform persons to not be too old fashioned and be capable of running an intelligent office at a juicy profit for the Company.

The best practice path for a person who WANTS to learn to control rigidity to bring about the flexibility in problem identification and solution is he or she needs to train to reach a higher level of qualification or skill in the exertion planned.

EITHER a problem is qualified by IF....., THEN.....
OR a problem is unqualified by IF....., NOT KNOWN.

NOTE: Treat indeterminate sets as belonging to the qualified sets.

In classical Buddha Dhamma texts are three stages to learning:

1. Learning (pariyatti)

2. Putting to practice. ( patipatti )

3. Realisation of the many truths of the problem in all respects. (pativedha)

For versatile control of problems it is possible to change what he or she has not learnt (by learning NOW) or mis-learnt on old culture (know the error learnt, forget it, and learn NOW).
But, THE PERSON MUST WANT TO LEARN.

To become more flexible; the underpinning problem is dealt with by becoming awake enough to OVERCOME an old qualification that enjoys the negative consequences of success e.g.

* "When things go well, I'll do something to ruin it";

A positive person MUST control his or her personality by CHANGE.

A negative person is useless for work because they refuse to change in any way because they like their present personality. How can this be done except by changing qualifications?.

All must be interested in confronting and destroying 27 concerns over the negative consequences of success.

HINT: Remember you are never right if you defend the negative parts of your old culture. Refer to "Software for the brain" tape.

Best practice must have "stress control flags" which constrains the system users from displaying their old qualification.

If they display old culture, demand they change their Current View of the Situation to a Better View of the Situation.

We have A CULTURAL CHANGE PROGRAM to destroy personality which enjoys the negative consequences of success. We no longer spend our resources on helping drug addicts because other agencies do this good enough.

Things work with persons who are wanting to change.

We have 27 learning units were designed to destroy 27 negative personalities. (ref. Aust. J. Psych. Vol. 33, No. 1 @ p.22

After destruction of their negative personalities, persons become qualified to manage their own stress control:

* to improve O H & S.
* to lower fixed costs.
* to provide a fair return on investment (ROI)
* to provide a consistency of PROJECT PLANNING naming files.
* to make intelligent use of our DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (DBMS) having available 3 types of relationships among entities.
* to avoid update anomalies.
* to develop best practice.

If you need to know more, please come and visit our Centre.
Thank you very much for your time.
I think every business in the Shire must attend to upgrading their computer systems this year because if they do not, they are left behind and cannot compete on managing costs with those who do.

In our case, three persons do what 20 persons did a decade ago.
We do not intend to waste the life blood of our organistion - our volunteer's time. Please consider joining us.

May you be well and happy. Have you any questions?

This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes and Leanne Eames.

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