Ignore what you manage, in order to manage what you ignore

Why would we want to manage what we do?

Something should be obvious: this is ultimately impossible.
I spell it because it may not be obvious for everybody _that_ it is obvious for everybody (including me).

So, managing is not a goal in itself.

Managing is managing _away_ , i.e. processing the known so that one can focus on the remainder: what is _not_ managed (yet).
The problem with not managing is that there is no boundary between what has already been managed or could have been, and what has not or is known to be (for now) unmanageable.

Managing is thus making the context clear for communication, so that we can _ignore_ it (blindness). So that when we notice that we fail to communicate, the breakdown would not be catastrophic.


Ignorance ToC
Marc Girod
Last modified: Tue Sep 11 10:27:02 EETDST 2001