Hello, my name is Robert Barrett and I get frustrated when things don’t work.  Friction is all around us and while the Zen masters can rise above it, I can not. 

The engineer in me is always looking to reduce friction where possible.  Friction creates frustration and frustration is my fuel; it compels me to get off my butt and design something better.  The artist in me is focused on design.  Much of nature’s beauty is derived from simple rules that repeat to form complex structures.  It is hard to design something simple, but when you do it becomes a thing of beauty.  

Organizations have many sources of friction.  An organization is a social system which is comprised of many individuals with their own intentions; working in a larger system that has its own intentions.  So the parts (the people), and the whole (the organization) have choice.  Moving the organization in a positive direction requires the efforts of many, so a tool that helps accomplish this goal has great value.    

Organizational problems typically take the form of a mess.  A mess is a collection of problems.  Many organizational messes are ingrained in the procedures and tools used to execute daily business.  They are essentially design issues that appear to be structural or cultural.  Restructuring that oscillates between centralized and decentralized control attempts to address these design issues but typically fails.  Cultural issues can result from poorly designed rigid systems that workers respond to with apathy as a coping mechanism.  

My frustration with the messes I observed in large social systems created pressure that produced a pearl, it’s a thing of beauty that I call the Understanding Tree.  The Understanding Tree transfers individual knowledge and understanding to the group and the group in turn transfers its knowledge and understanding back to individuals, which leads to personal and group wisdom over time.  Wisdom is the byproduct of synthesizing patterns to form accurate models of the world that have predictive power.  Wisdom is understanding of what ought to be done in a given circumstance to produce the best outcome.

The world is flush with data (symbols) and information (data with meaning) and this overwhelms people.  Most IT systems deal with data and information collection, storage, and transfer... Big Data is big news but maybe we should pause and focus on quality and not quantity.  

What people need is greater knowledge (know-how) and understanding (know-why).  The Understanding Tree provides this by design.  The Understanding Tree provides a simple and effective means of dissolving messes.

The process of working with this tool provides individuals and organizations knowledge and understanding of the complex messes they face.  As people work to solve complex problems, they start to understand why they exist.  Observing others attempts and failures at providing solutions that fail or generate other problems provides a depth of understanding which is hard to get without personal experience.  Whether people are actively working in the present to solve a mess, or they are reviewing an Understanding Tree from the past, they will gain knowledge and understanding of a mess simply by using the tool.  

The Understanding Tree is functionally different from other IT systems and tools.  It is a software tool that transfers knowledge and understanding using simple means to arrive at a complex structure.  The Understanding Tree is beautiful.