The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

by Richard Hamming

All organizations have this problem. You are now at the lower levels in your organization, and you can see for yourselves how things are reported and how the reports differ from reality—it will still be the same unless you, when you are in charge, change things drastically. The Air Force uses what are supposed to be random inspections, but as a retired Navy captain friend of mine once observed to me, every base commander has a radar and knows what is in the air, and if he is surprised by an inspection team then he must be a fool. But he has less time to prepare than for scheduled inspections, so presumably the inspection reports are closer to reality than when inspections only occur at times known far in advance. Yes, inspections are measurements, and you get what you measure. It is often only a little different in other organizations—the news of a coming measurement (inspection) gets out on the grapevine of gossip, and the receiver, while pretending to be surprised, has often prepared that very morning for it.