Planning And People

By Author: peter
Total Articles: 191
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A solar pump was built in a small desert village. The pump used the desert's most common resource—sunlight, to increase its greatest necessity—water. Solar collectors were used to collect the sun's rays. Flat collectors can be stationary and do not have moving parts which can be broken in sand storms. The system used the 20°C temperature difference between the solar collectors and the ground water to work a gas expansion engine which pumped water from under the ground.

Some of the social effects of the new pumps were planned for. Children aged 6—15 used to bring the water from wells, where they met the old men of the village and received Omega Replica informal education from them. In order to replace this, a school was also included in the project. But the project had not considered the traditional power structure of the village. As soon as the foreign experts left, the two richest men in the village took control of the pump and started selling water to everyone else. The result was that the majority of people were ...
... poorer than before.

In 1946 there was a program in the Rio Grande valley to substitute hybrid corn for the native corn. The native corn was of poor nutritional quality and gave a poor quantity of grain while j the hybrid corn was of excellent quality and gave about three times as large a crop as the native variety. In the first year half of the 84 farmers in the village planted hybrid corn and j doubled the corn production. Three years later, however, only three farmers planted hybrid j com. The others were planting the traditional variety. At the beginning of the project the prograrnjeader studied the ecology of the area and showed films demonstrating the superiority of the new corn. The farmers agreed that the hybrid corn had great advantages. The size of the crop confirmed these advantages. Why did they stop planting it? The answer was simple: their wives did not like it. They complained that it wasn't good for cooking and they didn't like the flavor.

The manager of a large office building had received many complaints about the lift service in the building. He engaged a group of engineers to study the situation and make recommendations for improvement. The engineers suggested two alternative solutions: Adding more lifts of the same types; Replacing the existing lifts by faster ones.

The manager decided that both alternative solutions were too expensive. So the firm's psychologist offered to study the problem. He noticed that many people arrived at their offices feeling angry and impatient. The reason they gave was the length of time they had to wait or the lift. However, the psychologist was impressed by the fact that they had only had to rait a relatively short time. It occurred to him that the reason for their annoyance was the act they had to stand by the lifts inactive. He suggested a simple, inexpensive solution to he manager. This was adopted and complaints stopped immediately. The solution was to lace a large mirror next to the lifts.

Three of these cases show failure, and one success. What conclusions can be made about the ecision involved? First, in any decision, some considerations are more relevant than others. t is a mistake to attempt to solve a problem in engineering terms when the Tag Heuer Replica problem is a psylological one. Similarly, it is wrong to concentrate on the social effects of a new invention if is mechanically inadequate. It is a mistake to attempt to improve one part of a system if the 'hole system has to be changed.

Secondly, there is a more fundamental question. A solution may be technically very crude it will work because people are enthusiastic about it. Some projects predict negative human actions but are unable to persuade people that the project is right. Other projects fail be-me of indifference—people neither like it nor dislike it—they just do not think it is necessary. A project will be successful only if the people involved believe that it is necessary and Jumble for their own lives. And people believe that in these cases the plans are right but the people are wrong. History, however, has shown this belief to be dangerous.