Optimal Leadership  by Wayne M. Angel, Ph.D.
The Optimal Organization - Understand Who Want What - Obstacles: Fuzzy Language


















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The Quest - A Preface

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Optimal Leadership
  The Optimal Organization
 
    From Where the 5 Critical Factors?
      The 5 Critical Factors
      Understand Who Wants What
          Obstacles
              Incompleteness
              Trade-Off Value
              What Will It Cost?
              Wants Will Change
              Whose Wants
              Fuzzy Language
              The Real Wants
          Getting Past the Obstacles
      Find a Solution
      Apply the Skills
      Establish Feedback
      Establish Foresight

      Other Possibilities

  Causes of Organization Failure
  Creating the Optimal Organization
  The Optimal Change Agent


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There is also the difficulty of correctly understanding what people mean when they use language to express a want.  It is not at all uncommon to hear a customer say, “That’s not what I wanted.”  And when you and your customer go back to the requirement's list you come to understand that what he thought he said is not what you thought he said.  You can read the same thing and find a different meaning.  This is language.  Even the most skilled individuals cannot entirely eliminate this source of misunderstanding. 

The fuzzy language problem will occur even with the best of writers, speakers, readers, and listeners.  Most people are not really very good at language.  This includes many who believe they are.  This, of course, compounds the problem.

You may very well believe that you can be, or at least some people can be, very precise with language.  I will discuss this in the theory section on Mimetics.  But, doing that now would be a very extensive side trip.  So, if you do not already believe that language is by its very nature a fuzzy way of expressing things, I ask that you accept the position that, "if it were fuzzy then that would be another source of wants misunderstanding." 

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