Did You Feel a Little Trukese of Lately?
In her landmark book Plans and Situated Actions, Lucy Suchman remarks on an article by Thomas Gladwin, an anthropologist, contrasting the different approaches of navigating small boats around tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean between a Trukese (Oceanic) and a European sailor.
Before setting sail, the European begins with a plan ? a course - that can be written in terms of directions, degrees of longitude and latitude, estimated time of arrival at separate points on the journey. Once the plan is conceived and completed, the sailor has only to carry out each step consecutively, one after another, to be assured of arriving on time at the planned destination. The sailor uses all available tools, such as a compass, a sextant, a map, etc., and his main objective is sticking to the plan and remaining ?on course?. If unexpected events occur, he must first alter the plan to respond accordingly.
In contrast, the native Trukese sailor starts his voyage by imaging the position of his destination relative to the position of the other islands. As he sails along, he constantly adjusts his direction according to his awareness of the position thus far. His decisions are improvized continually by checking relative positions of landmarks, sun, wind direction, etc. He navigates with reference to where he started, where he is going, and the space between his destination and the point where he is at the moment. His effort is directed to doing whatever is necessary to reach the objective. If asked, he can point to his objective at any moment but he cannot describe his course.
Although this contrast in behavior is commonly viewed as an example of Cartesian dichotomy, left/right hemisphere issue or the Venus/Mars opposition, Suchman?s research led her conclude that the European culture prefers plans more than anything else, while they are indeed only a weak resource for human activity. She regards human behavior in general being determined ad hoc by the context of specific circumstances, no matter how much planning is applied. In other words, people are driven in their activities basically by accomplishing a certain goal which is paramount to whatever structure you build around it before or after. It does not mean that there is no instrumental or systematic action but it means there is no linear progression from outset to target.
Like the Trukese modern business users struggle mostly with reaching their goals amidst constantly changing requirements and shifting environmental conditions. And if we want to stop widening the widely perceived gap between business and IT, IT has to come to understand that their plans (or models, or flowcharts, etc.) and tools would be of little help to the Trukese sailor holding out his nose in a stiff breeze.
lucy suchman