Re: New Mexico Fire - who is the owner of the system

[Ken.Kuang@kyocera.com (Ken Kuang)]

There has been a lot of discussions on the thread about "New Mexico Fire". 
Many discussions centered on the system view of this fire. 

Some discussions even suggested that Secretary Babbitt himself should be 
punished. Here is a trap. We are falling into the pitfall of punishing 
"someone" for system's fault too.

This eventually filters down to that who is the ultimate owner of the 
system?  Superintendent of National Forest Service, Interior Secretary 
Bruce Babbitt or all of us.  In my view, all of us, the general public are 
the ultimate owner of the system. The general public expects (demands) to 
punish someone as the outcome of this fire. Secretary Babbitt is working 
inside the system, he is a part of the system like all of us (maybe a 
bigger part than most of us).

The bottom line, it does not matter who is to blame for the fire, the 
system at macroscopic level is still the same. If someone asks if similar 
incident will happen again in the future, answer is definitely YES.

Sometime ago I had a chance to attend a presentation titled "Managing for 
Quality Still Makes Sense", by Murray Slater / Phil Monroe (both are San 
Diego DUG members), I learned a lot from it. The theme of the presentation 
was - "If you want victims focus on people, if you want improvement, focus 
on the process". 

Ken Kuang
Kyocera America, Inc.
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