Implementation Foreword

I have successfully undertaken many different projects over the years that would have fit within the Lewis Works framework in one way or another. This included various forms of field research; consulting for businesses and implementing designs for business development; setting up work shops of various kinds; planning and executing various types of construction projects at various levels. The list goes on, and it is almost as if the last quarter century has been nothing more than a life-time of preparation for what I am attempting to implement now in terms of the Lewis-Works Framework. Even this framework itself, now almost five years in the planning and preparatory organization, has come to a focal culmination in terms of this general implementation framework and its adaptive application to a broad range of problem sets. In all my previous projects, there was lacking a sense of overall purpose and coordination of planning and effort. Each project went only so far, and though each provided a window onto a world of larger possibilities, the framework in which they had been conceived was wanting of a larger sense of purpose and reason. The desire to have a sense of larger coordination and fulfillment, by which to align all my projects and diverse involvements, has probably led to the development of this Lewis-Works Framework more than any other single set of factors. As such it represents a coming together of diverse interests and sets of involvements to a single focal framework that I consider to have achieved a certain comprehensiveness in scope and purpose. I see it as a master game plan, not just for myself, but potentially for many people on earth.

  This process of project implementation will undoubtedly continue as long as we have the means and the context to continue doing so. My interest has grown increasingly towards the challenge of large scale implementation that involves complex planning and setting up of many different working systems in coordination. The Lewis-Works framework is intentionally designed to handle and coordinate a very diverse range of projects, from planning to successive regeneration and modification. I have little doubt now of the built-in potential of this framework to successfully implement many different kinds of designs, and alternative kinds of systems that will be forthcoming from these designs.

For the sake of clarity, let it be said here that a "project" is any set of coordinated undertakings designed to accomplish some limited, definite goal or objective. In general, the problem of implementation of such a project is setting up and managing effective a working system, or set of working systems, that is capable of achieving the desired goals or objectives. Of course, a project may be part of a larger program of action, a spin-off of other involvements, or one of a series of on-going projects. A project that continues through successive generations and life-cycles, sort of like the annual editions of new automobiles, can be considered to have become a "program" that encompasses a larger scope and framework than that of any single project or instance of a project.

For anyone to seriously consider the problem of project or program implementation, it is assumed that one is initially past the initial planning stage and that a reasonable, hopefully realistic set of goals have been formulated, along with a game-plan of action seen as necessary to achieve the goals in a timely way. This may not always be the case of course, and people may come upon the general problem of implementation even before they have clearly defined a set of goals or objectives. It may be the case that the search for solutions to problems that are encountered lead them to attempt to implement courses of action in the hope that these will serve to alleviate or solve the problem at hand. If one is working from a fund of experience, then the requirement of spending resources formulating goals and master plans may be obviated by the pre-understandings brought to bear upon the problems at hand and knowledge of outcomes that comes with experience and a certain degree of expertise. This is of course a bit harder to achieve if the kinds of problems one is dealing with are completely new, and the goals one is attempting to realize have not been done before.

The first step in implementation is therefore to ask, and hopefully answer in some reasonable way, the most important question: Do the means (resources, technology, knowledge, willingness) exist to accomplish the goals defined in a timely manner? Not only do the resources and other related means have to be sufficient to undertake the work in the first place (and probably a bit more than sufficient, but ample), but the organization of the work has to be such that the goals can be done within a time frame that makes sense--there must be some reasonable deadline and schedule, however tentative, that say's "by such and such a date we will have done A, B, and then C." If these two criteria cannot be reasonably met, then one's goals need to be redefined or else one might do better to seek a new direction to undertake in life.

Implementation is therefore at first a central dilemma of marrying potentially unlimited ends to usually very limited means. I would argue that in the real human world, constrained as it always is by thermodynamics, this kind of dilemma is always the case. It appears that not are only unrealistic or unachievable goals the initial problem, but this problem is also most frequently met by a lack of resources, or a lack of the right kinds of resources, coupled with the inability to utilize and organize the resources that are available in a manner that would be effective towards accomplishing one's goals. The problem of fitting means to ends may become a bit of a complex puzzle, a kind of AI problem to solve without a clear or obvious kind of answer. On one hand it may entail the gradual or stadial readjustment of goals, either redefining them in a more realistic or more achievable manner, or else, to borrow another rubric from AI research, to break a larger problem down into a number of smaller sub-problems (a strategy of Lewis-Works) with the hope of tying the sub-problems all back together afterward to solve the big problem. Even in conflict resolution and negotiation of competing interests, one's goals must sometimes be defined on the basis of vary small gains, of very trivial common ground, upon which at least hope can build further gains in compromise and reconciliation of interests in a larger sense.

Implementation moves beyond the definition and evaluation of ends and goals, and even of the formulation of plans, which is really the first stage of implementation, and it concerns centrally the assessment of resources, means, assets, as well as other factors like risks, obstacles, limitations, etc., that may exist to impede one in one's progress. What I have sought to do in these pages is to offer a sense of a coherent, systematic framework, part and parcel of the Lewis-Works meta-systems framework itself, that provides a general model as well as a coherent methodology for the implementation of plans, a broad range of plans, set to a wider range of potential problem sets.