lunes, agosto 30, 2010

Should the Smart Grid be a Technological Project to Address a Challenge Faced by Utility Executives?


Following the advice of the great designer Don Norman, the answer is NO, as the most difficult social, organizational, and cultural aspects, were not considered in its explicit architecture act. An emerging revolution can be organized to shifting the whole power industry with the Electricity Without Price Controls Architecture Framework, in which those difficult living system aspects have been explicitly considered.

Should the Smart Grid be a Technological Project to Address a Challenge Faced by Utility Executives?

By José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.

Creator of the EWPC-AF
Systemic Consultant: Electricity

First posted in the GMH Blog, on August 30th 2010.

Copyright © 2010 José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without written permission from José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. This article is an unedited, an uncorrected, draft material of The EWPC Textbook. Please write to javs@ieee.org to contact the author for any kind of engagement.

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"... technology is the easy part to change. The difficult aspects are social, organizational, and cultural." Donald Norman, "The Invisible Computer," Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press 1988. That old quote by Don applies right on the Smart Grid growing difficulties, as a result of “The Integrated Energy and Communication Systems Architecture (IECSA)” design work.

Under the title “THE NEED FOR AN INDUSTRY ARCHITECTURE,” on page 2-1 of the final release of IECSA Volume I, it is written that “There is a two-part answer to the question, “Why it is necessary to develop an industry architecture?’ First, it must be understood that the challenge facing utility executives is keeping the lights on while also enhancing the value of services to consumer… The second, and more powerful argument, is that the only way to address the challenge utility executives face is to go back to basics, understand why the current system doesn’t perform as needed, and then to design interoperability into the system from the ground up.”

While having a consumer portal for “…enhancing the value of services to consumer…,” It is easy to see that the industry architecture “… must be understood that the challenge facing utility executives…” and “… that the only way to address the challenge utility executives face…” is technological. It is important to know that the consumer portal was just a part (see page 5-3) that could “be directly fed into the project.” In sum, the smart grid is a technological project to address the challenge utility executives’ face. To make things a lot worst, according to Table 7 (page 7-6), the living system aspects of the “Industry Organizational Change,” is one the “Areas beyond the scope of IECSA.” No wonder the smart grid is facing growing opposition.

To be successful, the emerging electricity revolution requires a deep and fresh understanding of how parts and wholes are interrelated in the living system of the power industry. As explained in the book "Presence: human purpose and the field of the future," written by Peter Senge, C. Otto Sharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers, “Unlike machines, living systems, such as your body or a tree, create themselves. They are not mere assemblages of their parts but are continually growing and changing along with their elements.”

As a result of the discussion about the meaning highly important concept “shifting the whole,” the book authors discovered the new systems axiom “What is most systemic is most local.” After that discovery, they wrote that "The deepest systems we enact are woven into the fabric of everyday life, down to the most minute detail... This is so important for us to understand. We, every one of us, may be able to change the world, but only as we experience more and more of the whole in the present..."

When people quote that "The late Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill once posited that 'all politics is local,'" they are giving an instance of that axiom. I have long posited that the global power industry is undergoing a great systemic crisis, as I have been living in, the Dominican Republic, one of the places where this crisis has been and still is greatest. The smart grid based on the EWPC-AF is trying to emerged, but the political lobby does not allow the creative destruction to operate.

The minimalist architecture, holistic and emergent EWPC-AF is the result of seeing the emerging whole of the power industry. It has a unifying global vision based on an explicit architecture act that integrates cross-cutting issues for global energy policy, while letting efficient and effective local acts grow and change.

Having to pay one half of every dollar per kWh on top of the electricity bill, the US is also a clear representative of the global great systemic crisis. When Phil Carson writes "today's utilities often carry a legacy of mistrust derived from being the only game in town accustomed to dictating interactions with 'ratepayers'... ," in his article Smart Grid Is Local, Too, Phil has placed that mistrust at the center of the systemic crisis and the great local instance of the axiom.

Most local solutions can be found in the global scope EWPC post The New California Capitalist Model to Initiate the Transformation of the Global Power Industry, which responds to challenge set 2 weeks ago by Kate Rowland. Most other local solution can also be found in the global scope EWPC post 2 Smart Grid Lessons Learned: Increasing Stimulus Grant was Mistaken. Utilities Must be restructured, that gives Boulder, Colorado, one of the greatest opportunities to start the mentioned transformation.

miércoles, agosto 25, 2010

What Impact on Utilities Investors May Have a Reduction of 30 to 70 Percent in Home Energy Use?

Katherine Tweed reported on greentechenterprise, on August 24, 2010, that a General Electric Partnership Could Slash Home Energy Use by 70 Percent. She adds that "GE is part of a pilot project to show that homes can drastically cut their energy use with retrofits."
The impact on utilities investors is explained in the conclusion of the EWPC article Answering “What Energy Business Are You In?” As the Way Out of The Third Depression, that says "
... that any forward looking utility savvy investors, based on the above insights, will now be able to answer without distractions the question “What business are you in,” as either the T&D Grid or the Enterprise side of the EWPC-AF. Hence, I further predict that the opposition of state governments and the special interest utility lobby that aims to disallow the emerging creative destruction of the power industry will fade, in order to decrease the likelihood of The Third Depression."

lunes, agosto 23, 2010

Answering “What Energy Business Are You In?” As the Way Out of The Third Depression

During a similar time of great change, railroads and utilities have defined their business incorrectly, by ignoring several insights, like the one Theodore Levitt gave us in his 1960’s Marketing Myopia manifesto. A quote on the 1982 book Megatrends explains utility investors why the attempt to keep a monopoly on the customer relationship, with an ineffective old economy Big-Bang Advanced Metering Infrastructure will further extend the uneconomic overexpansion of the resources of the supply side. To reduce the odds of the return of the depression, we need policies for the new economy, like power industry transformation and boring banking, which mutually reinforce each other with the coming communications’ boom to enable innovative value creation and long term jobs.

Answering “What Energy Business Are You In?” As the Way Out of The Third Depression

By José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.
Creator of the EWPC-AF
Systemic Consultant: Electricity

First posted in the GMH Blog, on August 23rd 2010.

Copyright © 2010 José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without written permission from José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. This article is an unedited, an uncorrected, draft material of The EWPC Textbook. Please write to javs@ieee.org to contact the author for any kind of engagement.

Most Viewed on the EWPC Blog on August 23rd, 2010
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· Nanosolar Breakthrough and the Old Paradigm (9,638)

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· IMEUC False Facts (41)
· Campaign for Fair Electricity Rates (34)


João Batista Gomes has added the very interesting and timely discussion in two LinkedIn groups with the paradox “The only way utility companies will move toward a "Smart Grid" model (with own money), is if they are allowed to charge more money to deliver less power?” I claim that there is another way out.

It is easy to see from that paradox how the utilities mindset has led as a de-facto policy to an uneconomic overexpansion on the supply side that keeps the demand side highly undeveloped. The way out of that broken business paradox in which utility investors are involved was explained by Theodore Levitt in the July-August 1960 issue of the Harvard Business Review’s article (called a manifesto in HBR site) "Marketing Myopia."

To start to show the way out, I have adapted Levitt’s example on the situation that the railroads business faced after The Great Depression to the situation that utilities will face with the emergence of the Smart Grid (whose main value creating opportunities are in the development of the demand side) under The Third Depression (see below) in the making.

The utilities did not stop growing because the need for energy based services (light, air conditioning, refrigeration, etc.) declined. That grew. The retail side of utilities are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (competitive retailers, energy services companies, energy management companies, solar panel vendors, demand side energy efficiency suppliers, demand response companies, battery manufacturers) but because they could not be filled by the utilities themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the utility business rather than the energy based services business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were utility oriented instead of services oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented...

In addition, the idea of trying to keep the ownership of the relationship of all of the retail customers through the ownership of an ineffective old economy Big-Bang Advanced Metering Infrastructure is bound to extend the duration of the uneconomic overexpansion of the supply side that at some point will lead to a crash. That insight can be foreseen as we make a parallel with the crash for overexpansion in the railroad industry during The Long Depression at the end of the XIX Century, which highlights the reality versus illusion as a result of the big change being experienced in the business environment.

John Naisbitt's 1982 Megatrends, explains under the section "Law of the Situation: the railroads did not understand," the illusion utilities and state regulators are in, with the quote of Walter B. Wriston, chairman of Citicorp, who in 1981 said:

The philosophy of the divine right of kings died hundreds of years ago, but not, it seems, the divine right of inherited markets. Some people still believe there's a divine dispensation that their markets are theirs - and no one else's
- now and forevermore. It is an old dream that dies hard, yet no businessman in a free society can control a market when the customers decide to go somewhere else. All the king's horses and all the king's man are helpless in the face of a better product. Our commercial history is filled with examples of companies that failed to change in a changing world, and became tombstones in the corporate graveyard.


Now referring to what happen after the Great Depression, in The New York Times of April 10, 2009 article "Making Banking Boring," the Novel Prize winner and Op-Ed Columnist PAUL KRUGMAN wrote, among other things, it is: “Strange to say, this era of boring banking was also an era of spectacular economic progress for most Americans.” Carlota Pérez, a Venezuelan, researcher, lecturer, and author of the book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, has a self consistent explanation that runs as follows: the shift from financial capital to production capital [in which “boring”] financial capital takes on its traditional role, has happened after the depressions ends, in each one of the past 5 technological revolutions, after the old economy loses to the new economy, and a new golden age starts.

Increasing the leverage of the insights from the report "The Coming Communications Boom?: Jobs, Innovation and Countercyclical Regulatory Policy," written by Michael Mandel, I argue that initiating the transformation of the power industry and "Making Banking Boring" will come as the power industry and communication industries mutually reinforcing each other, through forward looking policy decisions that will create a new economy golden age boom, with mores jobs, innovations, helping us avoid altogether The Third Depression or at least substantially reducing its negative impact.

To place the needed sense of urgency to the emergent way of a customer oriented electricity business, please take a look at the EWPC post The New California Capitalist Model to Initiate the Transformation of the Global Power Industry, which responds to a challenge set byKate Rowland in her Intelligent Utility article Smart meter reflux continues. The challenge is based on a quote made by Peter Darbee, CEO and president of PG&E Corporation, which says:

As we go forward, I think the stakes are very great because once again, California is in the position to serve as the model for the rest of the United States when the United States has said it's not ready to move forward. And the challenge that we have is, are we going to be a good model, or a bad model, or an indifferent model.
All of the above explanations that leads to the new way are well in accordance with the EWPC article Three Smart Grid Predictions for Initiating the Global Power Industry Transformation, whose summary offers:

Prediction #1: Recognizing the emerging global power industry in the complete context around the Intelligent Utility Inside article Baltimore G&E: AMI Comeback? and that of this EWPC article, the Maryland PSC “No so fast” decision on the BGE proposal is highly likely the 1st domino of the chain reaction that is going to start “knocking over the next” state regulator’s utility case, “which upsets the next one, and so on.”

Prediction #2: Rethinking the old utility compact with an obligation to serve to an emergent compact on the T&D Grid side of the EWPC-AF with an obligation to deliver, the end-to-end “smart grid” will play out as part of the Enterprise side of the EWPC-AF.

Prediction #3: Repositioning the utilities that missed the opportunities to learn the lessons of other industries is bound to be in a restricted T&D Grid space that will sooner or later be "painfully consolidated."

I conclude that any forward looking utility savvy investors, based on the above insights, will now be able to answer without distractions the question “What business are you in,” as either the T&D Grid or the Enterprise side of the EWPC-AF. Hence, I further predict that the opposition of state governments and the special interest utility lobby that aims to disallow the emerging creative destruction of the power industry will fade, in order to decrease the likelihood of The Third Depression.



lunes, agosto 16, 2010

eMail Enviado: ¿Es la URGENCIA de la Estrategia Nacional de Desarrollo Ampliamente Apoyada por Todos los Niveles?

Estimada o estimado líder,

La Estrategia Nacional de Desarrollo (END) tiene la posibilidad de jugar un papel crucial en la transformación del país. No obstante, para que eso ocurra es necesario que la misma se guíe con un sistema de acción distinto al que percibo (quiero que me convenzan de lo contrario) se está siguiendo en este momento, que no es que más que el archiconocido sistema de gestión.

Siguiendo las enseñanzas de John P. Kotter, el eminente profesor retirado de la Universidad de Harvard, es necesario emplear un sistema no muy conocido, que es el sistema de acción de liderazgo. Un ejemplo de esto, lo doy en la nota Un Debate GMH: ¿Debería Ser la Estrategia Nacional de Desarrollo un Ejercicio de Gestión?

Mi percepción de que la END parece que va a ser solamente un ejercicio más para crear una ley que no facilite la necesaria transformación y que peor aún pueda restringirnos innecesariamente. Para considerar dicha transformación, repito que es necesario seguir el poco conocido sistema de acción de liderazgo. Una de las primeras evidencias de que se persigue una transformación, es que es absolutamente necesario que la gran mayoría de ustedes mismos, líderes inteligentes e importantes, crean con gran intensidad en su urgencia.

Orientado a la necesaria transformación del sector eléctrico local, que debe ser una de las estrategias esenciales de la END, un segundo ejemplo de las enseñanzas de Kotter aparece en la nota eMail Enviado: Vean lo que Debería Ser la Última Presentación de la Obra “Los Mangos Bajitos del Sector Eléctrico” Para que Actúen con Suma Urgencia. Dado que la transformación local está íntimamente ligada a la transformación de la industria eléctrica global, un tercer ejemplo aparece en la nota Response to Bob Gilligan, VP of GE's Digital Energy Business, Submitted to BusinessWeek. En dicha nota doy cuenta fehaciente de los últimos acontecimientos regulatorios de dicha industria.

En resumen, los invito encarecidamente a involucrarse personalmente con mucha intensidad para que la END, en vez de ser una pérdida de tiempo y dinero, que posiblemente, en el peor de los casos, pueda llevarnos a un estado fallido, sirva realmente a toda la sociedad como "un viaje de transformación hacia un país mejor."

Con suma urgencia,

José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.
Servidor-Líder del Grupo Millennium Hispaniola

domingo, agosto 15, 2010

Response to Bob Gilligan, VP of GE's Digital Energy Business, Submitted to BusinessWeek

Responding to the article The Electricity Grid Wants Heat Relief, Too, by Bob Gilligan, the vice-president for GE's Digital Energy business, part of GE Energy, I submitted the following comment to Bloomberg-BusinessWeek :

I start the EWPC post An Epic Smart Grid Failure is in the Making, with “The smart grid is a transformation process of the global power industry. A transformation is not a trivial change. It is a big and complex change process that will satisfy ongoing customer needs, which they are not able to articulate yet…”

A smart grid that only helps “… reduce the financial and environmental costs associated with ‘peak load,’ when utilities are forced to activate the marginal, more expensive "peaker plants" required to meet spikes in energy demand” is not a fully deployed one. A fully deployed smart grid requires an emergent, minimalist, and holistic regulatory framework, which enables the transformation of the power industry with business model innovations, where most of the value creation is bound to occur in the demand side. To initiate such a transformation we need a strong industry leadership to enact the mentioned regulatory framework.

The regulatory framework “to ensure that that appropriate incentives are in place to drive the desired investments,” by industry agents, and by customers as well, is already conceptualized as the Electricity Without Price Controls Architecture Framework (EWPC-AF), which says that: “The EWPC-AF is a two tiered architecture that greatly simplifies regulations. The first level is an intermediate architecture aimed for an energy policy act, which separates the whole emergent complex system into two less complex systems [which I now call the T&D Grid and the Enterprise]. Those systems are highly cohesive with lightly coupled interfaces among them:…”

To enable the purpose of maximum social welfare, this is not just about minimizing cost either, which is the main aim of the T&D Grid side, but increasing value creation as well, mostly by business model innovations in the Enterprise side.

I conclude the EWPC post The BGE Domino is Down, with “This is in accordance with my Prediction #1: Recognizing the emerging global power industry in the complete context around the Intelligent Utility Inside article Baltimore G&E: AMI Comeback? and that of this EWPC article, the Maryland PSC “No so fast” decision on the BGE proposal is highly likely the 1st domino of the chain reaction that is going to start “knocking over the next” state regulator’s utility case, “which upsets the next one, and so on.” See the EWPC article Three Smart Grid Predictions for Initiating the Global Power Industry Transformation.

“The question of who pays and who benefits” doesn’t “need to be worked out on a case-by-case basis.” To design the EWPC-AF regulatory framework I employed the four who’s insight, that according the book “The Art of System Architecting,” by Rechtin and Maier, “asks four questions that need to be answered as a self-consistent set if the system is to succeed economically; namely who benefits? who pays? who provides? And, as appropriate, who loses?”

José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, PhD
Creator of the EWPC-AF

miércoles, agosto 11, 2010

eMail Enviado: Vean lo que Debería Ser la Última Presentación de la Obra “Los Mangos Bajitos del Sector Eléctrico” Para que Actúen con Suma Urgencia

The most successful "heart-head" approaches fall into four categories.


In the first, people dramatically bring outside reality into groups that are too inwardly focused. They do not just collect data and dump it on individuals or massage valid information into goals and present them on PowerPoint slides… Instead, they create emotionally compelling experiences involving other people, information, and even the right kinds of business cases….


Second, they behave with true urgency themselves. They do not just say the right words daily, but they make their deeds consistent with their words.

Third, they look for the upside possibilities in crises, but very selectively and with great care. They do not view a crisis as only a threat but also as a potential opportunity to shake up an organization and reduce complacency.

Fourth, they confront the problem of "No-Nos." They do not accept the notion that an organization must put up with people who relentlessly work to kill urgency.

All four tactics can have an effect that is visceral, not merely intellectual, influencing attitudes, thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, and behavior. You can transform complacency with the status quo, or the anger and anxiety associated with a perceived mess, into a determination to move and win, now.

John Kotter
Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus
At Harvard Business School
A leading thinker on change management.
In his book “A Sense of Urgency.”


Estimado y estimada líder,

La sección Economía&Negocios del 11 de agosto de 2010, trae casi a página llena una obra teatral que se sigue presentando en la prensa nacional desde el 1999, cuando se estrenó la obra Capitalización del Sector Eléctrico. En esta ocasión, el personaje principal es don Celso Marranzini, a quien respeto y admiro mucho como persona. Don Celso sigue manejando la eterna crisis, como lo hicieron sus antecesores, Temístocles Montás, César Sánchez y Radhamés Segura, con un enfoque de gestión que, como había anticipado en octubre del 2009, lo mantiene también secuestrado dentro de un arreglo organizativo que carece de un sistema.

En adición a su valiosa cita, Kotter dijo también, en el artículo “What Leaders Really Do (Lo que Realmente Hacen los Líderes)” que “el liderazgo no es necesariamente mejor que la gestión, ni la reemplaza… En vez de ello, el liderazgo y la gestión son dos sistemas complementarios de acción,” a lo que agrego que se necesitan aplicar de acuerdo a las circunstancias reinantes. Es por eso que he venido insistiendo en cambiar de la gestión al liderazgo, para poder dotar dicho sector de un sistema conforme a las circunstancias que han estado latentes desde antes de que se estrenara la mencionada obra teatral, lo que nos debería emocionar al punto de declarar la necesidad de un cambio transformador urgente en la política de dicho sector que sigue siendo la de Los Mangos Bajitos.

Esta obra debería sacar a la gente de sus casillas para impulsar la tan necesaria transformación del sector eléctrico. Necesitamos que los Ramón Imbert den la cara con el requerido sentido de urgencia dispuestos a trepar la mata hasta los cogollitos, para que no solo los Martín Garata que se han adueñado de Los Magos Bajitos, sino que cada vez más gente pueda disfrutarlos

Se abre el telón y en la primera escena de la obra Cándida Acosta presenta “AES anuncia planta de US$15 millones.” La trama denota una cantidad de las ganancias que AES va a reinvertir. En ella se muestra a un Marranzini muy preocupado, moviendo los dedos, que parecen hacer, tacatá, tacatá … sobre la mesa.

En la segunda escena sale el director Severino anunciando “La Deuda de US$329 MM con generadores.” En la misma narra la historia de cómo se pagó la deuda pasada antes de la pasada revisión que protagonizó el FMI.

La tercera escena se inicia desplegando la historia reciente “Marranzini: Sector eléctrico cumple con el FMI.” En ella Cándida cuenta como el mismo Marranzini le dijo que “Por primera vez el sector eléctrico cumple con todas las condicionalidades.” Cándida agrega la clave que indica la necesidad de una transformación a base de liderazgo, cuando nos brinda el desenlace de su gestión “Explicó respecto a que la CDEEE no logra reducir su déficit financiero,” echándole la culpa “a un millón de dominicanos que no pagan la luz y sin embargo la reciben.” Se cierra el telón.

John Kotter, nos explica el porqué del fatal desenlace. Con unos pocos líderes al frente de la gestión de la CDEEE, es imposible resolver una crisis de grandes proporciones. Hacer falta crear el sentido de urgencia en cada uno de ese millón de ciudadanos y esa clase de cambio o transformación solo se puede lograr con una visión compartida de futuro por prácticamente todos, a base de liderazgo. No dejemos esta vez que los don Martín Garata maten el necesario sentido de urgencia.

Si como líder estás de acuerdo con esta estrategia para transformar el sector eléctrico, como parte de la Estrategia Nacional de Desarrollo, que pretende transformar simultáneamente los sectores de educación y de salud, con el apoyo del sector de las tecnologías de la información y de las telecomunicaciones, te invito a que actúes con suma urgencia para participar con nosotros en el Grupo Plan Dominicano de Desarrollo Sistémico, que recientemente trasladé de Facebook a LinkedIn.

Muy atentamente,

José Antonio Vanderhorst Silverio, Ph.D.
Servidor-Líder del GMH



sábado, agosto 07, 2010

Un Debate GMH: ¿Debería Ser la Estrategia Nacional de Desarrollo un Ejercicio de Gestión?


"Companies manage complexity by planning and budgeting - setting targets or goals for the future... establishing detailed steps for achieving those targets, and then allocating resources to accomplish those plans. By contrast, leading an organization to constructive change begins by setting a direction - developing a vision of the future (often the distant future) along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision."

"What Leaders
Really Do"

John Kotter
Destacado investigador de la Universidad de Harvard



Estimada o estimado líder,

Lo invito encarecidamente a unirse al Grupo de LinkedIn Plan Dominicano de Desarrollo Sistémico (PDDS), cuyo membresía será por invitación. Originalmente el PDDS fue creado en Facebook, un medio de mucho valor social, pero he comprobado que LinkedIn, a pesar de sus limitaciones, ofrece mejores características para el dialogo. Todos los miembros en Facebook están invitados a formar parte de este nuevo grupo.

El primer debate gira en torno a convertir la Estrategia Nacional de Desarrollo (END) en un instrumento eficaz. La cita de Kotter pretende repetir un debate que aconteció en los Estados Unidos a partir del artículo publicado en 1977 por el entonces profesor de Harvard Abraham Zaleznik bajo el título “Gerentes y Líderes: Son ellos diferentes?”

Sostengo que la END está excesivamente inclinada a la gestión, en vez de estar orientada principalmente al liderazgo. La publicación de ANJE “EL MAESTRO: La Clave para la Transformación del Sistema,” fue la que impulsó este mensaje que humildemente creo podría enriquecerse con nuestro diálogo amparándonos en la nota Visión Compartida de Futuro del Grupo Millennium Hispaniola, que en su párrafo capital dice:

Conforme a la visión compartida del GMH podemos empezar con una estrategia orientada al mercado global, centrada en el rejuvenecimiento de la educación, la electricidad y la salud, desplegando el potencial de las tecnologías de información y telecomunicaciones a esos sectores. Con ello se pretende un cambio radical en la cultura de dichos sectores, con una recomposición institucional que facilite la inversión productiva a largo plazo local y extranjera que los transforme en nuestras principales marcas-país.


Las eternas crisis que padecen los sectores educativo, salud y eléctrico dominicanos provienen en gran medida del ambiente de crisis permanente del país es que están situados. El ejemplo de los excesivos subsidios al sector eléctrico que impide el financiamiento completo de los sectores educativo y de salud no nos deja mentir.

La transformación de esos tres sectores transversales claves para nuestro desarrollo necesita considerarse en base a un cambio del pensamiento mecánico tradicional, que en la END considera los sectores a base de causa efecto, al pensamiento sistémico emergente, en que los mismos son interdependientes. Por tanto, es propicia la oportunidad para que se inicien dichas transformaciones como una parte integral de la Estrategia Nacional de Desarrollo (END).

Sugiero encarecidamente que tomemos en cuenta las lecciones de John Kotter, el destacado investigador de Harvard, para encausar la END. En su artículo “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” Kotter identifica lecciones de 8 grandes errores, cualquiera de los cuales impide un proceso de transformación. Esos grandes errores son: 1) no establecer un sentido de urgencia suficientemente grande; 2) no crear una coalición guía suficientemente poderosa; 3) falta de una visión; 4) dejar de comunicar la visión por un factor de diez; 5) no remover los obstáculos a la nueva visión; 6) no planear sistemáticamente por ganancias de corto plazo y lograrlas; 7) declarar la victoria muy temprano; y 8) no anclar los cambios en la cultura organizacional.

Para ser eficaz y cumplir su propósito, la END necesita concentrar su atención en unos pocos sectores claves para el desarrollo del país, en vez de tratar de gestionar el progreso de cada sector social, económico, político y ambiental como parece en la END. No cabe duda que los sectores de educación, salud y eléctrico son tres de esos sectores estratégicos transversales claves. Los demás sectores necesitarían alinearse a la estrategia de dichos sectores claves.