Richard Veryard's Blog, page 10
February 28, 2013
Intelligence and Governance
Katy Steward of @TheKingsFund asks What Makes a Board Effective? (Feb 2013). She's looking specifically at the role of the Board in the National Health Service, but there is much that can be generalized to other contexts. She asks some key questions for any given board.
Are its members individually effective and do they communicate effectively – for example, do they challenge themselves and others?
Do they use energetic presentations and have insightful conversations?
Do they support their colleagues and have good decision-making skills?
In this post, I want to develop this line of thinking further by exploring what the concept of organizational intelligence implies for boards.
1. Boards need to know what is going on.
Multiple and diverse sources of information - both quantitative and qualitative
Understanding how information is filtered, and a willingness to view unfiltered information as necessary.
Ability to identify areas of concern, and initiate detailed investigation
2. Boards need to make sense of what is going on.
Ability to see things from different perspectives - patient quality, professional excellence, financial accountability, social accountability.
Ability to see the detail as well as the big picture.
Courage to investigate and explore any discrepancies, and not to be satisfied with easy denial.
3. Boards need to ensure that all decisions, policies and procedures are guided by both vision and reality. This includes decisions taken by the board itself, as well as decisions taken at all levels of management.
Decisions and actions are informed by values and priorities, and reinforce these values. (People both inside and outside the organization will infer your true values not from your words but from your actions.)
Decisions and actions are guided by evidence wherever possible. Ongoing decisions and policies are open to revision according to the outcomes they yield.
4. Boards need to encourage learning.
Effective feedback loops are established, monitoring outcomes and revising decisions and policies where necessary.
Courage to experiment. Ability to tolerate temporary reduction in productivity during problem-solving and learning curve. Supporting people and teams when they are out of their comfort zone.
Willingness to learn lessons from anywhere, not just a narrow set of approved exemplars.
5. Boards need to encourage knowledge-sharing
All kinds of experience and expertise may be relevant
Overcoming the "silos" and cultural differences
The collective memory should be strong and coherent enough to support the organization's values, but not so strong as to inhibit change.
6. Boards work as a team, and collaborate with other teams
Effective communication and collaboration within the board - don't expect each board member to do everything.
Effective communication and collaboration with other groups and organizations.
Note: The six points I've discussed here correspond to the six core capabilities of organizational intelligence, as described in my Organizational Intelligence eBook and my Organizational Intelligence workshop.
See also: Steve Waddell, Wicked Problems, Governance as Learning Systems (Feb 2013)
Are its members individually effective and do they communicate effectively – for example, do they challenge themselves and others?
Do they use energetic presentations and have insightful conversations?
Do they support their colleagues and have good decision-making skills?
In this post, I want to develop this line of thinking further by exploring what the concept of organizational intelligence implies for boards.
1. Boards need to know what is going on.
Multiple and diverse sources of information - both quantitative and qualitative
Understanding how information is filtered, and a willingness to view unfiltered information as necessary.
Ability to identify areas of concern, and initiate detailed investigation
2. Boards need to make sense of what is going on.
Ability to see things from different perspectives - patient quality, professional excellence, financial accountability, social accountability.
Ability to see the detail as well as the big picture.
Courage to investigate and explore any discrepancies, and not to be satisfied with easy denial.
3. Boards need to ensure that all decisions, policies and procedures are guided by both vision and reality. This includes decisions taken by the board itself, as well as decisions taken at all levels of management.
Decisions and actions are informed by values and priorities, and reinforce these values. (People both inside and outside the organization will infer your true values not from your words but from your actions.)
Decisions and actions are guided by evidence wherever possible. Ongoing decisions and policies are open to revision according to the outcomes they yield.
4. Boards need to encourage learning.
Effective feedback loops are established, monitoring outcomes and revising decisions and policies where necessary.
Courage to experiment. Ability to tolerate temporary reduction in productivity during problem-solving and learning curve. Supporting people and teams when they are out of their comfort zone.
Willingness to learn lessons from anywhere, not just a narrow set of approved exemplars.
5. Boards need to encourage knowledge-sharing
All kinds of experience and expertise may be relevant
Overcoming the "silos" and cultural differences
The collective memory should be strong and coherent enough to support the organization's values, but not so strong as to inhibit change.
6. Boards work as a team, and collaborate with other teams
Effective communication and collaboration within the board - don't expect each board member to do everything.
Effective communication and collaboration with other groups and organizations.
Note: The six points I've discussed here correspond to the six core capabilities of organizational intelligence, as described in my Organizational Intelligence eBook and my Organizational Intelligence workshop.
See also: Steve Waddell, Wicked Problems, Governance as Learning Systems (Feb 2013)
February 26, 2013
Developing cultures of high-quality care
#kfleadership Excellent lecture at @TheKingsFund this evening by Professor Michael West. Here are some of my notes.
When he left college West was short of money, so he took a job in the coal mines. Productivity was important to everyone, and the pay at the end of the week depended on the quantity of coal extracted. But there was one thing more important than productivity, namely safety.
In many organizations this would just be lip service. But in the coal mines, safety was taken very seriously, and management actions were completely congruent with this.
West argued that the same should apply in the Health Service. Of course productivity is fundamentally important, but the number one priority should not be productivity but high-quality and safe patient care.
Valuing patients and staff turns out to be good management. West's argument is not merely based on rhetoric, but is supported by data. Patient outcomes and patient satisfaction are highly correlated with staff satisfaction and morale, and these in turn are correlated with staff engagement, which West defined in terms of three things: pride, intrinsic engagement and involvement in decisions. Ultimately this links back to improved productivity.
Someone in the audience objected that productivity must always be the top priority, otherwise you risk running out of money to pay for patient care. West replied that productivity follows from good people management. He agreed that the NHS has a great deal to learn from the private sector, and expressed a hope that private sector expertise would not be limited to Marketing and Finance.
West affirmed that the NHS is full of intelligent and highly motivated people, and said that the traditional command and control mode of leadership was such a waste of resource. The key role of leaders is to learn from staff, and to realize the potential of the people.
People at all levels require courage to accept challenging targets - in other words, to strive for things that they won't always achieve. The organization must accept and learn from failure to reach these targets. Blaming people for failure is counter-productive, because it makes people risk-averse and inhibits them from striving for anything that isn't guaranteed in advance.
Leadership includes the courage to seek unwelcome information - for example feedback that indicates things not going well.
After the lecture, I was chatting to a group from a London teaching hospital about accountability. As I see it, accountability doesn't only mean taking responsibility for the consequences of one's decisions (such as short-sighted cost-cutting) but also taking responsibility for what one chooses to pay attention to. One of the classic examples in Moral Philosophy concerns a ship owner who sends a ship to sea without bothering to check whether the ship was sea-worthy. Some argue that the ship owner cannot be held responsible for the deaths of the sailors, because he didn't actually know that the ship would sink. My own view is that the ship owner has a moral duty of diligence, and must be held accountable for neglecting this duty.
In the current climate, the NHS leadership has a duty to achieve high quality patient care and productivity, and the evidence from Professor West is that this can best be achieved by engaging staff at all levels. Executive boards must surely be held accountable if they neglect to do this.
When he left college West was short of money, so he took a job in the coal mines. Productivity was important to everyone, and the pay at the end of the week depended on the quantity of coal extracted. But there was one thing more important than productivity, namely safety.
In many organizations this would just be lip service. But in the coal mines, safety was taken very seriously, and management actions were completely congruent with this.
West argued that the same should apply in the Health Service. Of course productivity is fundamentally important, but the number one priority should not be productivity but high-quality and safe patient care.
Valuing patients and staff turns out to be good management. West's argument is not merely based on rhetoric, but is supported by data. Patient outcomes and patient satisfaction are highly correlated with staff satisfaction and morale, and these in turn are correlated with staff engagement, which West defined in terms of three things: pride, intrinsic engagement and involvement in decisions. Ultimately this links back to improved productivity.
Someone in the audience objected that productivity must always be the top priority, otherwise you risk running out of money to pay for patient care. West replied that productivity follows from good people management. He agreed that the NHS has a great deal to learn from the private sector, and expressed a hope that private sector expertise would not be limited to Marketing and Finance.
West affirmed that the NHS is full of intelligent and highly motivated people, and said that the traditional command and control mode of leadership was such a waste of resource. The key role of leaders is to learn from staff, and to realize the potential of the people.
People at all levels require courage to accept challenging targets - in other words, to strive for things that they won't always achieve. The organization must accept and learn from failure to reach these targets. Blaming people for failure is counter-productive, because it makes people risk-averse and inhibits them from striving for anything that isn't guaranteed in advance.
Leadership includes the courage to seek unwelcome information - for example feedback that indicates things not going well.
After the lecture, I was chatting to a group from a London teaching hospital about accountability. As I see it, accountability doesn't only mean taking responsibility for the consequences of one's decisions (such as short-sighted cost-cutting) but also taking responsibility for what one chooses to pay attention to. One of the classic examples in Moral Philosophy concerns a ship owner who sends a ship to sea without bothering to check whether the ship was sea-worthy. Some argue that the ship owner cannot be held responsible for the deaths of the sailors, because he didn't actually know that the ship would sink. My own view is that the ship owner has a moral duty of diligence, and must be held accountable for neglecting this duty.
In the current climate, the NHS leadership has a duty to achieve high quality patient care and productivity, and the evidence from Professor West is that this can best be achieved by engaging staff at all levels. Executive boards must surely be held accountable if they neglect to do this.
February 19, 2013
Cybernetic Entropy
The pioneers of
cybernetics borrowed the concept of entropy from thermodynamics, the tendency of systems
to become less organized over time.They regarded structure and
information as ways of halting or reversing entropy, and information is
sometimes defined as negative entropy (negentropy).
In the past
few days, I have seen a few examples of what appears to be entropy at a
higher level - over time, rules becoming less effective or even
counterproductive.
We keep hearing stories about large corporations paying practically no tax. As we heard on BBC Radio 4 recently, (File on Four: Taxing Questions),
new tax rules are created with the participation of interested parties,
including large corporations (HSBC, Vodafone) and accountancy firms
(KPMG). Having advised on the creation of loopholes, the accountants
then make huge amounts of money selling knowledge of these loopholes to
their clients. Sadly, even this valuable knowledge degrades over time,
and new tax laws must be created with new and more obscure loopholes.
Within a sceptical article about the so-called Robin Hood tax (Algorithm and Blues)
@TimHarford mentined Myron's Law - the theory that taxes collect
diminishing amounts of revenue over time, as people work out legal ways
to avoid paying.
Meanwhile, @CyberSal has tweeted a couple of
links to articles about Payment by Results. Since Deming, systems
thinkers have understood that targets and incentives often don't (and
perhaps cannot) achieve the intended results. Instead, they stimulate
various forms of devious behaviour, known as gaming the system.
I
think the interesting point here is not just that these mechanisms
don't work, but they get worse over time. To start with, people may make
a genuine attempt to do things properly, and some professionals may be
reluctant to game the system, but they gradually get worn down. Those
that don't quit altogether become stressed, depressed and cynical. For
example, if teachers don't teach to the test, and if the head teachers
don't bully them into playing the game, then the school will slip down
the league tables and become non-viable. But this degradation takes
time, which is why I think it makes sense to think of this as another
form of entropy.
How then might this entropy be halted or reversed?
More links: http://storify.com/richardveryard/cybernetic-entropy
cybernetics borrowed the concept of entropy from thermodynamics, the tendency of systems
to become less organized over time.They regarded structure and
information as ways of halting or reversing entropy, and information is
sometimes defined as negative entropy (negentropy).
In the past
few days, I have seen a few examples of what appears to be entropy at a
higher level - over time, rules becoming less effective or even
counterproductive.
We keep hearing stories about large corporations paying practically no tax. As we heard on BBC Radio 4 recently, (File on Four: Taxing Questions),
new tax rules are created with the participation of interested parties,
including large corporations (HSBC, Vodafone) and accountancy firms
(KPMG). Having advised on the creation of loopholes, the accountants
then make huge amounts of money selling knowledge of these loopholes to
their clients. Sadly, even this valuable knowledge degrades over time,
and new tax laws must be created with new and more obscure loopholes.
Within a sceptical article about the so-called Robin Hood tax (Algorithm and Blues)
@TimHarford mentined Myron's Law - the theory that taxes collect
diminishing amounts of revenue over time, as people work out legal ways
to avoid paying.
Meanwhile, @CyberSal has tweeted a couple of
links to articles about Payment by Results. Since Deming, systems
thinkers have understood that targets and incentives often don't (and
perhaps cannot) achieve the intended results. Instead, they stimulate
various forms of devious behaviour, known as gaming the system.
I
think the interesting point here is not just that these mechanisms
don't work, but they get worse over time. To start with, people may make
a genuine attempt to do things properly, and some professionals may be
reluctant to game the system, but they gradually get worn down. Those
that don't quit altogether become stressed, depressed and cynical. For
example, if teachers don't teach to the test, and if the head teachers
don't bully them into playing the game, then the school will slip down
the league tables and become non-viable. But this degradation takes
time, which is why I think it makes sense to think of this as another
form of entropy.
How then might this entropy be halted or reversed?
More links: http://storify.com/richardveryard/cybernetic-entropy
February 9, 2013
Agility and Fear
Frank Furedi argues that human thought and action are being stifled by a regime of uncertainty. The only thing we have to fear is the ‘culture of fear’ itself (April 2007),
If we frame fear in terms of Theory-X, then it becomes fear-and-blame and we can all go tut-tut. But isn't there also a way of framing fear in terms of Theory-Y, without yoking it to blame? Performing artists may experience some stage-fright prior to producing an outstanding performance, and while excessive stage-fright may be debilitating, some degree of anxiety may be a positive stimulus. Are we to ban all forms of anxiety and uncertainty from the organization, so that everyone can feel cosy and safe?
And what about Theory-Z? If an organization is under existential threat, then the members collectively need to focus all their energy and creativity on restoring the viability of the organization, and it would be perfectly normal for them to be emotionally as well as intellectually engaged in this task. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.
All I'm saying is that there are different types of fear, which may have different effects on organizational behaviour. Fear-and-blame is one particular type of fear, but there are other types.
Many workers rightly feel responsible for their work. In most organizations, employees or contractors are ultimately vulnerable to loss of status or loss of earnings if they fail to perform satisfactorily. A completely fear-free organization would be disengaged from its customers and environment, and therefore ethically problematic.
However, a caring organization may be able to attenuate some of this feeling of vulnerability, and provide some kind of safety net that allows people to take reasonable risks without too much fear of failure. Whereas an uncaring organization either fails to provide proper boundaries, or amplifies the sense of vulnerability by capricious and unjust management practices.
If we frame fear in terms of Theory-X, then it becomes fear-and-blame and we can all go tut-tut. But isn't there also a way of framing fear in terms of Theory-Y, without yoking it to blame? Performing artists may experience some stage-fright prior to producing an outstanding performance, and while excessive stage-fright may be debilitating, some degree of anxiety may be a positive stimulus. Are we to ban all forms of anxiety and uncertainty from the organization, so that everyone can feel cosy and safe?
And what about Theory-Z? If an organization is under existential threat, then the members collectively need to focus all their energy and creativity on restoring the viability of the organization, and it would be perfectly normal for them to be emotionally as well as intellectually engaged in this task. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.
All I'm saying is that there are different types of fear, which may have different effects on organizational behaviour. Fear-and-blame is one particular type of fear, but there are other types.
Many workers rightly feel responsible for their work. In most organizations, employees or contractors are ultimately vulnerable to loss of status or loss of earnings if they fail to perform satisfactorily. A completely fear-free organization would be disengaged from its customers and environment, and therefore ethically problematic.
However, a caring organization may be able to attenuate some of this feeling of vulnerability, and provide some kind of safety net that allows people to take reasonable risks without too much fear of failure. Whereas an uncaring organization either fails to provide proper boundaries, or amplifies the sense of vulnerability by capricious and unjust management practices.
How Offices Make People Stupid
@benhammersley at #RSAwork talks about the future of office work, and identifies some of the ways that organizations make themselves stupid. The irony is that a lot of these mechanisms were supposed to make offices more productive and efficient, and to promote collaboration and creativity. As Ben puts it
Let's start with open plan offices. As Ben tells the story, these were introduced in an ideological attempt (originating in North California) to flatten the office hierarchy, to remove barriers between people, and to encourage people and technology to work together in perfect harmony. There are various dysfunctional versions of this Californian Ideology - see my post All Chewed Over By Machines (May 2011).
In practice, various interesting forms of behaviour emerge in open plan offices. Ben notes the common practice of more powerful workers grabbing the desks near to the wall, leaving juniors huddled in the middle in a state of permanent anxiety, as if they were antelope anticipating the lion's pounce.
Many offices are designed as semi-open plan, with people huddled in cubicles, but with the constant chance of someone popping a head over the partition.
In some offices, there is a deliberate policy to move people around - sometimes called hot-desking. One of the supposed benefits of this policy is that it encourages workers to constantly develop new relationships with their transient neighbours. For companies whose workers don't spend all their time in the office, this policy also reduces the amount of office space required. However, the uncertainty and anxiety of getting any desk, let alone a decent desk near the wall and away from the more irritating co-workers, might be regarded as a negative factor.
Putting aside the economics and culture and psychological impact of open plan offices, the essential justification is that they promote communication and collaboration. These elements are necessary for productivity and innovation in a knowledge-based organization, but they are not sufficient since productivity and innovation also depend on concentrated hard work. Even if the open plan office improves communication and collaboration (which we might doubt), it certainly doesn't help people focus. People are forced to defend themselves, either by doing the serious work outside the office (I find I can usually focus better in a cafe than in the office) or by donning noise-cancelling headphones to signal their unavailability for casual conversation.
Another mechanism that supports superficial communication and collaboration while destroying focus is email. For a summary of Ben's critique of email, see my post Towards the Carbon Neutral Office (Feb 2013).
Besides the technical problems with email. there are also major social problems. For example, there are organizations whose employees feel under pressure
to receive and respond to emails at all times. If your boss (or a major
customer) sends you an email at the weekend, you may feel obliged to
answer. Some people can stand up to this kind of pressure, and ask the
boss politely but firmly whether the matter can possibly wait until
Monday. Others cave in, and find themselves working extreme amounts of
unpaid overtime.
Both open plan offices and email can be seen as a manifestation of a deeper force undermining organizational intelligence, namely hyperactivity. In his book Crossing the Postmodern Divide (1992) Albert Borgmann extends the concept of hyperactivity to society as a whole, and defines it as "a state of mobilization where the richness and variety of social and cultural pursuits, and the natural pace of daily life, have been suspended to serve a higher, urgent cause" (p. 14).
The traditional protection against
this kind of organizational pressure was the trades union. One purpose
for collective representation was not to resist any progress, nor to see
every management initiative as an opportunity to get something in
return for their members, but to act as a voice against unsafe,
unreasonable or unfair working conditions. Maybe it's hard to complain
about the occasional weekend phonecall, but if the boss is making a
habit of phoning staff at weekends, someone needs to tell him (or her)
that this is not helping anyone achieve greater productivity or
effectiveness.
The trades union has disappeared from many offices, there are various social and political reasons for this, and I'm certainly not going to campaign for their reinstatement. But what I think is worth noting here is that some useful feedback loops, formerly provided by trades unions, are no longer operational, and this makes it easier for organizations to spiral into uncontrolled, destructive hyperactivity.
To sum up, there are some interesting relationships between intelligence and physical environment (open plan offices) as well as some interesting relationships between intelligence and virtual environment (smartphones), together with a power structure that fails to protect people and organizations from the worst effects of these environmental factors.
For more ideas on Organizational Intelligence, you can read my Organizational Intelligence eBook, attend an Organizational Intelligence workshop, and subscribe to my Organizational Intelligence blogposts.
"We have optimized being on top of things rather than getting to the bottom of things."
Let's start with open plan offices. As Ben tells the story, these were introduced in an ideological attempt (originating in North California) to flatten the office hierarchy, to remove barriers between people, and to encourage people and technology to work together in perfect harmony. There are various dysfunctional versions of this Californian Ideology - see my post All Chewed Over By Machines (May 2011).
In practice, various interesting forms of behaviour emerge in open plan offices. Ben notes the common practice of more powerful workers grabbing the desks near to the wall, leaving juniors huddled in the middle in a state of permanent anxiety, as if they were antelope anticipating the lion's pounce.
Many offices are designed as semi-open plan, with people huddled in cubicles, but with the constant chance of someone popping a head over the partition.
In some offices, there is a deliberate policy to move people around - sometimes called hot-desking. One of the supposed benefits of this policy is that it encourages workers to constantly develop new relationships with their transient neighbours. For companies whose workers don't spend all their time in the office, this policy also reduces the amount of office space required. However, the uncertainty and anxiety of getting any desk, let alone a decent desk near the wall and away from the more irritating co-workers, might be regarded as a negative factor.
Putting aside the economics and culture and psychological impact of open plan offices, the essential justification is that they promote communication and collaboration. These elements are necessary for productivity and innovation in a knowledge-based organization, but they are not sufficient since productivity and innovation also depend on concentrated hard work. Even if the open plan office improves communication and collaboration (which we might doubt), it certainly doesn't help people focus. People are forced to defend themselves, either by doing the serious work outside the office (I find I can usually focus better in a cafe than in the office) or by donning noise-cancelling headphones to signal their unavailability for casual conversation.
Another mechanism that supports superficial communication and collaboration while destroying focus is email. For a summary of Ben's critique of email, see my post Towards the Carbon Neutral Office (Feb 2013).
Besides the technical problems with email. there are also major social problems. For example, there are organizations whose employees feel under pressure
to receive and respond to emails at all times. If your boss (or a major
customer) sends you an email at the weekend, you may feel obliged to
answer. Some people can stand up to this kind of pressure, and ask the
boss politely but firmly whether the matter can possibly wait until
Monday. Others cave in, and find themselves working extreme amounts of
unpaid overtime.
Both open plan offices and email can be seen as a manifestation of a deeper force undermining organizational intelligence, namely hyperactivity. In his book Crossing the Postmodern Divide (1992) Albert Borgmann extends the concept of hyperactivity to society as a whole, and defines it as "a state of mobilization where the richness and variety of social and cultural pursuits, and the natural pace of daily life, have been suspended to serve a higher, urgent cause" (p. 14).
The traditional protection against
this kind of organizational pressure was the trades union. One purpose
for collective representation was not to resist any progress, nor to see
every management initiative as an opportunity to get something in
return for their members, but to act as a voice against unsafe,
unreasonable or unfair working conditions. Maybe it's hard to complain
about the occasional weekend phonecall, but if the boss is making a
habit of phoning staff at weekends, someone needs to tell him (or her)
that this is not helping anyone achieve greater productivity or
effectiveness.
The trades union has disappeared from many offices, there are various social and political reasons for this, and I'm certainly not going to campaign for their reinstatement. But what I think is worth noting here is that some useful feedback loops, formerly provided by trades unions, are no longer operational, and this makes it easier for organizations to spiral into uncontrolled, destructive hyperactivity.
To sum up, there are some interesting relationships between intelligence and physical environment (open plan offices) as well as some interesting relationships between intelligence and virtual environment (smartphones), together with a power structure that fails to protect people and organizations from the worst effects of these environmental factors.
For more ideas on Organizational Intelligence, you can read my Organizational Intelligence eBook, attend an Organizational Intelligence workshop, and subscribe to my Organizational Intelligence blogposts.
February 3, 2013
Are we making progress?
In a great post, @JohnQShift explains how to build a culture of learning in your business. He calls this A Matter of Life or Death (Feb 2013)
In the post, John reports one of his clients observing that they had made some
progress in their business over the year. By progress, the client meant that
people were beginning to take up more responsibility and initiative without having to wait for the boss to tell them what to do
there was more discussion amongst the staff as to how to manage some
of the day-to-day challenges they meet and less referring to the boss
for the “answer”
mistakes were being used as entry points to examining business processes and working out how they could be improved
they had a clearer idea of their collective purpose and how important relationship is to achieving that purpose
the leaders were devoting more of their time to ensuring the
conditions and structures of the business were optimised so that people
could get on with their jobs (and less time micro-managing operational
tasks).
John comments
The lesson John draws from this story is about entropy. He suggests
This is a good point, but I drew a couple of other important conclusions from his story as well. Firstly, that it is possible to shift from "stuckness" to "progress". Secondly, that it is possible to make small progressive changes that may build towards larger progressive change.
Possible but clearly not inevitable. What we need to understand better is how to encourage and foster this kind of progressive change.
... to be continued ...
In the post, John reports one of his clients observing that they had made some
progress in their business over the year. By progress, the client meant that
people were beginning to take up more responsibility and initiative without having to wait for the boss to tell them what to do
there was more discussion amongst the staff as to how to manage some
of the day-to-day challenges they meet and less referring to the boss
for the “answer”
mistakes were being used as entry points to examining business processes and working out how they could be improved
they had a clearer idea of their collective purpose and how important relationship is to achieving that purpose
the leaders were devoting more of their time to ensuring the
conditions and structures of the business were optimised so that people
could get on with their jobs (and less time micro-managing operational
tasks).
John comments
"My client also reflected on how shifting the focus away
from “behavioural problems” as isolated events and onto the business as a
whole living system seemed to have injected some new life (his words,
not mine) into the business: that they were actually going somewhere.
Here was an example of the practical benefits of applying systems
thinking to overcoming business “stuckness”. They started the year
stagnating, with things getting worse, they injected some new learning
into the system, they are now moving to another level of effectiveness."
The lesson John draws from this story is about entropy. He suggests
"Closed systems that spend their energy simply on maintaining themselves
in survival mode eventually spend themselves out. If a business is
spending too much of its time on hunting for food, and not enough on
learning new ways to hunt for food, it will succumb to entropy. Vibrant
and open living systems naturally tend to greater complexity,
experiment often, are driven to what is possible and seek new
opportunities which destabilise them until they restablise in a renewed
way. They look for more stuff to put into the system to renew it."
This is a good point, but I drew a couple of other important conclusions from his story as well. Firstly, that it is possible to shift from "stuckness" to "progress". Secondly, that it is possible to make small progressive changes that may build towards larger progressive change.
Possible but clearly not inevitable. What we need to understand better is how to encourage and foster this kind of progressive change.
... to be continued ...
February 2, 2013
From research to practice
@danlockton is doing a survey How do actual designers use academic literature?
What are the barriers you've experienced?
What service would you like to
see?
What would be useful to you?
Could academics make their work more
easily applicable?
Here's my answer.
1. I do make an effort to be aware of academic research. There are some brilliant ideas if you know where to look, but looking is timeconsuming, and hampered by paywalls. Obviously academic research would be more practical use if it were more easily accessed by practising designers,
2. Academics typically divide one piece of research into several articles, to earn more academic points. So there may be little added value from each one. Peer review does not guarantee quality or uniqueness.
3. I do not have the funding to buy access for large numbers of articles on the off-chance they might be relevant or even comprehensible.
4. If practicising designers had better access to academic work, there would be a feedback loop that would help improve the practical relevance of future academic work,
5. There is a similar problem with international and industry standards such as ISO. These are widely ignored in my field because you have to pay upfront in order to find out if they apply to you, and most people don't bother.
See also @andybudd, It's all academic (February 2013)
What are the barriers you've experienced?
What service would you like to
see?
What would be useful to you?
Could academics make their work more
easily applicable?
Here's my answer.
1. I do make an effort to be aware of academic research. There are some brilliant ideas if you know where to look, but looking is timeconsuming, and hampered by paywalls. Obviously academic research would be more practical use if it were more easily accessed by practising designers,
2. Academics typically divide one piece of research into several articles, to earn more academic points. So there may be little added value from each one. Peer review does not guarantee quality or uniqueness.
3. I do not have the funding to buy access for large numbers of articles on the off-chance they might be relevant or even comprehensible.
4. If practicising designers had better access to academic work, there would be a feedback loop that would help improve the practical relevance of future academic work,
5. There is a similar problem with international and industry standards such as ISO. These are widely ignored in my field because you have to pay upfront in order to find out if they apply to you, and most people don't bother.
See also @andybudd, It's all academic (February 2013)
January 29, 2013
Real Criticism, The Subject Supposed to Know
"Goodbye, Anecdotes", says @Butterworthy, "The Age Of Big Data Demands Real Criticism" (AWL, January 2013). Thanks to @milouness, who comments "Important concepts here about what is knowable!". The article tries to link Big Data with Big Questions about the Big Picture, and what @Butterworthy calls The Big Criticism. From this perspective, Bill Franks' advice, To Succeed with Big Data, Start Small (HBR Oct 2012), is downright paradoxical.
But why would we expect Big Data to help us answer the Big Questions? Big Data is rather a misnomer: it mostly comprises very large quantities of very small data and very weak signals. Retailers wade through Big Data in order to fine-tune their pricing strategies; pharma researchers wade through Big Data in order to find chemicals with a marginal advantage over some other chemicals; intelligence analysts wade through Big Data to detect terrorist plots. Doubtless these are useful and sometimes profitable exercises, but they are hardly giving us much of a Big Picture. Big Data may give us important clues about what the terrorists are up to, but it doesn't tell us why.
A few years ago, Chris Anderson promoted The End of Theory, and published an article claiming that The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete (Wired June 2008), although this may have only been an ironic reference to Fukuyama's earlier idea of The End of History. Claiming obsolescence seems like hyperbole, although scientific method has always been modified by technological progress. Even in mathematics, computer power and human brilliance have combined to crack some previously unsolved problems. See for example, Proof and Beauty (The Economist, March 2005).
Although @Butterworthy claims to have identified some critical ("Big Critical") questions, there seems to be only one real question - the dialectical question of quantity becoming quality. Are we on the cusp of aggregating utilitarianism into new tyrannies of scale? Are the numbers are so big, they leave interpretation behind and acquire their own agency? How much information and of what kind would you need to conclude something - for example, something like gender bias in the media?
A recent academic study looked at 2.4 million pages of newspaper and came to the conclusion that there was some gender bias. That's a lot of newspaper. It's like looking at every single grain of sand in the forest and testing it for ursine faeces. (In other words, looking for microscopic proof that bears defecate in the woods.) From a technophile perspective, Big Data seems to be raising the bar for scientific methodology: following this impressive piece of research, those who don't understand the concept of statistical significance can dismiss any smaller study - for example, one that merely studied thousands of pages - as unscientific anecdote. At a stroke, decades of careful analysis by feminists can be discredited because their sample sizes were too small by modern Big Data standards, and so there is now less scientifically credible evidence of gender bias than there was before.
Seriously, how many pages of newspaper do you have to read to convince yourself of gender bias? Clearly this is an example of Big Data getting in the way of the Big Picture. @Butterworthy clearly understands this danger, and sees the redemptive possibility of Big Crit (whatever that is) revitalizing the notion of critical authority and restoring some balance to the universe. I'm not sure I follow how he thinks that is going to happen,
But why would we expect Big Data to help us answer the Big Questions? Big Data is rather a misnomer: it mostly comprises very large quantities of very small data and very weak signals. Retailers wade through Big Data in order to fine-tune their pricing strategies; pharma researchers wade through Big Data in order to find chemicals with a marginal advantage over some other chemicals; intelligence analysts wade through Big Data to detect terrorist plots. Doubtless these are useful and sometimes profitable exercises, but they are hardly giving us much of a Big Picture. Big Data may give us important clues about what the terrorists are up to, but it doesn't tell us why.
A few years ago, Chris Anderson promoted The End of Theory, and published an article claiming that The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete (Wired June 2008), although this may have only been an ironic reference to Fukuyama's earlier idea of The End of History. Claiming obsolescence seems like hyperbole, although scientific method has always been modified by technological progress. Even in mathematics, computer power and human brilliance have combined to crack some previously unsolved problems. See for example, Proof and Beauty (The Economist, March 2005).
Although @Butterworthy claims to have identified some critical ("Big Critical") questions, there seems to be only one real question - the dialectical question of quantity becoming quality. Are we on the cusp of aggregating utilitarianism into new tyrannies of scale? Are the numbers are so big, they leave interpretation behind and acquire their own agency? How much information and of what kind would you need to conclude something - for example, something like gender bias in the media?
A recent academic study looked at 2.4 million pages of newspaper and came to the conclusion that there was some gender bias. That's a lot of newspaper. It's like looking at every single grain of sand in the forest and testing it for ursine faeces. (In other words, looking for microscopic proof that bears defecate in the woods.) From a technophile perspective, Big Data seems to be raising the bar for scientific methodology: following this impressive piece of research, those who don't understand the concept of statistical significance can dismiss any smaller study - for example, one that merely studied thousands of pages - as unscientific anecdote. At a stroke, decades of careful analysis by feminists can be discredited because their sample sizes were too small by modern Big Data standards, and so there is now less scientifically credible evidence of gender bias than there was before.
Seriously, how many pages of newspaper do you have to read to convince yourself of gender bias? Clearly this is an example of Big Data getting in the way of the Big Picture. @Butterworthy clearly understands this danger, and sees the redemptive possibility of Big Crit (whatever that is) revitalizing the notion of critical authority and restoring some balance to the universe. I'm not sure I follow how he thinks that is going to happen,
January 27, 2013
Expert Generalists and Innovative Organizations
What do the great innovators have in common? Looking at examples from Picasso to Kepler, Art Markman calls these men expert generalists. They seem to know a lot about a wide variety of topics, and their wide knowledge base supports their creativity.
Markman identifies two personality traits that are key for expert generalists: Openness to Experience and Need for Cognition. Can we also expect to find these traits in innovative organizations?
Openness to Experience entails a willingness to explore new ideas and opportunities. Obviously many organizations prefer to stick with familiar ideas and
activities, and have built-in ways of maintaining the status quo.
Need for Cognition entails a joy of learning, and a willingness to devote the time and effort necessary to master new things.
In his post on the origins of modern science, Tim Johnson compares the rival claims of magic and commerce. He points out that good science is open whereas magic is hidden and secretive; he traces the
foundations of modern science to European financial practice, on the
grounds that markets are social,
collaborative, open, forums. But perhaps it makes more sense to see
modern science as having two parents: from magic it inherits its Need
for Cognition, a deep and passionate interest in explaining how things
work; while from commerce it inherits its Openness to Experience, a
broad fascination with the unknown. Obviously there have been individual scientists who have had more of one than the other, and some outstanding individual scientists who have excelled at both, but the collective project of science has relied on an effective combination of these two qualities.
Within most organizations, there are a few "early adopters" who are always keen to try out new stuff. But their strength can also be a weakness - they can sometimes be lured onto the next new thing before they have really mastered the previous new thing, let alone brought the rest of the organization up to speed. So they may get an ego trip from being two or three steps ahead of everyone else, but their personal need for cognition is sometimes compromised by a restless desire for novelty. There is a disconnect here.
And as Jose Baldaia points out, an open mind is not enough. What we need is "people with a mind open to collaboration with the representatives of the
various existing disciplines inside and outside the organization". Some people think themselves open-minded, but their minds are not open in this direction.
So any form of disconnect can be a block to organizational intelligence. How can we collectively integrate the two sides of the expert generalist?
One domain that this is critically important is healthcare. There is a simple view that healthcare is divided into generalists (called General Practitioners) and specialists (called Hospital Consultants). There is also a simple view that innovation in healthcare originates with specialists, and the GPs are merely a channel to transmit healthcare innovation to the patients. The specialists and healthcare researchers follow a policy paradigm known as Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and what some people call Scientific Bureaucratic Medicine (SBM). This underplays the contribution of the GP as expert generalist. Des Spence complains about this in a recent blogpost.
Spence's title is a reference to Michael Balint's idea of the Collusion of Anonymity. I'm seeing Balint's name appearing more these days, including some links to what appears (from Twitter) to have been a fascinating Masterclass on Reflective Practice at the RCGP on January 26th. I wish I'd been there.
Perhaps the expertise of the GP is better described by what Joanne Reeve, drawing on Balint and others, calls Interpretive Medicine (IM). So I want to think more deeply about reflective practices in organizations, both heathcare and other organizations, and explore how this rich vein of "next practice" can inform my work on organizational intelligence.
Jose Baldaia, Creativity and diversity. To add value and meaning (May 2012)
Tim Johnson, Magic, markets and models of science (Jan 2013)
Art Markman, Picasso, Kepler, and the Benefits of Being an Expert Generalist
Joanne Reeve, Interpretive Medicine - Supporting generalism in a changing primary care world (Jan 2010)
Richard Veryard (ed), Reflective Practice (Storify, January 2013)
Markman identifies two personality traits that are key for expert generalists: Openness to Experience and Need for Cognition. Can we also expect to find these traits in innovative organizations?
Openness to Experience entails a willingness to explore new ideas and opportunities. Obviously many organizations prefer to stick with familiar ideas and
activities, and have built-in ways of maintaining the status quo.
Need for Cognition entails a joy of learning, and a willingness to devote the time and effort necessary to master new things.
In his post on the origins of modern science, Tim Johnson compares the rival claims of magic and commerce. He points out that good science is open whereas magic is hidden and secretive; he traces the
foundations of modern science to European financial practice, on the
grounds that markets are social,
collaborative, open, forums. But perhaps it makes more sense to see
modern science as having two parents: from magic it inherits its Need
for Cognition, a deep and passionate interest in explaining how things
work; while from commerce it inherits its Openness to Experience, a
broad fascination with the unknown. Obviously there have been individual scientists who have had more of one than the other, and some outstanding individual scientists who have excelled at both, but the collective project of science has relied on an effective combination of these two qualities.
Within most organizations, there are a few "early adopters" who are always keen to try out new stuff. But their strength can also be a weakness - they can sometimes be lured onto the next new thing before they have really mastered the previous new thing, let alone brought the rest of the organization up to speed. So they may get an ego trip from being two or three steps ahead of everyone else, but their personal need for cognition is sometimes compromised by a restless desire for novelty. There is a disconnect here.
And as Jose Baldaia points out, an open mind is not enough. What we need is "people with a mind open to collaboration with the representatives of the
various existing disciplines inside and outside the organization". Some people think themselves open-minded, but their minds are not open in this direction.
So any form of disconnect can be a block to organizational intelligence. How can we collectively integrate the two sides of the expert generalist?
One domain that this is critically important is healthcare. There is a simple view that healthcare is divided into generalists (called General Practitioners) and specialists (called Hospital Consultants). There is also a simple view that innovation in healthcare originates with specialists, and the GPs are merely a channel to transmit healthcare innovation to the patients. The specialists and healthcare researchers follow a policy paradigm known as Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and what some people call Scientific Bureaucratic Medicine (SBM). This underplays the contribution of the GP as expert generalist. Des Spence complains about this in a recent blogpost.
"Generalism has been dismissed as inferior, has been left fatally
undermined, and is dying, if not already dead. Anything encountered that
is outside the modern telescopic specialist training programmes results
in referrals to other specialties, choking the system in needless
referrals. But we can’t blame modern medicine because it only reflects
modern society, which is risk averse, unable or unwilling to accept
uncertainty, and left in a paralysis of indecision. " A Conspiracy of Anonymity, January 2013 via @tetradian
Spence's title is a reference to Michael Balint's idea of the Collusion of Anonymity. I'm seeing Balint's name appearing more these days, including some links to what appears (from Twitter) to have been a fascinating Masterclass on Reflective Practice at the RCGP on January 26th. I wish I'd been there.
Perhaps the expertise of the GP is better described by what Joanne Reeve, drawing on Balint and others, calls Interpretive Medicine (IM). So I want to think more deeply about reflective practices in organizations, both heathcare and other organizations, and explore how this rich vein of "next practice" can inform my work on organizational intelligence.
Jose Baldaia, Creativity and diversity. To add value and meaning (May 2012)
Tim Johnson, Magic, markets and models of science (Jan 2013)
Art Markman, Picasso, Kepler, and the Benefits of Being an Expert Generalist
Joanne Reeve, Interpretive Medicine - Supporting generalism in a changing primary care world (Jan 2010)
Richard Veryard (ed), Reflective Practice (Storify, January 2013)
January 26, 2013
Information and Affirmation
@timrayner01 points out that so-called information-sharing is never neutral, disengaged - it is a positive act of communication.
Tim Rayner, The gift shift: what’s social about social media? (August 2012)
So even scorn is a form of affirmation. The comedian who devotes his spleen to the latest reality show is thereby contributing (in a complex post-modern fashion) to the show's success. Daniel Smith describes this as alternative consumption, and sees Charlie Brooker as a modern version of Baudelaire.
Daniel Smith, Spleen and Modernity: Baudelaire and ‘alternative’ consumption (July 2010)
The Royal Television Society may pretend that Charlie Brooker represents the high-brow alternative to Simon Cowell. But Brooker's material is basically the same as Cowell's, it just has a different sentiment. They obviously need each other.
Jonathan Harwood, Cowell and Morgan beaten by Brooker and Theroux (The Week March 2010)
"Don’t think of what you share as information. Even if what you share is information, by sharing it, you are telling the world that it is information that you affirm
in some way. It is the affirmation that counts. We share what we
love. Even when we share details about things we despise, they are
things we love to hate. Love is the key to understanding how we
contribute to social media commons. We populate the commons with
expressions of love."
Tim Rayner, The gift shift: what’s social about social media? (August 2012)
So even scorn is a form of affirmation. The comedian who devotes his spleen to the latest reality show is thereby contributing (in a complex post-modern fashion) to the show's success. Daniel Smith describes this as alternative consumption, and sees Charlie Brooker as a modern version of Baudelaire.
Daniel Smith, Spleen and Modernity: Baudelaire and ‘alternative’ consumption (July 2010)
The Royal Television Society may pretend that Charlie Brooker represents the high-brow alternative to Simon Cowell. But Brooker's material is basically the same as Cowell's, it just has a different sentiment. They obviously need each other.
Jonathan Harwood, Cowell and Morgan beaten by Brooker and Theroux (The Week March 2010)
