I am what I am

Whatever the balance between nature and nurture, this phrase has some provenance.

Whether it's from the song made famous by Shirley Bassey and then most recently John Barrowman ... I am what I am, my own special creation, a notable Popeye phase from the 1930s, and with earlier biblical references too.

We are all different, and that's reflected in every personal interaction, and hence every work interaction too. That's why in the world of work there's a lot of time and effort expended in that understanding of self, as a steeping stone to understanding others.

One of the most popular models of types of us is the Myers-Briggs Type, based on the work of the Karl Jung. Here's my ready reconner that lays this out in a visual way to get a personal sense of where our personal preferences lay.

Numberator

This is one of my terms.

This is used to describe a number that should be berated for being presented out of it's context.  Most typically this is a number is a numerator, presented in the absence of any denominator context

Project Traction

Everything is a project.  With some combination of purpose, time and resources.  This applies to life in general too.  Going on holiday is a project, some purpose (maybe sun or surf or serenity), then some planning, then using resources and doing activities.  We think of projects more often in the workplace context , especially where project management methodologies start to be wheeled out.

Once project management methodologies get wheeled out then even the simpler projects can seem more complex, because with project management methodologies, there's simply more to do.  So not just to achieve the purpose of the project, but now also to construct and feed the project management machinery along the way.

So at this point it can be helpful to distinguish between what the project delivers to achieve it's purpose and what the project delivers to support the project management.  After 20+ years, PRINCE 2 is the de-facto project management standard for public and not for profit sector (originally developed through the office for Government Commerce (OGC), now subsumed within the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills).

It can be more helpful to also think of this is a more accessible way.  And to maintain some explicit air gap between these things.   The things that the project delivers to fulfil its purpose are deliverables. products or outputs.  The things that the project delivers to support the project management can be more simply described as the project tools.  The same way a carpenter's toolbox contains things that enable the carpenter to achieve some purpose with wood, the tools are the means to that end,and while important - even critical  -to achieving that purpose - those tools are a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves.  (Sure for someone else their purpose is to make tools for the carpenter in the first place - probably making tools with machinery.

It's the project management that can reliably provide the traction for the project.  The way a tractor is designed to provide the traction in  range of circumstances - to pull different tools.  The tractor is that generic  tool, just just those project management methodologies. Both can be applied to different purposes in different circumstances....

Risky Business

Risk is an integral part of our world and our lives and so too of the workplace. 

Risk management, an industry in in’s own right, defined as “the identification, assessment, and prioritisation of risks (defined in ISO 31000 as the effect of uncertainty on objectives, whether positive or negative) followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimise, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realisation of opportunities”. Source: Wikipedia

Corporately risk is often seen in the use of ‘risk logs’ – a project management tool used to list, assess and (even) managing risk– used to support larger streams of work.  Then of course the more implicit approaches in activities like SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.  Those threats being potential risks.  However those opportunities present a more positive approach to risk – the risk of not doing positive things.

There’s some really helpful pointers to getting to grips with risk from David Spiegelhalter, who is Professor of Public Understanding or Risk at Cambridge University.  The author of some really useful materials, not just studying public understanding of risk, but also enabling that understanding too.  So some really helpful materials.   Having seen the talk (the University’s Department of Continuing Education)  on communication risk and uncertainty explaining “how people's perceptions of risk and uncertainty are influenced by the words, numbers and pictures used to communicate them”, there’s some really helpful observations and pointers to help get to grips with practically thinking about risk.  Here my key observations from that talk….

Approaching risk…  

We have two approaches to risk.  Firstly there’s the feeling approach.  That’s the gut reaction, fuelled by intuition, emotion and culture.  Secondly there’s the rational approach, weighing things up in a structured way, with careful analysis and measurement.  We’re seem to be comfortable with the more intuitive approach especially for the more personal matters.   When it comes to decisions taken on our behalf – for example by local and national government – we of course expect to see the more rational approach.  There in lies the world of business cases and cost benefit analysis.

Framing this issue… 

The purpose or context in which risks are presented is key.  It might simply be to attract attention to the issue, perhaps to inform or educate, or even change behaviour.

Numbers... 

Risk is often reported as tables of numbers, but increasingly as graphics too.  Interesting that the smallest number actually represents the biggest risk, 1 in 100 (higher risk) vs 1 in 10,000 (lower risk) when represented this way.  It’s proven that we act is some pre-disposed ways to how risks or probabilities are presented.  For example, Ratio Bias is where we focus on the numerator more so than the denominator.  So those two black bags...bag ‘A’ with one while and two red balls, and bag ‘B’ with two white and six red balls… so if the challenge is to get a while ball  then we’ll opt for bag B, the chances are exactly the same but the fact that we know there’s more while balls is too much to resist.  While that’s subtle, then how about Denominator Neglect where we ignore the denominator entirely.  So with those balls in the bag, we behave as it the red balls don’t exist at all.

Evidence and consensus… 

Certainly for some of the big areas of risk with lots of focus by lots of experts, we can look to a “meta” assessment of the risk, to get an overall impression of the understanding of the risk.  The two dimensions here are (a) the robustness of the evidence and (b) the degree of consensus.   So the robustness covers type, amount, quality and consistency, and the consensus covers the extent of agreement amongst experts.  Here’s how the assessment quality of evidence might considered, based confidence in estimates of medical treatment effects:

• High quality – further research is very unlikely to change our confidence in the estimate of the effect.

• Moderate quality – further research is likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate and may change the estimate.

• Low quality – further research is very likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate and is likely to change the estimate.

• Very low quality - any estimate of the effect is uncertain.

Of course the same evidence can be interpreted in different ways.  A favourite example of mine is the measurement of “staff turnover”, which for several years a national performance indicator for all police forces in England.  So a low turnover either means “staff are very happy here and are not drawn elsewhere” or  “staff are not good enough to achieve employment elsewhere”.  Probably the former that holds sway by default.

So arguably what we seek is a strong expert consensus based on robust evidence, rather than disagreement based on weak evidence.  That said, the world of consensus has had plenty of wake up calls, or “paradigm shifts” which can turn current thinking on it’s head….the worlds in now officially round. 

Tools...

There’s interesting ways to help present risk to ease understanding.  The idea of the “micro mort” which is a 1 in a million chance of dying, being used to more easily compare probabilities.  Examples of experiencing a micromort are travelling 6,000 miles in a train, driving 230 miles in a car, riding six miles on a motorbike.

Then there are the visual tools.  For example, a risk ladder shows the level of risks on a log scale to make comparing bigger and smaller risks easier.  Arrays of icons – grids of icons – help see the risk relative to a larger group.  Blocked arrays (where risk icons are clustered) are good for comparing, while scattered arrays (where risk icons are scattered) are good for seeing personal risk. 

Meeting Measure

Meeting…. defined as the act or process of coming together as an assembly for a common purpose. A very laudable and effective exercise when done well.  However, the practice of meetings can seem a little less rigorous at times, and not as effective as they could be.  Some key factors at play here, and here’s thoughts specifically around preparation and purpose.

In practice preparation can be quite variable.  Here’s a simple meetings measure to reflect the degree of preparation.  At one end of the continuum there is “Nightclub” style…just turn up and play it by ear.  Might even leave to go to something more interesting part way through.  At the other end of the continuum is “Bookclub” sytle …pre read with insightful collective reflection.  Materials are read and reflected on in advance,  and the meeting is the chance to share perspectives.  Most practical meetings are somewhere in between, but there’ll be a tipping point where just the right amount of preparation can maximise effectiveness.

In practice the purpose might not always be explicit enough.   Perhaps we need a more dynamic term for the person that’s in charge, rather than the ‘chair’.  So not a great metaphor - a passive functional object.  How about the “purposer”, as someone who is relentlessly focussed on delivering the purpose or objective of the meeting…

Data Quality Standards

This is a helpful framework for explicitly thinking about data quality.

There have been plenty of frameworks for performance and data, see for example A Framework for Performance Information or the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.  However this one, although not the most recent, has a quite unique depth of focus on the quality of data as an end in itself, and the corporate standards to help achieve this.

A joint product from the collective auditing bodies of the UK.....

There are are two broad sets of considerations here.  The first are the characteristics which are displayed by good quality data.  These are the outcome of the second set of considerations, which concern the corporate arrangements which directly influence the quality of data, and are described as the standards.

So the characteristics of good quality data....

And those characteristics are delivered by these five standards, the corporate arrangements to secure good quality data, and summarised as follows....

And each of these standards have some exacting questions to test against, each of which are listed below.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the emphasis is on the governance and leaderships for data quality from which all else follows.  It's worth noting that this is not describing the leadership for data, rather the leadership specifically for data quality, and hence for which there might even be different leadership roles.

It might be helpful to consider policies-and-procedures and systems-and-processes more as a whole. Given these terms are not explicitly defined.  In simple terms, policies-and-procedures can be considered as the guidance, and the systems-and-processes the actual data activity.

And here's all those 30 questions as a wordcloud...so that data quality emerges from the predominant themes of management, reporting, staff, recording, proceedures....

Decisions Decisions

So what’s in a decision?  It would appear to come down to judgement, helpfully defined as… “the evaluation of evidence in the making of a decision“.

So this means there are two parts to that judgement: (1) the evident itself and (2) the process of evaluation.   So a good judgement needs the right evidence (or information) to be evaluated (or analysed) in the right way.   So that’s the right information AND the right analysis for a good decision.  Hence either poor information OR poor analysis can lead to a poor decision.

So judgement tends to be the shorthand for using evidence and evaluating it.   The evidence is perhaps clear enough – some history and context.  Of course it needs to be the right evidence (the scope or breadth of evidence) and there need to be enough of it (the depth of evidence).    The evaluation might well be a structured process , weighing up (even weighting)  different evidence,  but perhaps more often than not a more ephemeral exercise.  

So there is a helpful balance to be struck between what might be called “process judgement” and that more ephemeral “judgement by osmosis”.    The process judgement is really what’s described above, a transparent approach to think about evidence and its evaluation in coming to a decision.     So not just the oft quoted “evidence based” decision making - that’s not enough - but rather evidence and evaluation based.   More science than art, and perhaps best typified by the “business case” approach.

The “judgement by osmosis” is the more attractive proxy for all of the process business.   The right decision just permeates through all of the potential complexity of evidence and evaluation.   In some cases a fantastic short cut to assimilate and distil the information and its analysis, and providing a natural blending with experience and risk appetite.  In other cases less so...  Overall probably more art than science.

So all decisions are judgement based, but how many of those judgements are evidence and evaluation based.

Let’s not forget it’s also quite possible to get the right decision randomly, “more by luck than judgement’.  So judgement is just the helping hand to increase the chances of making the right decision first time by using sufficient evidence and evaluating it systematically.