orgintelligence

Working for the Machine

by

#orgintelligence The recent appointment of an algorithm to a Board of Directors raises the spectre of science fiction becoming fact. Although many commentators regarded the appointment as a publicity stunt, there has always been an undercurrent of fear about machine intelligence. Even the BBC (following Betteridge’s Law of Headlines) succumbed to the alarmist headline Could a big data-crunching machine be your boss one day?

There are several useful ways that an algorithm might contribute to the collective intelligence of a Board of Directors. One is to provide an automated judgement on some topic, which can be put into the pot together with a number of human judgements. This is what seems to be planned by the company Deep Knowledge Ventures, whose Board of Directors is faced with a series of important investment decisions. Although each decision is unique, there are some basic similarities in the decision process that may be amenable to automation and machine learning.

Another possible contribution is to evaluate other board members. According to the BBC article, IBM Watson could be programmed to analyse the contributions made by each board member for usefulness and accuracy. There are several ways such a feedback loop could enhance the collective intelligence of the Board.

  • Retrain individuals to improve their contributions in specific contexts.
  • Identify and eliminate individuals whose contribution is weak.
  • Identify and eliminate individuals whose contribution is similar to other members. In other words, promote greater diversity.
  • Enable trial membership of individuals from a wider range of backgrounds, to see whether they can make a valuable contribution.

Organizational Intelligence is about an effective combination of human/social intelligence and machine intelligence. Remember this when people try to develop an either-us-or-them narrative.

#QTWTAIN

Jamie Bartlett, Will Artificial Intelligence put my job at risk? (Spectator 6 June 2014)

Adrian Chen, Can an Algorithm Solve Twitter’s Credibility Problem? (New Yorker 5 May 2014)

John Rentoul, Will Artificial Intelligence put my job at risk? (Independent 6 June 2014)

Richard Veryard, Does Cameron’s Dashboard App Improve the OrgIntelligence of Government? (23 January 2013)

Matthew Wall, Could a big data-crunching machine be your boss one day? (BBC News 9 October 2014)

Other Sources

Algorithm appointed board director (BBC News 16 May 2014)

National Decision Model

by

@antlerboy asks does anyone know theoretical underpinning of the (rather good) police decision-making model?

The National Decision Model (NDM) is a risk assessment framework, or decision making process, that is used by police forces across the UK. It replaces the former Conflict Management Model. Some sources refer to it as the National Decision-Making Model.

Looking around the Internet, I have found two kinds of description of the model – top-down and bottom-up.

The top-down (abstract) description was published by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) sometime in 2012, and has been replicated in various items of police training material including a page on the College of Policing website. It is fairly abstract, and provides five different stages that officers can follow when making any type of decision – not just conflict management.

Some early responses from the police force regarded the NDM as an ideal model, only weakly connected to the practical reality of decision-making on the ground. See for example The NDM and decision making – what’s the reality? (Inspector Juliet Bravo, April 2012).

In contrast, the bottom-up (context-specific) description emerges when serving police officers discuss using the NDM. According to Mr Google, this discussion tends to focus on one decision in particular – to Taser or not to Taser.

“For me the Taser is a very important link in the National Decision Making Model . It bridges that gap between the baton and the normal firearm that has an almost certain risk of death when used.” (The Peel Blog, July 2012). See also Use of Force – Decision Making (Police Geek, July 2012).

ACPO itself adopts this context-specific perspective in its Questions and Answers on Taser (February 2012, updated July 2013), where it is stated that Taser may be deployed and used as one of a number of tactical options only after application of the National Decision Model (NDM).

Of course, the fact that Taser-related decisions have a high Google ranking doesn’t imply that these decisions represent the most active use of the National Decision Model. The most we can infer from this is that these are the decisions that police and others are most interested in discussing.

(Argyris and Schön introduced the distinction between Espoused Theory and Theory-In-Use. Perhaps we need a third category to refer to what people imagine to be the central or canonical examples of the theory. We might call it Theory-in-View or Theory-in-Gaze.)

In a conflict situation, a police officer often has to decide how much force to use. The officer needs to have a range of tools at his disposal and the ability to select the appropriate tool – in policing, this is known as a use-of-force continuum. More generally, it is an application of the principle of Requisite Variety.

In a particular conflict situation, the police can only use the tools they have at their disposal. The decision to use a Taser can only be taken if the police have the Taser and the training to use it properly. In which case the operational decision must follow the NDM.

More strategic decisions operate on a longer timescale – whether to equip police with certain equipment and training, what rules of engagement to apply, and so on. A truly abstract decision-making model would provide guidance for these strategic decisions as well as the operational decisions.

And that’s exactly what the top-down description of NDM asserts. “It can be applied to spontaneous incidents or planned operations by an individual or team of people, and to both operational and non-operational situations.”

Senior police officers have described the use of the NDM for non-conflict situations. For example, Adrian Lee (Chief Constable of Northants) gave a presentation on the Implications of NDM for Roads Policing (January 2012).

The NDM has also been adapted for use in other organizations. For example, Paul Macfarlane (ex Strathclyde Police) has used the NDM to produced a model aimed at Business Continuity and Risk Management. which he calls Defensive Decision-Making.

How does the NDM relate to other decision-making models? According to Adrian Lee’s presentation, the NDM is based on three earlier models:

  • The Conflict Management Model (CMM). For a discussion from 2011, see Police Oracle.
  • The SARA model (Scan, Analyze, Respond, Assess) – which appears to be similar to the OODA loop.
  • Something called the PLANE model. (I tried Googling this, and I just got lots of Lego kits. If anyone has a link, please send.)

There is considerable discussion in the USA about the relevance of the OODA loop to policing, and this again focuses on conflict management situations (the “Active Shooter”). There are two important differences between combat (the canonical use of OODA) and conflict management. Firstly, the preferred outcome is not to kill the offender but to disarm him (either physically or psychologically). This means that you sometimes need to give the offender time to calm down, orienting himself into making the right decision.

And the cop needs to stay calm. George “Doc” Thompson, who taught US police a de-escalation technique known as Verbal Judo, once said “We know that the most deadly weapon we carry is not the .45 or the 9mm, it is in fact the cop’s tongue … A single sentence fired off at the wrong person at the wrong time can get you fired, it can get you sued, it can get you killed.”

So it’s not just about having a faster OODA loop than the other guy (although clearly some American cops think this is important). And secondly, there is a lot of talk about situation awareness and anticipation. For example, Dr. Mike Asken, who is a State Police psychologist, has developed a model called AAADA (Anticipating, Alerting, Assessing, Deciding and Acting). There is also a Cognitive OODA model I need to look into.

However, I interpret @antlerboy’s request for theoretical underpinning as not just a historical question (what theories of decision-making were the creators of NDM consciously following) but a methodological question (what theories of decision-making would be relevant to NDM and any other decision models). But this post is already long enough, and the sun is shining outside, so I shall return to this topic another day.

Sources

Michael J. Asken, From OODA to AAADA ― A cycle for surviving violent police encounters (Dec 2010)

Erik P. Blasch et al, User Information Fusion Decision-Making Analysis with the C-OODA Model (Jan 2011)

Tom Dart, ‘Verbal judo’: the police tactic that teaches cops to talk before they shoot (Guardian 21 July 2016)

Adrian Lee, Implications of NDM for Roads Policing (January 2012).

Steve Papenfuhs, The OODA loop, reaction time, and decision making (PoliceOne, 23 February 2012)

National Decision Model (ACPO, 2012?)

National Decision Model (College of Policing, 2013)

SARA model (Center for Problem-Oriented Policing)

Related Posts
National Decision Model and Lessons Learned (Feb 2017)

Updated 28 February 2017

National Decision Model

by

@antlerboy asks does anyone know theoretical underpinning of the (rather good) police decision-making model?

The National Decision Model (NDM) is a risk assessment framework, or decision making process, that is used by police forces across the UK. It replaces the former Conflict Management Model. Some sources refer to it as the National Decision-Making Model.

Looking around the Internet, I have found two kinds of description of the model – top-down and bottom-up.

The top-down (abstract) description was published by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) sometime in 2012, and has been replicated in various items of police training material including a page on the College of Policing website. It is fairly abstract, and provides five different stages that officers can follow when making any type of decision – not just conflict management.

Some early responses from the police force regarded the NDM as an ideal model, only weakly connected to the practical reality of decision-making on the ground. See for example The NDM and decision making – what’s the reality? (Inspector Juliet Bravo, April 2012).

In contrast, the bottom-up (context-specific) description emerges when serving police officers discuss using the NDM. According to Mr Google, this discussion tends to focus on one decision in particular – to Taser or not to Taser.

“For me the Taser is a very important link in the National Decision Making Model . It bridges that gap between the baton and the normal firearm that has an almost certain risk of death when used.” (The Peel Blog, July 2012). See also Use of Force – Decision Making (Police Geek, July 2012).

ACPO itself adopts this context-specific perspective in its Questions and Answers on Taser (February 2012, updated July 2013), where it is stated that Taser may be deployed and used as one of a number of tactical options only after application of the National Decision Model (NDM).

Of course, the fact that Taser-related decisions have a high Google ranking doesn’t imply that these decisions represent the most active use of the National Decision Model. The most we can infer from this is that these are the decisions that police and others are most interested in discussing.

(Argyris and Schön introduced the distinction between Espoused Theory and Theory-In-Use. Perhaps we need a third category to refer to what people imagine to be the central or canonical examples of the theory. We might call it Theory-in-View or Theory-in-Gaze.)

In a conflict situation, a police officer often has to decide how much force to use. The officer needs to have a range of tools at his disposal and the ability to select the appropriate tool – in policing, this is known as a use-of-force continuum. More generally, it is an application of the principle of Requisite Variety.

In a particular conflict situation, the police can only use the tools they have at their disposal. The decision to use a Taser can only be taken if the police have the Taser and the training to use it properly. In which case the operational decision must follow the NDM.

More strategic decisions operate on a longer timescale – whether to equip police with certain equipment and training, what rules of engagement to apply, and so on. A truly abstract decision-making model would provide guidance for these strategic decisions as well as the operational decisions.

And that’s exactly what the top-down description of NDM asserts. “It can be applied to spontaneous incidents or planned operations by an individual or team of people, and to both operational and non-operational situations.”

Senior police officers have described the use of the NDM for non-conflict situations. For example, Adrian Lee (Chief Constable of Northants) gave a presentation on the Implications of NDM for Roads Policing (January 2012).

The NDM has also been adapted for use in other organizations. For example, Paul Macfarlane (ex Strathclyde Police) has used the NDM to produced a model aimed at Business Continuity and Risk Management. which he calls Defensive Decision-Making.

How does the NDM relate to other decision-making models? According to Adrian Lee’s presentation, the NDM is based on three earlier models:

  • The Conflict Management Model (CMM). For a discussion from 2011, see Police Oracle.
  • The SARA model (Scan, Analyze, Respond, Assess) – which appears to be similar to the OODA loop.
  • Something called the PLANE model. (I tried Googling this, and I just got lots of Lego kits. If anyone has a link, please send.)

There is considerable discussion in the USA about the relevance of the OODA loop to policing, and this again focuses on conflict management situations (the “Active Shooter”). There are two important differences between combat (the canonical use of OODA) and conflict management. Firstly, the preferred outcome is not to kill the offender but to disarm him (either physically or psychologically). This means that you sometimes need to give the offender time to calm down, orienting himself into making the right decision. So it’s not just about having a faster OODA loop than the other guy (although clearly some American cops think this is important). And secondly, there is a lot of talk about situation awareness and anticipation. For example, Dr. Mike Asken, who is a State Police psychologist, has developed a model called AAADA (Anticipating, Alerting, Assessing, Deciding and Acting). There is also a Cognitive OODA model I need to look into.

However, I interpret @antlerboy’s request for theoretical underpinning as not just a historical question (what theories of decision-making were the creators of NDM consciously following) but a methodological question (what theories of decision-making would be relevant to NDM and any other decision models). But this post is already long enough, and the sun is shining outside, so I shall return to this topic another day.

Sources

Michael J. Asken, From OODA to AAADA ― A cycle for surviving violent police encounters (Dec 2010)

Adrian Lee, Implications of NDM for Roads Policing (January 2012).

Erik P. Blasch et al, User Information Fusion Decision-Making Analysis with the C-OODA Model (Jan 2011)

National Decision Model (ACPO, 2012?)

National Decision Model (College of Policing, 2013)

SARA model (Center for Problem-Oriented Policing)

Updated 19 May 2014

From information architecture to evidence-based practice

by

@bengoldacre has produced a report for the UK Department for Education, suggesting some lessons that education can learn from medicine, and calling for a coherent “information architecture” that supports evidence based practice. Dr Goldacre notes that in the highest performing education systems, such as Singapore, “it is almost impossible to rise up the career ladder of teaching, without also doing some work on research in education.”

Here are some of his key recommendations. Clearly these recommendations would be relevant to many other corporate environments, especially those where there is strong demand for innovation, performance and value-for-money.

  • a simple infrastructure that supports evidence-based practice
  • teachers should be empowered to participate in research
  • the results of research should be disseminated more efficiently
  • resources on research should be available to teachers, enabling them to be critical and thoughtful consumers of evidence
  • barriers between teachers and researchers should be removed
  • teachers should be driving the research agenda, by identifying questions that need to be answered.

Clearly it is not enough merely to create an information architecture or knowledge infrastructure. The challenge is to make sure they are aligned with an inquiring culture.

to be continued …

Ben Goldacre, Teachers! What would evidence based practice look like? (Bad Science, March 2013)

From information architecture to evidence-based practice

by

@bengoldacre has produced a report for the UK Department for Education, suggesting some lessons that education can learn from medicine, and calling for a coherent “information architecture” that supports evidence based practice. Dr Goldacre notes that in the highest performing education systems, such as Singapore, “it is almost impossible to rise up the career ladder of teaching, without also doing some work on research in education.”

Here are some of his key recommendations. Clearly these recommendations would be relevant to many other corporate environments, especially those where there is strong demand for innovation, performance and value-for-money.

  • a simple infrastructure that supports evidence-based practice
  • teachers should be empowered to participate in research
  • the results of research should be disseminated more efficiently
  • resources on research should be available to teachers, enabling them to be critical and thoughtful consumers of evidence
  • barriers between teachers and researchers should be removed
  • teachers should be driving the research agenda, by identifying questions that need to be answered.

Clearly it is not enough merely to create an information architecture or knowledge infrastructure. The challenge is to make sure they are aligned with an inquiring culture.

to be continued …

Ben Goldacre, Teachers! What would evidence based practice look like? (Bad Science, March 2013)

Intelligence and Governance

by

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.
  • Decision-making by consent (Robertson)

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.
  • Circle Organization (Robertson)

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

Brian Robertson, The Sociocratic Method. A Dutch model of corporate governance harnesses self-organization to provide agility and a voice to all participants (Strategy+Business Aug 2006)

Steve Waddell, Wicked Problems, Governance as Learning Systems (Feb 2013)

Updated 1 March 2013

Intelligence and Governance

by

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.
  • Decision-making by consent (Robertson)

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.
  • Circle Organization (Robertson)

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

Brian Robertson, The Sociocratic Method. A Dutch model of corporate governance harnesses self-organization to provide agility and a voice to all participants (Strategy+Business Aug 2006)

Steve Waddell, Wicked Problems, Governance as Learning Systems (Feb 2013)

Updated 1 March 2013

Complexity is not a problem

by

There is a common view in the enterprise architecture world that complexity is a big problem, perhaps the biggest problem, and that the primary task of enterprise architecture is to deal with this complexity.

  • “Enterprises are instances of complex adaptive systems having many interacting subcomponents whose interactions yield complex behaviors.  Enterprise Architecture is a way of understanding and managing such complexity.” (Beryl Bellman Managing Organizational Complexity pdf FEAC Oct 2009)

Indeed, I’m sure I’ve said things like this myself. But if complexity is a problem, whose problem is it? I am not seeing a huge rush of businessmen hiring enterprise architects just to deal with The Complexity Problem. Usually they have much more practical problems that they want addressing.

Read more »

How Offices Make People Stupid

by

@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


“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 (supposedly 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 widespread 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 but not sufficient for productivity and innovation in a knowledge-based organization. Not sufficient because productivity and innovation also depend on concentrated hard work.

Read more »

How Offices Make People Stupid

by

@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


“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 (supposedly 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 widespread 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 but not sufficient for productivity and innovation in a knowledge-based organization. Not sufficient because productivity and innovation also depend on concentrated hard work.

Read more »

Are we making progress?

by

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).

Read more »

Are we making progress?

by

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).

Read more »