No more secretaries – no more secrets?

The UK government is stepping up the stakes and increasing its own accountability for lost data so maybe the boring, detailed and tedious work of data security will attract a bit more glory and attention-to-detail.  But I doubt it.  It is house-keeping, and there ain’t no glory there.  

In the good-old bad-old days before the PC, Secretaries took care of their boss’s information for them. (Hush, little children.  There was such a time.  Mummy and Daddy were there).  When Reggie Perrin said “take a letter Joan” because he had a mind above typing, Joan did all the boring, detailed and tedious stuff like keeping track of information and who had access to which filing cabinet.  Imagine Joan needed to distribute an org chart.  She’d type it up,  get the key to the photocopy room from the MD’s secretary, log the number of copies in the photocopy book, and walk round the building and pin them on the notice boards.  She’d also get instant feedback on the new structure for Reggie, not to mention some interesting gossip and a couple of slices of cake.

But there’s really no cheap and elegent way to automate updating information so – still going with the org chart theme – in a large business these are stored all over the place: on dozens or scores of intranet sites, in any number of induction and orientation and planning packs, scattered through email boxes and shared drives.  And those are just the electronic ones – never mind the ones that individuals have printed out and put up on notice boards and cubicle walls.  

Its not just keeping track of information like org charts.  It’s not just the just the challenge of laptops and usb sticks and CDs.  It’s secure internet sites.  It’s keeping track of who’s allowed access to what internal systems, or the applications used and the support that’s available, or whether the temp who finished his contract with HR and came back to work for Goods Inwards still has access to HR’s shared drives?

The Business think of this as an IT problem, but IT don’t know what individuals should be prevented from doing, so they say it’s a Business problem.  And the Business are too busy doing their day job selling widgets to care.  And data is now so friction free it’s no wonder it keeps on sliding out of control.

This isn’t the Daily Mail.  I’m not saying “bring back the secretary”.  Legislation is the only way.  The speed of business is so great and data security so complex, that organisations won’t do it for themselves.  

Joan retired long ago.  David’s growing organic cress on the Isle of Arran.  Super.  But Tony is European Strategic Development Director of an IT consultancy with a contract with the government.  Sure, he’s got a PA but he shares her with the rest of the Leaderhip Team and she says “oh I’m not technical” when IT Services call.  He’s a high powered business-orientated guy who’s always on.  

So Tony’s sitting there using an unsecured laptop on Starbucks’ wifi while someone nicks the Blackberry from his jacket slung over his chair.  

Great.

The Question Is…

Tony Robbins has a slick one-liner in one of his self-help books.  He says:

Questions are the answer.

For a Business Analyst that is certainly true.

It’s true for academics too, in a different way.  I’m currently taking a Research Methods course as part of my MSc at Bristol, and am having to think about questions and answers in a whole new way.  I’m having to think of them as the set-up for a piece of research, and the research has to be doable.

Now I thought I was reasonably clear on what I want to do for my dissertation.  Something along the lines of “What mitigates for success or failure of a corporate Knowledge Base, and is it worth the time and effort?”  - Get that use “mitigates” eh?

But of course, when you start picking that over you start finding that it’s as full of holes as a crunchie:  what do you mean by “success” and “failure” in this context?  What is a corporate Knowledge Base anyway, and what things aren’t corporate knowledge bases?  How do you measure what’s “worth it?”

My usual standbys don’t work in this context.  If I put this question to a team in a workshop I’d ask them “what does good look like?” and

And the question is…

Tony Robbins has a slick one-liner in one of his self-help books.  He says:

Questions are the answer.

For a Business Analyst that is certainly true.  We are members of a profession like law and journalism, where success is built on asking the right questions, in the right way, at the right time.  I’ve spent most of my professional life consciously trying to improve my ability to ask questions.

I’m discovering just how important this is in academia too.  I’m doing a Research Methods course as part of my MSc at Bristol and I have to think about questions and answers in a whole new way: I must think of them as the set-up for a piece of research, and the research has to be doable.  

Now I thought I was reasonably clear on what I want to do for my dissertation.  Something along the lines of “What mitigates for success or failure of a corporate Knowledge Base, and is it worth the time and effort?”  -Sounds nice and crisp and – hey – how cool is that use of “mitigates” eh?  

But when you pick it over, you find it’s as full of holes as a crunchie.  Let’s define a few paramaters here: what do I mean by “success” and “failure”?  And scope: what is a corporate Knowledge Base anyway, and what things aren’t corporate knowledge bases?  And metrics, let’s define some metrics: how do you measure what’s “worth it” and what isn’t?   

My usual stand-bys don’t work in this context.  If I was running a workshop and put this question to the team, I’d supplement it with “what does good look like?” and “what do you mean by… success / failure / corporate knowledge base” etc, etc, and put the answers up on the whiteboard.

Maybe what I’m learning is that it’s much harder to answer questions than to ask them.

A commentators’ meme

Here’s a meme and a half, courtesy of Solnushka at “Verbosity leads to unclear inarticulate things”.

The rules:

1. List the last ten people who have commented on your blog

2. If you’re on my list then you should do the meme on your blog too [if you would like to - I'm wary of anything that smacks of creating obligations AB]

1. Reed at Out of Ideas
2. Healing Magic Hands at The Havens
3. kelli
4. Creig Buchannah
5. Hairy Farmer Family at The Hairy Farmer Family
6. Alfster
7. Son of Roj Blake
8. Paul
9. Omega Mum at Three kids no job 
10. Anticant at Anticant’s Arena 

Now for the questions:

1: What is your favourite post from number 3’s blog?  (Kelli)

Kelli doesn’t blog, which is a shame.  She’d post grounded and well-informed posts about whatever her project was at the time – currently motherhood, which has occasionally been difficult, and pregnancy.

2. Has number 10 taken any pictures that have moved you? (Anticant)

Not that I am aware of, but I’m charmed by the portrait of him as a mouse elegantly ensconced in a wing chair wearing a paisley silk dressing gown with a smoking hat and pince nez, reading a book.

3. Does number 6 reply to comments on their blog?  (Alfster)

Alas, Alfster is another of my visitors who does not blog.

4. Which part of blogland is number 2 from?  (Healing Magic Hands)

She’s in “A medium size town in Missouri” and – if she will forgive me for saying so – she’s from somewhat left of the field, having a labyrinth and a river and a great openness and warmth for people.

5. If you could give one piece of advice to number 7 what would it be? (Son of Roj Blake)

Ooooh.  It’s tempting to say “Don’t be a stranger”.  He’s always ignored my advice in the past and I’m not aware that he needs any now.  On the other hand it’s also tempting to say “take Jesus into your heart as a friend” simply to see the steam come out of his ears.

6. Have you ever tried something from number 9’s blog? (Omega Mum)

Nn…no.  Her blog is more of an Awful Warning than a source of useful Hints and Tips.  The Awful Warning that springs to mind at the moment is don’t go cycling commando.

7. Has number 1 blogged something that inspired you? (Reed)

Her use of language.  Her sense of humour.  The letters after her name. Her sheer bloody bravery under fire.  Yes.  Here, for fun, is a post from last year about the crack in the floor at the Tate.

8. How often do you comment on number 4’s blog?  (Creig Buchannah)

Never at all.  His post was spam.  However I dislike revisionism so I tend to simply remove the links and leave the comments.  Besides which there was something about the combination of literacy, unfamiliarity with the language leaps of illogic and non-sequiteurs that appealed to me.

9. Do you wait for number 8 to post excitedly? (Paul)

Paul drifted in, didn’t leave a link, and drifted out again.  I don’t know him from Adam.  Or Eve.  Or Kissmequick.

10. How did number 5’s blog change your life?  (Hairy Farmer Family)

Um.  I don’t think any blog has done that.  She’s given me insights into motherhood and rural life, some of which I’d rather not have had…

11. Do you know any of the 10 bloggers in person?

I’ve met Reed on several occasions, and adored her every time.  I danced at Kelli’s wedding.  Alfster and the Son of Roj Blake weeded my allotment in exchange for a round or two of allotment golf.  And Verbosity, too, I know, not to mention the Star who I met while he was still a bump.  So yes.

12. Do any of your 10 bloggers know each other in person?

Alfster and the Son of Roj Blake go way back.  Two bodies, one mind.  Reed and Verbosity I know are close and dear friends in real life as well as on the internets.  Reed has met the Hairy Farmer Family, to my enduring envy.  Kelli knows Reed, Verbosity, and the Son of Roj Blake, but probably not Alfster.

Look, shall I draw you a diagram?  

13. Out of the 10, which updates more frequently?

Oh, I’m not sure.  None of them enough for me.

14. Which of the 10 keep you laughing?

All of them.  And crying too.  

15. Which of the 10 has made you cry (good or bad tears)?

See above.

PS – Interesting that the meme assumes that all commentators are bloggers.  And interesting that so many of mine are not.

Queuing theory and the Traffic-Jam Oratorio

I have in my time got very annoyed with Post-Modernists the main reason being that I’ve found them to be slippery, self-indulgent, intellectually-dishonest solipsists.  Oh, and lazy.  Add “intellectually lazy” to that list.  And while I’m tacking ideas on to the end of this paragraph, I should admit I had to ask and be told that solipsism means narcisitic or self-centred.  So narcisstic and self-centered while we’re at it.

What has brought this on is the two day course on Research Methods I’ve just come back from which is preparation for writing my dissertation.  And of course Management Studies is particularly prone to wars between the quants on one end of the scale and the slippery, self-indulgent, yadda-de-yah post-modernists on the other end of the scale.  Which is a human construct anyway.  

And enormous fun the whole weekend was too.  

Since there’s almost nothing quotable from Wikipedia’s article on post-modernism let me give you my own definition by summarising it as the idea that there is no reality, everything is a human construct, we are independent actors with free-will and, since all research is subject to researcher-bias, writing a tone poem about the credit crunch has as much meaning and more honesty than tracking the FTSE 100.  I had the following limerick rattling about my head the whole weekend:

There was a faith-healer from Deal
Who said: “Although pain isn’t real
If I sit on a pin
And if punctures my skin
I dislike what I fancy I feel”. 

I’ve come back with my head fizzing with ideas but I’ll leave you with this one for the time being.

It comes down to intent.

 Why are you doing the research you are doing?  What do you want it to achieve?  (A post-modernist would say “but why do you want it to achieve anything?” at which point their cleverness runs up against my premises and the whole thing falls apart in hyperventilation and swearing).

If you want to examine the phonomenon of rush hour traffic jams you can do it in a variety of ways.  

If you take the view that the only reality is subjective experience and we are all free agents whose opinions have equal validity you can interview people to find out how they feel about traffic jams.  Or get them to draw pictures or sing songs about it.  You can create a traffic-jam oratorio of “found sounds”, or a traffic-jam sculpture out of traffic and – er – jam.  (It seems to me that the line between post-modernist “research” and conceptual art is non-existant).  You can make a film of what people do in their cars in a traffic jam or get them to film and record their own experiences.  Whatever.  It’s all valid and all research.   Etc, etc, etc.  And it is.  It IS all valid research.  It’s interesting and thought provoking and rich and informative.  But it doesn’t solve the problem.

The thing is, it’s not a particularly difficult problem to solve: you model the traffic-jam mathematically using queueing theory and then adjust the cycle on the traffic lights or alter the speed limit and get rid of the traffic jam.

 

The thing is, while I’d love to be sitting in a car listening to a traffic-jam oratorio of “found sounds” on Radio 3, I also want my town planners to be doing the maths so I don’t have to.

Fell running to conclusions

At what point to you stop looking for patterns and start drawing conclusions?  Or to put the question another way, if someone’s out of signal range for their mobile phone does that mean  they are “stranded”?

There was much news last weekend about overwhelmed emergency services in the Lake District scouring the mountain-sides in atrocious weather for 1700 fell runners lost on the moors.  And commentators took it a step further and seethed with outrage that they organisers went ahead with the event despite advice from the police not to.

One of my bug-bears is organised events getting a free ride from the emergency services, so this was just the sort of story I notice.  Confirmation bias did the rest and by mid-day Sunday I was steaming at the selfishness of the organisers and the folly of the entrants.  I wanted to know if the event’s organisers or its insurers would pay the costs of the call-out.  So I went to the OMM website and from there to the discussion boards and asked – very politely – about it.

I was enchanted and fully won over by what I found on their discussion boards.   The people posting had clearly had a great time because of the atrocious conditions.  They reminded me of great big wet dogs who have just had the most enormous fun getting really cold and really muddy and who have no idea why you might not want them bouncing around inside your car.

Aside from that, they clearly know what they are doing – a fair number of them were members of the Mountain Rescue teams doing what they love best, and scores of them were members of the armed forces.  The rules required that they should be equipped with food, a tent and appropriate clothing and entrants who weren’t properly equipped were not allowed to start.

Something else that came through again and again was that they took individual responsibility for their actions despite the fact they were entering an organised event.

Regarding the funding, I’ll quote the relevant post that I found by lurking their boards:

Police- Came to block honister pass and borrowdale road, to the general public, because they were flooded then decided to get unnecessarily involved in assisting with the OMM. They actually thought that because people were camping out for the night that they were missing, which they weren’t. They were just being safe and not trying to get off the hills in the dark.

M[ountain] R[escue] – No cost there to taxpayer as they are entirely volunteers, many of whom were actually doing the race. A small number of injured people needed assistance. Only 0.004% went to hospital. Have a look at stats on those injured on Fun runs etc

Ambulance services- I think a couple of guys got transported to hospital, it wasn’t really a disaster zone.

RAF Heli- The CAA require the RAF to undertake a certain amount of training and they use Mountain Rescues as a training exercise. If there are not enough call outs they have to make up the hours with “dummy” rescues etc.

Salvation Army- say no more…..

Since then they have donated several thousand pounds to the Cumbrian Mountain Rescue.

So I left their boards convinced by their case and with considerably less respect for the BBC journalists.  It was a salutory lesson in the dangers of making assumptions, jumping to conclusions and accepting at face value the analysis of the first person you speak to.

Which is are lessons in “how not to do it” that every BA should learn.