Just a note that the world is in great need for more on Dunbar’s numbers in antidote to totalitarian-bureaucratic compliance efforts.
Nah, wanted to, but have more urgent issues to discuss. E.g., tomorrow. See you then!
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The beauty of variance
Oh why did we think that mere straightforward compliance with one definitive set of rules (however principled, or detailed) would achieve anything worthwhile ..?
Why didn’t we consider the inherent, innate beauty of variance and variation, beyond mere secondary usefulness in resilience/robustness ..?
Because reasons. The perennial one being Fear, probably. Fear of uncertainty. As there’s downside risk in that. Where all the risk management still focuses on. Yes, no, no denying that; all models still have any ‘impact’ of any ‘event’ as a single negative number. If (in the every-part-but-when sense) we would inculde positive, good possibilities and outcomes to count as well, wouldn’t we end up with zero average impacts in many places ..? Like the great many places where non-compliance is conscious just because the enterpreneur wants to achieve something worthwhile hence other than compliance ..?
But what if we turn risk management into the brushing off of the rough edges of beautiful sculpturing that enterpreneurs and true managers do ..? Chiseling away grey/gray unusable material to keep the beuatiful statue that was in the stone already to be released ..?
Those that want nothing to bloom may await nothing but their ignomous and insignificant death. In the mean time, don’t bother the one sthat want to achieve something, please.
After which I remind you: That’s all secondary talk. Primarily, seek the beauty of variation for its own richness. Hence:
[The view from my field office, once. Y2K was a party on St. Lucia…]
Partially compliant: as a solution
I was recently informed by a respected colleague in a peer-to-peer discussion (see; they’re useful!) about a development of his in the Compliance arena.
About not having just one single Statement of Compliance that all too often wipes deficiencies under the rug for the sake of agreement everywhere. But having two, one on (first-lines’) management awareness of deficiencies as things to actively manage and actively discuss with second and third lines, and one on abstract, ‘anonymous’ no-blame control effectiveness.
So, when the Three Lines of Defense would actually work (yes I’ve ranted against that on this blog frequently as the simpleton approach inherently can’t work!), first-line management can provide their own list of control deficiencies, and the second and third lines can only confirm and not add much of at all. Then, the first line is in control (all is well and/or known-and-WIP), over their own stuff. Hence, awareness ✓ effectiveness X. When the first line doesn’t have much but the 2nd/3rd lines add quite some (other) things, awareness is X and effectiveness is undetermined. Only when the first line doesn’t have much and the second/third lines cannot add quite a few things, will awareness be ✓ and control effectiveness be ✓
Which sounds like a far better, and in practice far better palatable approach than just one messy jumble-together undetermined opinion. For which I leave you with:
[The bus buck stops here at this chaotic (?) shelter; Aachen. In Control statement: similar]
Effectiveness or Compliance
In assessing ‘compliance’ of your … [fill in the blanks and then colour the picture], do you actually go for correct set-up and design, and operating effectiveness ..?
If so, you’d be ready when the design is suitable.
Though a great many of you would still consider operating effectiveness proven by repeated measurement and establishing everything runs smoothly according to procedures, including the capture and re-alignment of exceptions.
But you would be wrong. That’s just verification in the weakest form.
Actual operating effectiveness would have been dictated (meant literally, not ‘literally’-figuratively) by an appropriate design. The design should be such that there is no way in which, e.g., any transaction could escape procedures, ever.
Which would require very careful study of procedures, the result of design. Which would fail when the design wasn’t aimed for totalitarian control. Which is the case; the design almost always is focused on obtaining the most basic of functionalities of a system – that includes catering for some exceptions, the bulk of the foreseeable ones; at most – not capture all and everything as that would indeed be impossible ex ante. Hence, the inherent impossibility of total operating effectiveness. There’s always unheard-of, thought to be impossible exceptions at the lowest levels of detail. (Let alone in the infrastructure on which any system would have to run, at about all abstraction layers of ‘system’ that one can study.) And there’s Class Breaks, and penny-wise but pound-foolish type of ‘exceptions’ at higher abstraction layers (all the way up to ‘the CEO wishes this. He (sic) only has to wish for it to be done already’).
So, already in the design phase, you know to fail at Operating Effectiveness later, however perfect you think you’re doing. And you delude yourself further if you’d think that the design will be implemented perfectly. On the contrary, in the implementation the very reality will have to be dealt with, where the nitty-gritty will derail your ideas and something that is a bit workable at all, will be the most you can achieve. Always, ever.
Hence there too, you lose a lot of ‘perfection’.
Whihc may show in operations or not. If you don’t look careful enough, you might arrive at a positive conclusion about somewhat-effective control operations. That has little to do with effective operations by the way; the latter (client service) being greatly disturbed by your ….. (insert expletive describing subpar quality) controls.
If you look careful enough … you don’t even have to; just point out where controls didn’t operate effectively and qualify that as total SNAFU.
Oh yes, in theory (contrasting practice) it just might work, by having all sorts of perfectly stacked control loops on top of control loops (as detailed here) but these have their leakage and imperfections as well and would have to be infinitely stacked to achieve anything approaching closure so nice try but no cigar.
Conclusion:
Set-up/Design and Implementation are everything, Operating Effectiveness follows: OE fails logically.
ISAx Statements Type I or II: Logically inherently deficient hence superfluous money- and paper waste.
Revert to Understanding and opining on your guts. It takes guts, yes, as risky as that is, but pretension of logical reasoning and/or sufficiently extensive proof-of-the-pudding auditing (on the paper-based pudding …) cannot but fail: Non-compliance found: negative rating; no non-compliance found: failed at the task.
I’m done now. For you:
[Just a side corridor, neatly controlled (for!) decoration]
Modelling innovation
Just a note: Why do we see so many sites, posts, models, templates how to organise innovation ..?
Wasn’t Innovation about not being squeezed into models or templates ..?
Or are the ones actually innovating, not interested and the ones that are, not innovating ..?
I’ll come back to this later, if needed. For now:
[Ideals, at Cologne]
Your ASI-MBTIFuture
With all the discussion on the future of work, and how finally! we would be able to do ‘only’ creative, (physically/mentally!) non-repetitive work and/or where and how jobs for that could be craeted or would we all be doomed to be some (un/underpaid) Leisure Class, I suddenly realised:
The future of work depends very much on your myopia of what all ‘workers’ would want.
As about 60%+ of ‘workers’ at all levels of intelligence at/of work including pure mental, knowledge workers, would prefer simple 9-to-5 type jobs, with the predictability and security it brings (requirement…). Established per hard science. Only 40% or less actually wants the wild, the change, the uncertainty-is-beautiful.
So, will 60%+ not be able to make the transition or only not want to and maybe be able to after sufficient pressure is applied ..?
Which brings me to the find I did. Myers-Briggs.
Yes, yes, it indeed is discredited by some, to some extent. But it’s still the most recognised, most recognisable and easily applicable method to establish one’s own interests [with inclusion of the caveats and recognition of its time dependency and outcome variability]. I mean,
Is easily assessed (though I’d recommend the more extended questionnaire versions, e.g., from some books). And personally attempted-falsified.
Some take it to the limit. Resulting in:
but really I’d say that’s pushing it, and why?
To which above type ‘scores’ there’s also career advice, also in books and on-line. Like:
Note the remarks at the bottom. Variants apply, like this one which is skewed to sales/marketing business, I think..
But nevertheless, the overall trend is clear: When you’re an I, and/or S type in particular, and maybe too much of the T and J into the mix, you may find it harder and harder to adapt to the on-going exponential (?) fuzzification of work. If you’re in any of the ‘typical’ trades, you may either become the Expert of Experts, retreating into an ever smaller corner until retirement, if you can hold out that long, or bring your characteristics to other trades (remember, yin and yang both have an element of the other within them – this applies here as well), or retrain yourself psychologically to better fit the trades that may be left until ASI overtakes us. [As in this post]
If you can …
I’ll leave you with:
[For no reason – or, how many trades have come and gone in this environ… Sevilla]
Tip: Morozov’s Click Here
Ah, maybe I’m the one not having paid attention, but I see so little response (which would be: digesting and repeat) of the ideas of the great Morozov in his To Save Everything, Click Here, as e.g., here (to be clicked).
Which is quite a contrast with his content, having a major discussion area in itself, about every other paragraph throughout. Yes, that makes it just a little bit harder to retain the main plot (?) line and the ‘details’ as well; it seems a bit like the asymmetry in information security where the defence will have to fight (? debate, rather) on all sides when attackers (the ones with the blindingly large blinds/blinkers on, headless chickens) can move their individual spearhead attacks forward anywhere – but in this Morozov case, one can count on the defense having the much more and more importantly, much better, arguments on its side. One should not count arguments, but weigh them (Cicero).
“Huh, no content of the book here …” Indeed not. Get it and read! I’m off now to finish reading, leaving you with:
[Ah, the one little part where The Hague is somewhat like a big Milanish / Parisian city; unedited hence the off light conditions]
Positive: Singular Golden Age
In the Utopian versus Dystopian post-Singularity discussion, two additions.
One; some folks said that once humanity would figure out how the world turns, one/some deity/deities would immediately replace the world with an infinite more complex one. Some claim this has happened already. [Dunno how many times, can’t tell.]
Would it be possible that this happened during the Age of Aquarius (yes), with its Egyptian sphinx riddles, and/or the phase shifts of the Greek Golden Age (et al.) mythology, as here ..?
Two; Clark’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. How far on this path are we, with our Singularity thinking ..? And, there’s talk about talking to gods here.
Three (for logic); can we mix the two ..? What are the third-dimensional discussion directions ..?
It seems to become ever more a mer à boire …
Hence:
[Feels relevant; London 2007 – shiny, no crisis in sight]
Hegel’s Chaos
… Just as I posted on Hegel’s future or not (recently here and there; errr…), it struck me: Did the He man know about Newton’s Second ..?
Because, if everything in the universe devolves to Chaos (assuming it’s closed or at least confined), and He man thinks the universe in the end will realize/become ultimate Reason, then the one equals the other, or what ..?
So much for the Singularity (…?). And:
[Yes Rietveld-Schröderian suppliers ring here, Utrecht (analog)]
Middle secretaries
Two points to make:
* Middle management will be.
* Secretaries should be.
The discussion regarding middle managers being superfluous or not had a slight uptick the past couple of months. With the latter voice having been a bit too quiet. Yes, middle management is under threat. It has always been; only the (history-)ignorant will have missed that. And Yes, all the Disruption things and similar empty barrel half-baked air by a lot of folks who have hands-on experience in the slim to none bin with (real) management altogether let alone this kind, have predicted over and over again that the disruption by Server-with-algorithm-app-that-schedules-day-laborers will make middle management redundant, as the believed task was only that.
Quod non. And as if just an algorithm will capture the full complexity (and incoherence, inconsistency, internally and externally contradictory ..!) of the requirements and work of the middle manager.
OK, we’re not discussing the drone administrative clerk that has Manager on his card (huh?) and sits in an office passing top-down orders and bottom-up reports back and forth. We’re talking the real, 24/7 problem firefighter here. The coordinator of chaos. The translator of lofty (other would say, ‘airhead’) ‘governance’ (quod non) mumbo jumbo into actual work structure and tasks, and translatereporting back. That survives and in doing so, shows great performance. The other ones, will be weeded out anyway, every time there’s an economic cycle downturn. [If the right ones would be kept, and the wrong ones ‘given growth opportunities elsewhere’. Seldomly the case; offing is by the fte numbers, and the wrong ones have being glued to their seats as their core competence, through sucking up or otherwise.]
So, the middle manager stays for a long time to come as (s)he does the kind of non-predictable work that will remain longest. If start-ups don’t have them, see them grow: They will.
Secretaries deserve a come-back. In similar vein as above, the vast majority of managers office clerks (from the shop floor (even if of knowledge workers…) all the way to near the top) these days have to do their own typing, scheduling, and setting up socializing things. Whereas before, economies of scale were many, and there were additional benefits because the good (sic, again) secretaries would e.g., know the best, unrenown restaurants all around and could get you a table even when they would be fully booked, and they would manage (massage away) some internal friction as well, often very discreetly and efficiently. Now, vastly more expensive (by hourly rate, productivity (think switching costs in the managers minds …, and utilisation), cost of ineffectiveness (sic again) and opportunity costs re their actual objectives (if these would be achieved; good/bad manager discussion again)) managers must manage their way around. An impoverished world it is indeed.
To bring back some joy:
[Some colour, but it’s down there… Zuid-As]
