Category Archives: Narrative Use

Narrative Use

One ounce of emotion beats a ton of scientific evidence. It’s all about “the babies….”

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Last week I attended an event organised by The Alliance for Useful Evidence and Wales Public Services 2025 (#a4ue on Twitter). The aim was to work out how you get policies developed and practices delivered that are better informed by evidence. The problem seems to be that millions of pounds (of taxpayers money) is spent on things for which there is limited evidence of success.

There were lots of views about how you collect better evidence and a bit of ‘hand wringing’. Why is it that evidence doesn’t get used properly? To paraphrase; “We produce compelling, factually accurate evidence yet the politicians ignore it and make decisions based on political values, not the evidence we put in front of them……”.

This situation could apply almost anywhere. Head down to your Local Council Planning Committee and you probably won’t have to wait too long before you see the Committee Members overrule some technically correct, fully evidenced advice from the Planning Officer. A cruel but compelling spectator sport.

In their defence I’d say its not just politicians that are ‘guilty’ of this, and in fact, it’s more to do with how you communicate the evidence. Here’s a personal experience.

Lets clean up the Gas Works. About 20 years ago I was working in environmental protection when a proposal to clean up a former heavy industry site landed on my desk. This was an imaginative and cost effective proposal that would deal with the huge quantities of toxic waste that had blighted a local community for over a 100 years. In three years time the site would be regenerated, creating space for new clean employment opportunities and a community recreation facility. What could possibly go wrong?

The Public Meeting. Imagine this, a village hall packed with about 100 local citizens and a bunch of experts sat on the stage. The experts had absolutely tons of carefully researched scientific evidence about why this proposal was a good thing:

  • Long term risks to health from the site would be removed;
  • Risks during cleanup would be minimal and well managed;
  • Economic benefits during the clean-up would be significant (jobs);
  • Long term job opportunities were predicated;
  • River water and ground water quality would improve significantly;
  • The Environment and biodiversity in the valley would be improved; and
  • Sustainability was constantly mentioned.

This was a very logical, rational, well balanced and fully evidenced argument to proceed with the scheme. As a trained scientist I was completely convinced.

The Counter Argument. A lady stood up at the back of the room and yelled “what about the babies……?”. She then proceeded to describe in graphic detail a case of birth abnormalities that had occurred close to a waste management facility in a nearby community. That situation was completely different to what we were talking about, but that didn’t matter. The damage had been done. The carefully prepared evidence had been rendered useless by 30 seconds of pure emotion. That’s where I learnt the phrase, “one ounce of emotion beats a ton of scientific evidence”.

As I recall, the clean up of the site was delayed for several years (of continued pollution) while an agreeable compromise was reached.

Why don’t we accept what experts say? In this seminar I heard Dave Snowden talk about how you need to be prepared to accept new ideas. Patterns of recognition need to be developed beforehand so that you can accept the new idea. If we don’t recognise what is being offered we are more likely to reject it straight off. I’ll dig out my notes from the session and put together a more substantial post.

For me the learning from “what about the babies…”, has great relevance to the ‘useful evidence’ debate. It’s all about choice. Whether you are a local citizen, policy maker, delivering a service or a politician you have the choice of ignoring or using evidence. Understanding that people will make choices about what they absorb, no matter how scientifically accurate, is worth thinking about if you are trying to get people to use your ‘really useful evidence’.

So, whats the PONT?

  1. People can choose what evidence they accept. Scientific ‘fact’ does not automatically equal acceptance.
  2. How evidence is presented is important if you want people to understand and accept it. Recognition of something familiar is important.
  3. Emotion will beat evidence and facts, just remember “the babies……”

Picture Source: Just a thought. The evidence bag in the picture says ‘to be opened by authorised personnel only’. I wonder how much other evidence is given this ‘experts only’ status!

Linked posts: How Florence Nightingale used infographics to convince Civil Servants and Politicians that they needed to improve sanitary conditions to reduce deaths during the Crimean War. http://whatsthepont.com/2013/01/27/florence-nightingale-the-mother-of-infographics-btw-she-was-also-a-nurse/

Jargon. A tool of exclusion, efficient technical language or just the ‘cheeping of birds’?

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20130426-205100.jpgMy last post about meetings led to a bit of a discussion about jargon. It’s something that’s despised by many people, but has probably been used by most of us on occasions . So I’m being particularly carefull to avoid using it in this post.

It’s worth having a think about why jargon exists and why we use it.

Basically it’s just a very specific form of language used by people to communicate and (hopefully) help others understand what they are saying.

The origins of the term jargon seems to have come from the Old French word ‘gargun’ which describes the ‘cheeping of birds’. In the 14th century it was used to describe unintelligible or confused speech. Some of the modern definitions of jargon you’ll find include:

  • confused unintelligible language;
  • technical terminology or characteristic language of a special activity or group; and
  • obscure and often pretentious language marked by the unnecessary use of too many, long, vague and uncommon words.

For me, there seems to be two distinctly different reasons for using jargon, one acceptable (with conditions) the other completely unacceptable:

Technical. In this case you have a specific highly technical area where jargon helps communicate more clearly, efficiently and effectively (within the technical community).
Posturing. Here people choose to use language that prevents others understanding what they are saying. The word ‘evasive’ is used a lot in connection with this type of jargon.

What do you do about jargon?

Posturing Jargon. In the case of posturing this is easy (in theory). Just say, “I haven’t got a clue what you are talking about. Please could you explain that without the jargon.” Obviously, this isn’t as easy to do as it sounds, but it’s worth thinking about. Remember that the use of jargon will be an (unconscious or deliberate) act to exclude you from a conversation or prevent you understanding what is being said. You may have encountered this sort of person……..

Technical Jargon. For technical jargon it’s much less clear-cut. This might be a highly specialised area and the jargon actually helps with communication. I remember as an undergraduate I used a specialised scientific dictionary as part of classes. Perfectly reasonable as most of the words didn’t need to be used in general conversation, but it helped greatly in the laboratory. To people outside of that community it was just jargon – ‘cheeping birds’. You need to be on your guard to avoid excluding people from the conversation if they don’t understand the specialised words. There are useful approaches like having a ‘jargon buster’ (explanations of the jargon) available, but the objective should surely be to minimise the jargon in the first place, or keep it where it belongs, in the specialist community.

Management Speak. The place where this gets messy is the crossover between technical and posturing. What if you have someone posturing using technical jargon terms? Dangerous territory. If I was being sceptical I could say that this is the territory of management speak. This Guardian article highlights some of the worst examples like, ‘drill down’ (look in detail) and ‘sunset’ (close down the project). I’m sure you could find plenty of jargon and management speak from your own experience, and use it in that the old favourite ‘Buzzword Bingo‘.

One final thought whilst I was thinking about this post I stumbled upon a book by Tony White called NHS Jargon Explained. Initially I thought it was a joke. It’s not, you can buy it on Amazon. I’ve no doubt it’s necessary, but I do wonder if we’ve over complicated things to the point where people have written books to explain what public services are talking about. Not just for people who work in the service but also, “campaigners, patient interest groups, researchers and journalists, and patients and their relatives may also find it useful and enlightening!” No further comment…….

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Jargon has its place in specialised technical communities where it helps communication and understanding.
  2. Once you take that language outside of the community you have to explain clearly what you mean, or risk excluding people.
  3. People using jargon to posture, evade, confuse or exclude people should not be tolerated. Ask the question, “I don’t understand, what do you mean?”

Just checking, how jargon free is this post? Anyone know of a jargon checker I could use?

Photo Source. Birds on a wire. http://johnsmyth.ie/blog/2011/11/21/the-chattering-classes/

Linked Posts: Buzzword Bingo http://whatsthepont.com/2012/11/16/best-practice-glossary-or-buzzword-bingo/

Meetings Sabotage http://whatsthepont.com/2011/10/30/meetings-sabotage-additional-field-examples/

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NHS Jargon Buster

Vardre RFC, Venice of the Swansea Valley? Re-visiting old rugby grounds

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For over quarter of a century I spent Saturdays playing rugby on many of the pitches across South Wales (all generally in the lower divisions). Unfortunately I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the places I was visiting. Before the match I was usually too anxious and afterwards, well it was usually dark, I was exhausted and occasionally ‘over refreshed’.
Recently I’ve had the joy of accompanying my middle son to rugby games with Pencoed RFC Youth (not a club I ever played for….. it’s a long story).
This has allowed me to see things differently and appreciate some of the interesting quirks and oddities of South Wales Rugby Clubs.
This week was a trip to Vardre RFC, which can be found at Clydach in the Swansea Valley.

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Lovely Clydach. This is Vardre RFC, at the confluence of the Lower Clydach and Tawe Rivers. The Club could well be a prototype for the Tardis. You enter a small door off Clydach High Street, pass through the modest bar and then get swallowed up by an enormous function room; not what I was expecting. There are also extensive changing rooms underneath the function room, but nowhere near the pitch.
Listen carefully if you ask anyone in the club for directions to the pitch. Last time I heard anything so complicated, with as many bridges, canals and water, I was in Venice at the Rialto Bridge.

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Here’s the first of the bridges. A lovely centuries old cast iron affair over the Clydach to Swansea Canal. You might have noticed the enormous chimney in the background. That’s ‘The Mond‘. The largest Nickel refining plant in Europe, which has a long association with the area. Some local ‘characters’ were sat at the right hand end of the bridge, thoughtfully placing their huge quantity of empty beer cans in a recycling sack.

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Bridge number two. Crossing the River Tawe this time. The bridge looks quaint on a sunny day, but I really wouldn’t fancy it at night when the river is in flood. It’s also single file, so if the rugby teams are coming the opposite direction you’ve got a long wait. Don’t look down either. Some of the wooden planks have seen better days.

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Waters-Meet. Excuse the self-indulgence here. This is the point where the waters of the River Tawe, Lower Clydach and the overflow from the Canal meet. As a former student of water quality this is a text-book situation. Where is the mixing zone? Where do you collect representative water quality samples? Why are there so many foreign beer cans on the river bank?

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Bus Route? This perplexed me. When I eventually found the rugby pitch I encountered a bus shelter. Hugely vandalised, but still a very modern bus shelter with electronics and one of those screens for real-time updates. We don’t even have those in the village where I live and this was in the middle of a field! I can only speculate that it was some creative ‘re-purposing’ as a team dugout by the Vardre RFC, Pitches (sub-committee). Alternatively a cover up for some late night, over enthusiastic e-Bay bidding.

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Grandstand View. Continuing the ‘re-purposing’ theme I tried out the grandstand, a single story, lean-too tin-shed affair. In keeping with many other South Wales rugby grounds I think the building materials may have been ‘borrowed’ from the local industrial facility. No picture unfortunately, but you do get a good view of the pitch, and the second ‘re-purposed’ bus shelter (also vandalised).

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Rugby Action Shot No1. Our number 7 making a break, just before he got isolated in the tackle and was penalised for not releasing the ball.

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Rugby Action Shot No 2. Our number 7 demonstrating the classic line-out overthrow (aka failing to catch the ball). We did actually win the game though.

So, what’s the PONT?
1. Should Vardre RFC be incorporating a Gondola alongside the Magpies on the club badge given that they are the Venice of the Swansea Valley?
2. Where did Vardre RFC Pitches (sub committee) get those bus shelters from?
3. Will the Pencoed No7 be selected for the League match against Mumbles RFC next weekend? (btw, No 7 is my son. He is cool with this).

My epic communication fail…… The 4 Foot Post Story

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This week has been about failures in communication.  I’ve ended up with 16 feet of timber for fence posts, excellent. Unfortunately it wasn’t in the shape of the two 8 foot lengths I needed. I got four 4 foot lengths. It might as well have been firewood.

I could put this down to a sophisticated act of malicious compliance by my kids, but I’m hoping they aren’t that cruel. I’ve rationalised it as a massive communication failure on my part. This is how the story unfolds.

In the final stages of shed building I’m fencing off an area and needed two extra posts. Fortunately my father in law had two spare 8 foot post that would do the job perfectly. There is a minor hurdle to cross, they are 10 miles away and are just a little bit too long to fit in the car. There is good news however; two of the kids are due at their Grandfathers to help with some chores, bringing the posts home will be no problem…….

I thought I had a very clear conversation with the kids that went along the lines of….”fold the seats in the car flat and slide in the posts, cut enough off the post so that it will fit neatly inside the car, don’t forget to take the saw, not my best one, take a sheet to cover the car seats, drive safely, avoid the busy motorway, blah blah blah”. I was going on a bit.

Obviously that’s not what they heard. Things got worse as only one of them actually went on the visit to Granddad. When he returned he had the posts, in neat 4 foot lenghts that fitted very easily in the car, without the need to fold down seats.

Son number two informed me of this fact when I walked in from work (please remind me to ask for the money back from the extra ‘Dignity and Respect’ classes I’ve been sending him to), “Dad, you’ll never guess what that donkeys gone and done?….. He’s only chopped your posts in half! “

It was truly one of those ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry’ moments……my only hope is that for the future we all learn to communicate more clearly AND LISTEN PROPERLY!

The whole sorry affair did remind me of that cartoon of the tree and the swing that gets used in various training sessions about poor communication in IT project management. I used to think that this sort of situation could never happen. Now I’m convinced it probably does. Hopeful the kids can learn the lessons from our little low risk venture and avoid a massive failure in the future. Apparently we do learn quickest from failure…… ahhh…. that makes me (and my 4 foot posts) so much happier.

So what’s the PONT?

  1. I would have been better sticking to the key facts and not over complicating the message with non critical information.
  2. I should have checked back that the message had been received and understood. If not, I needed to try again until it was.
  3. If I ever find out this was a sophisticated act of malicious compliance, I will seek revenge (and it will be hideous).

Picture source: The tree and swing cartoon has been used by lots of people. This article unravels some of the history.  http://blog.thingsdesigner.com/index.php?/archives/354-The-infamous-software-designdevelopment-process-tree-swing-comic.html

More Malicious Compliance, Mastery and lessons from Shed Building……

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Shed building is not my day job; in fact it’s about as far away from ‘driving a desk’, as it’s possible to travel.  These two areas do however have some interesting crossovers where it’s possible (in theory) to transfer some learning. Before I say anything it is probably worth mentioning that my recent activity wasn’t just extending the shed, nothing here is ever as straightforward as it appears. There was a bit of chicken ranching thrown in, messing around with the sewage tank, significant amounts of concrete and lots cutting up logs. Naively I thought this would be an opportunity to test my motivational skills and transfer employee engagement ideas into the world of teenage sons…… like the complete idiot I am.

Malicious Compliance is worse than blank refusal.  I’d always imagined that my teenagers would be thrilled at the prospect of doing some building with me. Learning some of the skills I’d picked up from my father and others, and creating something useful.

Using a bit of motivational ‘pull theory’ I tried the following approach:

  • Me, “kids, fancy having a go at chopping up logs with the chainsaw?”
  • Kids, “No thanks…. we are fighting off zombies with double blade chainsaws on the X-box, woah, awesome, totally realistic!”

I could go on, but you get the drift. My initial ‘offer’ was then followed by a series of increasingly less polite requests until I eventually ‘lost it’ and used coercion (blatant threats) and switched off the house power supply.

So, I got the help I needed. However it was possibly worse than struggling alone. The sullen half hearted shoveling of aggregate into a cement mixer and the limp attempts at hammering nails were pitiful. This was good old malicious compliance at its worst with nothing hidden, nothing taken away. But I know the game!

Some of this was a deliberate attempt to provoke me into criticism which would legitimise the option of storming off in a “Dad is so grumpy and really difficult to work with” rage. So not ‘loosing it’(again) and ‘solid encouragement’ were the order of the day, and it sort of achieved the objective.

Work Lesson Learnt – What excites and motivates me doesn’t necessarily do the same for other people, not everyone loves chainsaws. It never occurred to me until recently that not everyone loves those ‘hands on’ practical team building activities that happen in work. Painting the community hall, might not be something everyone enjoys, even if it is a fantastic thing to do.

People tend to be more committed to something they have chosen to do rather than forced to do, so it’s better to let them choose the activity.  Failing to do this will probably generate malicious compliance which just defeats the point of the exercise.

Age and experience beats youth and enthusiasm. For round two with the kids I did actually find something that interested them.  Driving 8ft posts into the ground for the chicken run with a 16lb sledgehammer. Just the sort of thing a teenage gym monkey dreams about. Whacking a post with a 16lb lump of metal should be nothing for someone used to throwing around ten times that weight in the gym. My ‘pull theory’ was working, full engagement, excellent.

It all went wrong as it turned out, I “won” on the post sinking contest, by a mile, I am champion (of our back garden) on the sledgehammer.

Why did I succeed? Well it is apparently because “Dad’s had about 150 years of practice…..…and my hair was in my eyes”. Not strictly true, I did use a sledge hammer a fair bit in my youth and developed a little bit of expertise.  I might not as be as strong as the gym monkeys but experience it seems does count.

Lessons Learnt – Mastering a skill is important, which usually means putting in the hours. Even something as apparently straightforward as using a sledgehammer requires skill.  A lesson that has parallels in the workplace.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hour rule in his book Outliers which might be the amount of time spent by the people who manually drilled the holes in this rock with a sledgehammer and cold steel chisel. I took this picture of a rock used in drilling competitions at Central Nevada Museum in Tonopah with the hope of inspiring the kids about what their ancestors did as miners. I’m still waiting to see if anything has registered.

Anyway we did finish a few jobs and rounded off one day with a genuine campfire and cooked some burgers. During this I got the most astonishing request:”Dad, can you move the fire closer to the house, I keep losing the WiFi signal on my phone”……..I despair.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Take care in what you pick for motivational activities at team building activities (not everyone loves a chainsaw).
  2. Better still, let people choose what they want to do. This should get better engagement and avoid malicious compliance.
  3. Age and experience (and mastery of your tools) will beat youth and enthusiasm, but I would say that wouldn’t I!

The staff don’t understand, quick draw them a picture or something……..

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You are engaged! http://www.delta7.com

Suspend reality and imagine this strange situation…….

  • Boss: “The staff here are a huge problem. They just don’t get my latest initiative, what’s wrong with them?”
  • Smithers: “Ah yes Sir. The words in your manifesto document are so beautifully crafted, truly inspirational, and it’s printed on the finest paper”
  • Boss: “Well here’s something that might work. I’ve heard that some organisations are drawing pictures….. to dumb things down ……..so the staff get it”
  • Smithers: “errrr…… perhaps you mean graphical representation Sir? A picture is drawn so that the  message can be understood and communicated at many levels, in a high impact way?”
  • Boss: “Yes that’s the sort of thing. Right, I want you to knock up an oil painting or bronze sculpture of my fantastic ideas. Then they will understand and I shall achieve true greatness.  Make it happen Smithers!”

This (obviously) is a bit of a parody of a real life situation I heard about. Those involved represent a kind of staff engagement ‘anti-matter’. They were struggling to justify yet another failed initiative and ended up blaming the staff for their lack of cognitive ability. The failure (in their eyes) was on the part of the ‘dumb’ employees, to understand and implement the clever ideas that were being thrust upon them. The ‘draw a picture’ discussion was actually just a diversion to avoid confronting the real problem, a lack of engagement with staff around the ‘clever new initiative’.

This is a great shame as there are genuine benefits in using diagrams, pictures and graphics to communicate messages, understand ideas and generally make sense of the complexities of organisational life.

A good example the approach I’ve seen is archetype extraction used by Cognitive Edge. This is a process where common understandings will emerge out of discussions, workshops, focus groups or other social interactions. A cartoonist / graphic facilitator will capture these common understandings and present them as a cultural archetype. These archetypes are a physical picture of how a community views things; common behaviours, social conventions, rituals and beliefs, common language, role models, “the way things happen around here”, etc (archetypes).  According to Cognitive Edge; “Archetypes can then be used in various initiatives such as branding, communications or strategy. Archetypes that are extracted from the anecdotes told naturally in a community resonate: they have bite.”  Have a look at their website for more details.

Another good example I’ve seen of using pictures and cartoons is by Delta7. The graphic I have included in this post (you are engaged!) is one of many examples on their website. In a similar vein to the Cognitive Edge archetypes the example I’ve included here does look like a bit of an extreme version of what happens in organisations, or perhaps not? A bit like mentioned above, ‘it has bite’ and could be perceived as a bit uncomfortable for some people. It’s well worth having a look at the Delta7 website gallery for a few more examples of the pictures and archetypes they have created, I bet you will see a situation you recognise.

Coming back to the Boss and Smithers mentioned earlier. I don’t think these are the sort of pictures the Boss had in mind. It’s a case of being careful what you wish for. If all you want are simple graphical illustrations, that’s fine but you do run a huge risk of patronising people and seriously disengaging them by ‘dumbing’ things down. If you go for something that digs a bit deeper that engages people (which I think you should), be prepared to live with the results. The pictures might actually have ’bite’ and tell you how things actually do happen around here, possibly not what you wished for.

So, what’s the PONT?

1. Pictures, graphics and diagrams are a really effective way of communicating complicated messages, ideas or making sense of situations.

2. They are also a good way of engaging staff, particularly if they are involved in creating the image as something that is commonly understood in the organisation, an archetype.

3. Bosses be careful what you wish for here, some egos may not withstand the archetypes created, they can ‘bite’.

Picture source: http://www.delta7.com/you-are-engaged/

http://www.delta7.com/walking-the-talk/  another great one from Delta7.

Field notes to Report……..what we write down is different to what happens

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If you are Welsh and have even the faintest interest in rugby you’ll know exactly what this picture is all about (just in case you don’t have read about why Allain Rolland was right).

This isn’t a post complaining about referees, they are just like the rest of us, struggling to cope with the reality of ‘what we write down is different to what happens’.

What has prompted this post was reading a referees report about an incident that generated three red cards in a single game. I was watching my son play in the game; thankfully he wasn’t involved in the incidents. I’m not questioning the referee’s decision, it’s absolutely right that they clamp down on dangerous behaviour. It does however prove the point that what gets written down in formal reports is frequently different to what happened.

I also understand the need to produce a report, but people do use some strange language in formal incident reports, a sort of slow motion speak:

“I proceeded briskly to the disturbance and attempted to restore order with a few sharp blasts of my whistle”.

Really? To me looked like you ran over to the fight, flapping your arms around and shouted “Oi!….. Boys leave it out”.

The next bit was quite unintentionally hilarious, “The player I know now to be Rambo Llewellyn landed five punches on the head of his opposite number”. Really? Everyone knows this cannot be the case:

  1. Rambo ‘Psycho’ Llewellyn is a lovely boy. Ask his Mam (also watching);
  2. Rambo is incapable of firing off that many punches in a short space of time; and
  3. Had he done so, he would have punched himself in the face, at least twice.

In a more serious vein, a while back I heard Professor Harry Daniels from Bath University speak about learning as a socio-cultural process . He used an example from multi-agency working in health and social care about what happens in the field is different to what is written down in files back at the office.

The gist of what he said was that when the front line practitioners were faced with rapid fire situations they frequently did things to achieve a positive result or solve the problem, not unusual. On occasions this positive action was novel or innovative, and outside of the organisations rules framework policies and procedures, again not unusual. However, when the practitioner got back to the office, and they wrote their notes, they did it in a way that reflected the rules framework and not what actually happened. Not whole scale altering the facts, but forcing information into the organisations framework and systems. This was something that was recognised through the organisation. The practitioners knew this was happening, so did their managers and just about everyone up the chain of command. It’s just the way things worked.

This example struck a chord with me. It’s exactly what I’ve done myself and seen plenty of other people do. You encounter a problem in the field, fix it, then you write-up notes to reflect what the organisational system requires, rather than what actually happens. There are some significant issues here like the loss of learning and transfer of knowledge from developing innovative and novel solutions in the field. If these solutions don’t find their way into the notes, how on earth do they get shared? Perhaps through people informally meeting and talking to each other, social learning, but that’s the subject of another post.

So what’s the PONT?

  1. Report writing is selective and can also be influenced by the requirement to fit in with the organisation’s processes and systems.
  2. The loss of learning and knowledge can be significant if alternative methods of transfer are lacking.
  3. The gap between ‘field and report’ can be significant in formal reporting. If Rambo Llewellyn was that good, he wouldn’t be playing rugby for us, he’d be in the Olympic boxing team.

Look out for weak signals….it’s not always ‘the expected’ that nails you.

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I’m just out of my decontamination shower after removing layers of ancient paint from an old sea chest. The chest is lined with an 1878 edition of The London reader of literature, science, art and general information, so there is a fair chance that the paint has a few toxic components, particularly the black base layer. I’m not daft (thanks to all that mandatory Health and Safety training) and know that such a job requires full PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). Full equipped with my mask, goggles, gloves and overalls I’ve been busy sanding the chest this afternoon but failed to pick up on a weak signal that was my eventual downfall and brought the job to a premature end.

Due to my reduced vision with the goggles I failed to spot the tin of paint sitting on top of the cupboard which was dislodged by the electric extension cable, fell off the edge and straight onto me. Should have had a hard hat as well! I was so busy focussing on the microscopic airborne toxic dust particles that I missed the gallon tin of paint coming my way. Not such a weak signal in the end.

This event reminded me of another dusty story I was told while I was in hospital with pneumonia last summer. One gentleman had worked in an iron foundry during the 1960/70’s and told me about how they would keep the place cool during the summer heat (not that common in South Wales). This involved removing the asbestos roof sheets to let in a breeze. Yes I did say asbestos; they also had drinking water supplied via lead plumbing. This place had just about every health and safety risk going. Workers had very little in the way of PPE; heat-resistant clothing was about the limit.  There were no dust extraction helmets or positive pressure masks, just eight hours a day of breathing what ever was in the foundry atmosphere. Back to the summer ventilation. Once the roof sheets had been removed, the sunlight would stream in and clearly show up just how thick with dust particles the air was inside the foundry building. The attached picture is far better than the reality he described.

I was amazed when he told me what the workers did next. When crossing the foundry floor, they would avoid the sunlit patch (full of dust particles) and walk around it. The patterns of where they walked would also change as the sun changed position during the day. The different routes workers took were all clearly visible via the footprints in the significant quantities of dust and other debris on the floor. The dust was everywhere in the foundry, with not so weak signals like a 20mm thick layer of it on every solid surface. Incredible really that it wasn’t until it became obvious that it was airborne as well, that people did anything about it, even if that was actually a futile act of walking around the sunlit patch.

This was ultimately 19th Century technology (being used in the late 20th Century) where the obvious risks were from physical injuries such as burns or crushing from heavy machinery. The effects of the dust particles on the workers was a not so weak signal that either hadn’t been detected or was just being conveniently ignored.  Interesting how things reverse themselves and this afternoon my over concentration on the airborne dust led to me to missing the obvious physical risk.

For a much better explanation of weak signal detection and why it’s important, have look at this post from Dave Snowden and this guest post from Steve Holt on the Cognitive Edge site.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. In planning for the expected you can often miss or ignore the weak signals.
  2. You need to have wide awareness if you want to detect weak signals.
  3. Its one thing to spot weak signals, but another thing to act upon them (like the foundry dust).

The Scorpion and the Fox

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This is a post I’ve wanted to do for a while. It’s all about trust and links to the one I did about low trust costs you money. In my day-to-day dealings I really want to follow the
advice from people like Henry L. Stimson “the only way to make a man trustworthy is to  trust him”. Unfortunately ideology runs into the harsh realities of life and you end up making a few judgment calls about when and how much to trust some people. A bit like the quandary my son faced when he was asked for money by a stranger at the railway station.

The Scorpion and the Fox is a fable that is used to illustrate that the behavior of some animals is so irrepressible that they will act in a certain way, no matter what the
consequences, death included. There’s plenty of material on the web where it is used to illustrate why some people cannot be trusted.

It’s origins seem to go back as the 3rd century and involve a menagerie of scorpions, frogs, toads, turtles, snakes and people. I like the scorpion and the fox version, partly because I have difficulties with speaking frogs (it’s a Kermit thing), but mainly for the You Tube video I want to link to at the end.

The story goes along the following lines:

  • A fox and a scorpion both need to cross a river.
  • The scorpion asks the fox for a ride on its back as it cannot swim.
  • The fox refuses saying “no you’ll sting me”.
  • The scorpion replies that it wouldn’t, as it would damage the both of them.
  • The fox agrees and allows the scorpion to ride on it’s back.
  • Half way across the river the scorpion stings the fox.
  • As the poison takes effect on the fox and it starts to sink it asks the scorpion, “Why?”
  • “Why did you sting me, now we are both going to die?”
  • The scorpion replies, “I couldn’t help myself, it’s in my nature”.

Without compromising my desire to try to trust people, I think there is something in
this about managing trust situations to reflect the nature of the ‘animal’ and the environment.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. If you go for the ‘trust everyone to do the right thing’ approach accept that you will feel some pain from time to time.
  2. To minimise the pain, it’s worth managing your exposure to reflect the risk from the person and the environment.
  3. On some occasions this might be a very low-level of exposure you can tolerate. In some situations (scorpions & swollen rivers) this might unfortunately mean saying no.

Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu44zAcqnXg

Ritual Dissent – getting better proposals and dealing with saboteurs

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Ritual Dissent is one of my favourite facilitation techniques. It gets good results quickly and is great for dealing with the saboteurs (see spotting field sabotage post). I was taught it by Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge who also provides a method statement.

It’s a very structured approach that minimises the opportunities for the saboteurs to do bad things. Essentially you develop a proposal, idea or whatever and then have it subjected to ‘ritual dissent’ by another group. The process generates really robust proposals and ideas that will live in the real world. I find it’s a great improvement on the more nebulous ideas you often get through the round the table, consensus developing approaches.

The ‘ritual dissent’ bit really is ritualised and a bit of a trial. Once the person presenting the proposal to the second group has finished speaking, they physically turn their back on the group and just actively listen.

This does three things that I’ve seen:

  1. It focuses the dissent on the idea itself and not the person presenting……. ‘what is wrong with this idea’………..not a snipe at the presenter.
  2. It removes any body language from the discussion. A potentially powerful tool for both sides.
  3. It makes the person with their back turned listen. It’s not been called an ‘forced listening technique‘ for nothing.

Once the person has ‘listened’, they return to their group and improve the proposal based upon what they have heard.  You can repeat the ritual dissent cycle a couple of times, and even throw in an ‘assent’ phase where the group can only suggest helpful improvements.

One of my best experiences using Ritual Dissent was facilitating the development of a medium term plan with a Strategic Leadership Team. After sitting with their back turned on their colleagues, listening, the Director calmly announced; “that’s the first time I’ve actually listened in years ……if I had been receiving that face to face I would have been eyeballing you lot…..  In fact I wouldn’t have kept my mouth shut”. If you ask me, that outcome had to be a good  thing.

So what does it mean for the saboteurs, well they hate it.  A tight structure with clear tasks reduces the opportunity for mischief.  When it comes to the dissent part, it’s surprising how quiet they can be, even in a group. They don’t like the sunlight very much. Just as importantly to produces robustly tested proposals and ideas that will stand up to scrutiny in the real world.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Ritual Dissent is a great facilitation method. It gets robust results quickly and makes people actively listen.
  2. Structure and tasks are a good way of involving everyone and minimising the opportunities for saboteurs
  3. If you intend to use the technique, make sure you download the method statement, it really helped me.
An extreme reponse to ritual dissent

An extreme response to ritual dissent

Having your back turned really forces you to listen, and not eyeball the dissenters, unless you pull a stunt like this. Nice one!

Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joe469/3708318542/