Here’s a question. How do you find a parking space for someone visiting your organisation? Is it as challenging as securing a visa for a sightseeing tour of North Korea, for you and your friends from the photography club? Alternatively, do you just check for an available space and book it? Simples! Recently I shared […]
Churchill Fellowship Post 2: Many Thanks, Panic Buttons and Dunning Kruger
Fulfilling the promise I made in my initial blog post (link here), I’m starting to share some learning from my Churchill Travelling Fellowship. This post summarises the whirlwind since the 2018 Fellowships were formally announced on the 9th March and today, the 25th. It’s been as interesting and exciting as people promised. Thanks… and Don’t […]
Beating the Inspectors Number 7*. Satisfaction of Search Bias
My old friend Martyn tells a lovely story about one of the most important jobs he’s done during a lifetime of working on building sites – distracting the Site Agent. Basically this exploits one of Martyn’s superpowers, the ability to talk to anyone, for quite a long time if needed. This superpower comes into play […]
Never ask the Internet to name something. The ‘wisdom of crowds’ isn’t always plain sailing.
Developing the nautical theme, I’m guessing you’ll be familiar with the Boaty McBoatface saga? The 2016 online poll to name the UK Government’s £200 million Arctic Research Ship? It actually ended up being called Royal Research Ship Sir David Attenborough (sigh…), despite Boaty McBoatface clearly winning the poll with over 124,000 votes! It’s explained in […]
Participatory Budgeting. Think carefully about ‘Going Brazilian’ and Silver Bullet Syndrome
Participatory budgeting is all the rage at the moment, but is the stampede for ‘Wales to be more like Brazil’ realistic? Participatory budgeting is big in Brazil by the way, and you can read about it here. The re-branding of Barry Island as ‘Barrybados’ was genius, but Cardiff-Copacabana-Bay might be a bit of a stretch. I do […]
Is common sense more useful than the rule book when you are making decisions
This is the second of three post (First one here) about some work using SenseMaker to trying and get a better understanding of attitudes towards risk. In particular how ‘well manged risk’ works in relation to innovation and major changes. Text from the original post is below, with the hopefully familiar ‘What’s the PONT?’ added at the […]
Safe to Fail Pilots, Well Managed Risk, Context is Everything and a bit of SenseMaker
I don’t usually mix work and what I write here (well not in any sort of way that is too obvious). For the next three posts I’m crossing the line. These posts are all about some work using SenseMaker to get into the area of attitudes towards risk. In particular how ‘well manged risk’ works […]
