Category: Uncategorized

Never been a fan of management metrics – it’s all too easy for lazy managers to measure what is easy to count, and not deal with what really matters. Even Einstein said “not all that counts can be counted”. However this Forbes piece by James Slavet nails five valuable “metrics” worth assessing subjectively – starting with “Flow”.

[M]ost managers only measure outputs, not inputs, which is like telling a Little League team to score more runs, rather than actually explaining how to swing a bat and make contact with the ball.

BTW I couldn’t believe that the “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” adage could have originated with Peter Drucker, at least not outside some particular context. Good to see I’m not alone in seeing that message as alien to Drucker’s style. I certainly couldn’t find it as an attributable quote – sounds more like an adage created to justify Taylorism to me.

Good to see the actual quote (in a comment response):

“What you measure is what you get.”

As Ed says, “that is very different from the attributed quote. In fact, it is right on target. If you measure billable hours, you will get more billable hours”. You treat people like children / monkeys, you get children / monkeys. (I recall my Master’s thesis concluding something about the need for multiple objective and subjective measures in order not to skew behaviour towards narrow measures.)

Also like this from another actual Drucker quote:

Reports and procedures should be
the tool of the man who fills them out.

A particular bug-bear of mine is reports like time-sheet and expense report systems with UI’s that are formatted the way the report user wants to see things, not the way that is useful to the reporter – eg allocation to cost-centres or breakdown-codes before recording as line-items is a common fault designed to make form-filling twice the chore it needs to be. Reports should always be – this is what I did from my perspective as I report it – with the tools automating the re-presentation of the same information in whatever format management requires.

I only “rediscovered” Drucker relatively recently, since his death in 2006, and largely because I was taken by his debt to Mary Parker-Follett.

More good advice from Peter Drucker (via HBR and David Gurteen again). Facts can always be made to fit, so better to understand subjective differences of opinion.

Lots of examples in Sacks, and in Ramchandran and in Damasio if I recall. (Ram is mentioned in the story in fact.)

Amazing that so many scientists are reported as denying Darwinian evolution. Steve Jones in The Telegraph.

The growing tide of fact‑denial is a statement of failure, not by students but by their teachers, up to and including those at university level. We do our best, I think, but faced with schools or faith groups that get their ignorance in first, we seem to be fighting a losing battle.

Well, I’d say they need to start by teaching quality, rather than claiming to be “right”. Science is always incomplete and contingent, but there are places where science has no value (first-cause) or limited value (psychology, for short, or any metaphysical philosophy of science).

Even theist Francis Collins says:

Evolution is as solid a theory as gravity.

Impressive case. “Minding Your Mitochondria” – Large quantities, but minimal grain or pulse-based carbohydrate.

Thanks to Dave Gurteen for reposting Robert Paterson’s blog.

Sarah Lund’s sweater.

Loving the second series as much as the first. Even though the relentless plot twists and red-herrings are infuriatingly, yet somehow predictably unpredictable, with motives and suspects ten-a-penny, a la Morse, it is still gripping stuff. Forget the knitting patterns, the question is – is it always necessary to cross the bridge to Malmo to avoid the rain in Copenhagen ? This week’s cliff-hanger – is her sidekick already dead ? Probably.

It’s not the plot, it’s the character(s) – though the political players are less believable this time around. Brix is the hero, and no, her sidekick did survive for another week.

A letter from Robert Oppenheimer recommending Richard Feynman for work at UCAL Berkeley posted by “Letters of Note“. (Via Jorn Barger)

“He is a second Dirac, only this time he’s human.”

Has to be the pick of the quotes (used in the blog post title in fact). Graham Farmelo’s biography of Paul Dirac is entitled “The Strangest Man”

PS Jorn Barger (Robot Wisdom) is the granddaddy of blogging – an inspiration of mine not just in blogging, but in taking a “timeline” view of complex (ie evolving) subjects – he’s really got his act together using Google+ as his blog. Must look into that; so far my Google+ account is lying dormant.

Listening now to Laurie Taylor’s Thinking Allowed … quoting Emily Dickinson’s “Brain is Wider than the Sky”.

Not an original idea, but Bryan Appleyard uses it as the title of his latest work. A veritable meme.

Actually drawn to this edition of TA by Laurie’s introduction:

“Bryan Appleyard and John Gray on why simple solutions don’t work in a complex world.”

Reductionism of mind to brain, the mental to matter. The hype of the “Transhumanist” “H+” “Singularity” … Aaaaggghh my entire agenda in a single edition of TA. We don’t want to believe mind-brain “explanations” – I agree with Laurie. (Previous post …) Incoherent post, but for now this is the loop of thought I’m in …

https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3931 No-one wants to believe
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3430 Hofstadterian Algorithmic Loops
http://vimeo.com/7441291 Schmidhuber’s Humour as Compression Algorithm
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3440 Compression Loop
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3392 Hofstadter’s Tabletop
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=279 Rationalisation as Compression
Mandelbrot on Roughness at TED2010
http://www.cognitionresearch.org/extras/bio.htm Computing as Compression
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=278 Cornflowers – Too Blue
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=794 Edelman – Wider than the Sky
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=806 Sacks & Emily D

All these posts are inter-linked to each other, but following that link collection in order will give you the flavour. Now where’s that windmill we’re tilting at ? What was the name of the place again ?

It’s all Welsh to me. Acknowledgement to Gerry Wolff for the image.

Excellent short interview by Claudia Hammond (BBC-R4 All in the Mind) with economics-psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

(Also in the same edition another twist on the many studies of real-life abnormal brain lesions contributing to the understanding of normal brain-mind functions. A pair of conjoined-twins with separate-but-connected brains – 4-half-brains having more possibilities than the usual two. Interesting to consider the “case-study” distinct from the two human individuals. Personally, I don’t find the brain-mind findings in the least mysterious, there is so much reinforcement of common sense in published cases – it’s almost as if

we don’t want to believe explanations of consciousness and identity

See previous blog post on Claudia Hammond.)

[Post Note : Forgot also to attach this link to Kahneman’s appearance with Kirsty on Desert Island Discs. Learn a bit about the man.]

[And: a growing number of Daniel Kahneman references in the blog.]