I've been in Belgium and Luxembourg for the last two days delivering two half day seminars for the EU. All journeys by train which allowed me to catch up a lot of work, although I will confess that on the journey from Brussels to Luxembourg I dozed and watched the unfolding scenery remembering past trips to the Grand Duchy. Many moons ago when I was setting up a logistics software business one of our important early clients was NAMSA, the supply agency of NATO. We handled stock forecasting and inventory management for weapons systems; an interesting bit of Operational Research there, we had to create a whole new category of Lumpy Lumpy to handle some of their slow moving parts. There is a whole story about the trip there to close that contract which involves myself and team ending up perfectly parked on the hard shoulder of the M25 approaching the Guildford exit at around 0200 in the morning; sounds ordinary until I tell you that we were upside down and the facing the oncoming traffic, but (thank god) not on fire and with everyone alive. That's a story for another day however (the roof rails saved us).
What I want to talk about today (and tomorrow). Is my concern, nay passion for governments of whatever ilk to adopt complexity theory and new research/reporting approaches such as our work on impact based measurement, citizen consultation and policy formation.
There is a very simple reason for this which is in part ideological. I think we face a real set of choices in the world at the moment, between carrying on within the current paradigm and radical change. The consequence of not changing will be an increasing inability to provide the basic public services on which any civilised society depends for its existence. For me that is free at the point of entry, access to health services and education for all, together with a safety net of basic housing and income (especially where children are involved). I am less doctrinaire about what political system delivers that, and many of the polarities of my student radical days are no longer with us or even appropriate. I am also realistic enough to know that we will never fully achieve that goal. I am also old enough to know that doctrinaire and/or utopian political movements will not achieve anything approaching that result. But its equally true that if we don't do something then we will fall into the pit that the acolytes of Ayn Rand find so desirable, namely the tyranny of self interest. I know I need to write a blog on that evil woman (so described by Chomsky from the left and Buckley from the right) but I need to cleanse my soul before and after and that will require some time.
The trouble at the moment is that we moving away from that goal rather than towards it. For every step forward we take at least two strides backwards. We face the challenge of meeting increasing legitimate demands for social services with decreasing real time resources. That brings with it questions of rationing, control and measurement which, however well intentioned, conspire to make the problem worse rather than better. For me this all comes back to one fundamental error, namely we are treating all the processes of government as if they were tasks for engineers rather than a complex problem of co-evolution at multiple levels (individuals, the community, the environment etc.). This was compounded for me over the last two days with the discovery that the invidious tentacles of sick stigma are starting their poisonous intrusion into the body politic of the European Union. While there are aspects of government which would benefit from process based control, there is nothing that you can legitimately do with sick stigma that you can't do as well with a much cheaper BPR tool and some common sense. There is no need to create a high priesthood of black belts to enforce the occult insignificance of meaningless numbers.
Ok rant over, but I'm not withdrawing anything! The above mentioned fundamental error needs some elaboration in the context of the difference between an ordered and complex system. In an ordered system, the level of constraint makes agent interaction predictable, The system can be modelled and desirable outcomes defined. So where you are dealing with processing student loan forms, car tax renewal or counting the swabs out of a patient at the end of an operation you can use engineering type approaches. Nothing wrong there, in fact such approaches are to be desired in those contexts. On the other hand where you are dealing with a complex adaptive system such an approach is a living breathing disaster. A complex system is one in which the co-evolutionary process between agents and system (people and government being one manifestation of that) is such that any future state is inherently uncertain, cannot be modelled and defining outcome based targets produced perverted behaviour.
So what is wrong? I'm sure this is incomplete but here are my seven errors:
- You get what you measure, so if you set a target humans will achieve the target at all costs, ignoring context or the unstated goals that the outcome based target was attempting to achieve. If you measure teachers on their learning plans then you will get learning plans, however you may not get learning. Teachers who inspire pupils to learn are not measured on their ability to motivate but rather on a set of indirect indicators whose links to learning are dubious at best. Triage in the accident and emergency department of a hospital is about making medical decisions, not processing everyone within a defined time period.
- Outcome based measurement can make people far too comfortable. it's all to easy to achieve an explicit target, especially if you can turn off an empathy (or at least suppress it). To be able to site back and point to a clear set of targets achieved can all to easily be used an excuse for not really making a difference. I have heard one UK minister argue a year or so ago that we had just seen the best ever year for the health service, only to be destroyed by the anecdotal evidence of medical and patient experience. The scary thing is that she couldn't understand that there was a problem. Just like the social work director who had achieved all her targets but was still the scapegoat for an horrific case of child abuse.
- A mechanical approach is by its nature dehumanising in its effect on people and inhuman in its impact on society. People are not robotic units who should be forced (in other than limited circumstances) to follow rigid processes and comply with idealised rules. When you deal with people you need to flexibility to adapt to the local context. The mental impact is high as well. I remember just after my parents had died within ten days of each in a cancer ward, sitting in a workshop with a group of health administrators who were in tears; they knew that achieving their targets was in some cases killing people or causing unnecessary suffering but they had little choice if they were to keep their jobs. A week or so ago a couple of nurses had broken every rule in the book to tell me what was really happening with my mother as a result of which her sister was able to be there when she died. They did the right thing, and we had built enough of a relationship over the previous two months for them to trust me.
- You waste an awful amount of resource just managing the measurement system. That is both real money and time. Why are we spending money on screens & computers to monitor waiting time when key medical equipment and drugs are rationed? How many people are engaged in inspecting schools rather than teaching? How many headmasters are now administrators without any teaching responsibility? How many questionnaires do hard pressed front line staff have to fill out every week to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the measurement junkies? How many people have died because we treated hospital cleaning as a contracted service rather than as a part of the overall nursing/medical provision? How many entrepreneurs have not received start up funding because they weren't good at filling out the forms and playing the game?
- We try and solve issues with idealistic fail-safe designs rather than allowing systems to evolve. This is every present in the use of technology, and deeply ironic as modern IT systems allow for far greater messiness and adaptability. The patient record system in the UK is a good example of this, building a massive system on how things should be rather than creating a sound infrastructure then allowing different capabilities to evolve. They also don't do joined up thinking. Why wasn't the national identity card used to allow people to carry their patient records around with them? Flexible and adaptable, thinking at the right level of granularity and a damn sight more secure. God, I'd even take an implanted chip if it made things work better. In a modern computer age, you distribute capability you don't centralise it.
- Re-organisation is a disease and an excuse. It's the knee jerk reaction to any failure that ends up breaking your jaw with the recoil. It's easy with hindsight to see how things went wrong, and to design something around your retrospectively coherent interpretation of the facts. The trouble is you don't know everything anyway, you only know what was reported and that was influenced considerably by the adverse outcome in the first place. Smashing things together, spending weeks creating pretty organisation charts may seem satisfying, and allows those who execute the plan to postpone delivery while the reorganisation takes place but it rarely works. It takes human beings a few years to settle into any new structure anyway and informal networks, so critical to trust, take similar periods to evolve. This not a factory floor, its people's lives, social interactions, their work, their values and in many case their meaning that you are playing with.
- Communication is all up and down the chain, ironically this mediates information to senior decision makers so they are immunised from the real data they need, and also from the consequences of their actions. The expectation is that people in the field will report upwards, and work within centrally determined rules. They will of course be consulted first, and then generally ignored. Plans and actions are then determined, communicated and measurement systems put in place. Those who execute them learn quickly to feed back what is expected, building up an level of inauthenticity in the system which is dangerous at all levels of the organisation. There are few if any people in this, at any level who are evil, bad things are done for the best of all possible motives, good things often happen accidentally despite the system not because of it.
OK so that's a set of examples of what is wrong, what is the alternative? Well I can't tackle all of that, but complexity gives us a good shift in the right direction on how to make decisions and how to organise, while narrative based research allows us to move from targeting outcomes to impact based measurement. I'll start work on outlining those tomorrow if I get the time.
Comments (20)
Nice post ... nearly can't wait for the answers :)
My current gripe with large public and private sector organisations is with the seemingly non-complex task of paying their bills. My observation is that these organisations have invariably "re-engineered" their processes, usually involving a large branded ERP system (along with a large branded consulting company to implement it)yet I can barely recall a single instance where our SME business has not had to chase payment. This is nothing to do with trying to preserve their cash flow (far too clever). Its more about us not fitting the narrow and prescriptive profile or template required to be "automatically" processed. Unfortunatley there is no graceful decline here when this happens. Simply waiting for customers and staff (usually our embarrased clients) to spend weeks chasing and re-chasing payments and becoming acquainted with anyone who is left in the accounts payable department. These hidden costs no doubt do not figure in the ROI for the new ERP system, which I'm sure is particularly aggravating to those that have to spend their valuable time picking up after it.
Hopfully ERP III will have some complexity components ....
Posted by Laurence Lock Lee | May 20, 2009 7:11 AM
Posted on May 20, 2009 07:11
I agree. I think the issue itself is part of a complex system with some of the 'attractors' being:
* A simplistic view of causality (possible genetically wired in many of us)
* The implicit management control assumptions built into bureaucracies
* An education system, especially management schools, that emphasise analysis over synthesis and judgment - we are taught to be 'perfectly wrong' rather than 'approximately right'
* A political/financial context that is inherently short term and focused on quick wins, be they a 'photo opportunity', a dressed up IPO, or a repackaged financial product that hides the inherent risk.
Posted by Markus Fietz | May 20, 2009 8:23 AM
Posted on May 20, 2009 08:23
How true how true, - please save me from the findings of and recommendations of meaningless audits when I actually have a job to get on with.
One thing about rules based approaches is that not only does it distort desirable outcome, it also allows participants to abdicate responsibility as well. Witness the recent, and ongoing, expenses scandals in the UK parliament. Each miscreant has been able to hide behind a defence that they "followed the rules" thereby permitting them to remove their ethical responsibilities.
Posted by Tim Wright | May 20, 2009 9:04 AM
Posted on May 20, 2009 09:04
Dave indeed I can't wait to read more. I wonder will you also refer to your experience with how The occult insignificance of meaningless numbers is dealt with by our friends at the EU?
Peter
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May 20, 2009 10:53 AM
Posted on May 20, 2009 10:53
Some gems in this article which I have tweeted for others to see.
I am interested in Markus's comment that a simplistic view of causality is possibly genetically wired in many of us - not sure about the genetic part, but perhaps more likely nurtured into us from an early age?
Posted by Jonathan | May 20, 2009 10:54 AM
Posted on May 20, 2009 10:54
I think Barry Schwartz's latest TED talk on practical wisdom is a wonderful complement to this post (in my view, he succeeds in rehabilitating the term "wisdom" as something reasonable and respectable) - he makes a passionate plea for something very similar (except he doesn't call it a complex system), and presents what feels like a simple set of ideas around how to create an environment that does not fall foul of your principles of destruction listed above.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html
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May 20, 2009 11:32 AM
Posted on May 20, 2009 11:32
Thanks for all comments, will sweep up responses in the next entry. Patrick - I agree its a great TED talk, I previously posted on it here.
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May 20, 2009 12:33 PM
Posted on May 20, 2009 12:33
Wow. Spot on given a conversation we just had the other day with a potential client and intermediary organization. The trap of outcomes measurement looms large. We keep seeing evidence of people attempting to apply network theory using the old paradigm of command and control. Letting go is hard to do. If you have not seen it, this post is worth reading - http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/2009/05/do-goals-hurt-your-chance-of-success
Posted by Curtis Ogden | May 20, 2009 2:40 PM
Posted on May 20, 2009 14:40
David,
Wow – this post is just what I needed this morning... I work as a district-level librarian in a public school system in the United States. One of the things that I do here (and do well, I think) is research things for our leadership. Recently, my supervisor, with impeding budget cuts in mind (due to the economy), gave me what I considered a very, very difficult task: “see what you can find on R.O.I. as it regards not things that are *easily* measured or quantified, but more soft and less clearly defined…”
He added that he was not just looking for articles based in an education context, but that articles written in a business context might do the trick to.
As someone who reads blogs like this regularly (where one finds incredibly thoughtful and deep posts like this for example: http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/2008/10/darth_vada_hiding_behind_the_f.php
), perhaps you can imagine how I feel about this task.
Does anyone here have any suggestions about how to handle this? (perhaps analogous to this post [which I fear for those uninitiated in thinking along these grooves may be like drinking from a fire hose!], but dealing directly with issues in education [and if possible educational technology], many, which of course, are “soft” areas).
So, in sum: what might I be able to give my supervisor that won’t avoid the question, but might rather give him something that will satisfy him and also get him to think more critically in this area? I think he is quite intelligent – so maybe by giving him some links to some particular articles that have gained unwarranted popularity (“unwarranted” due to their weaknesses quickly seen by more critical thinkers) – perhaps to show him the logical consequences of this kind of thinking?
Thanks much,
Nathan
Posted by Nathan | May 20, 2009 2:41 PM
Posted on May 20, 2009 14:41
As usual, spot on. I'll use it in teaching at the Civil Service College.
Posted by Ryan Lanham | May 20, 2009 5:25 PM
Posted on May 20, 2009 17:25
Thank you so much for your post!
Lean and six sigma (mean sick stigma) are often seen as a kind of wonder oil: as the ultimate answer to life, the universe and the rest, while it should be clear that the proper answer is 42 and never mind the question.
Another quite annoyed and wonderful guy is John Seddon by the way. I keep plugging him here and there not because I know him (though I wish I did: he's intelligent and committed and not afraid of a battle with a.o. UK government), but because he has gotten things right. His newsletters on lean and six sigma process improvement, which mainly consist of stories mailed to him and his comments on those stories, would be hilarious if they weren't so - well - annoying. There's that word again. Here's the link where you can download his newsletters: http://www.lean-service.com/6-news-0.asp. Wish I could attach Seddon's latest newsletter (not yet published at his site; it started with utter fury) but it's hidden somewhere in my mailbox-folders at work and I can't access those folders from home. Good news is that you can subscribe to these newsletters yourself here: http://www.systemsthinking.co.uk/0-2.asp
Again: thank you for your wonderful post. We MUST rescue the world from the utter idiocy of measurement idiots.
Look forward to your next post! All the best.
Mireille
Posted by Mireille Jansma | May 20, 2009 10:29 PM
Posted on May 20, 2009 22:29
The "tyranny of self interest". You are pathetic. Do you require acts of self-interest to survive...hellooooo? Shouldn't everyone have a healthy does of self-interest...i.e. do what is necessary to exist, survive, eat, provide for loved ones. Why do individuals like you refuse to see the obvious? Are you by reason of being possibly "over-educated".....dumb. Has common sense eluded your neural network? The only true TYRANNY is one person stealing from another...either taking their life and/or their assets (that's money if you have trouble comprehending the word "assets").
I no longer wonder why the world is in such a mess when I hear non-professional statements as yours.
Robert Taylor/Horseshoe Bay, TX
Posted by Robert Taylor | May 21, 2009 1:57 AM
Posted on May 21, 2009 01:57
For those who want to know more of Robert's views his blog speaks for itself. I can't find any details of the University of History but I'm sure its alumni have avoided the evils of over-education. If you want to maintain your sanity then I recommend approaching Randinista web sites as an anthropologist would approach the island of Golding's Lord of the Flies assuming no rescue ten years on.
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May 21, 2009 6:25 AM
Posted on May 21, 2009 06:25
Interesting in itself that this post is triggering such responses! So what is the difference in this posting that makes this difference (following Bateson's notion) - recognition? I thoroughly enjoyed it and it resonates for me. Thanks also, Curtis, for the HBS paper which is an interesting and fun read.
A couple of thoughts.
1. Another angle to the focus on measurement is that it is not only undertaken to enhance productivity of course. But it is also part of the way trust is 'earned' under many societal (and legal) contracts. In that sense there is no direct link to increased productivity but rather measurement as contribution to sustain trust to continue existing and acting. Is that a bad thing? This doesn't let current poorly theorised and poorly implemented outcome-based measurement systems off the hook of course but is another way to look at their existence.
2. A friend with whom I was having a background conversation about the fundamental error that you point out said: "... but governments do not usually want complex messages which take into account the reality of co-evolutionary, multi-stakeholder, contradictory processes. They want and need simple messages, because their institutions and weak and frail and unable to deal with complexity. So that is the paradox." Do we have an example here of 'idealised' thinking about government? What if we take a more 'naturalised' perspective on government? Would that lead to more acceptance of less than perfect measurement systems or rather create even stronger arguments to build systems that recognise govt weakness?
3. In some countries, govt budges are abysmally low. One estimate of municipal budgets in Nicaragua came to 50,000 USD per year, including salaries. Even more reason NOT to waste it on poor measurement systems of course. But I'm not sure how many of them would have the human and financial resources to focus on "building the infrastructure and then letting capabilities evolve". Plenty of perverse incentives in such systems with (very) low salaries to 'let capabilities' evolve in ways that don't necessarily respond to municipal citizens' needs. It's not a cynical response but just wondering how to DO this in poorly resourced govt systems.
Posted by irene | May 21, 2009 2:55 PM
Posted on May 21, 2009 14:55
I was interested in Mireille's comment as I also read John Seddon's depressing litany of disasters each month, and I heard him speak eloquently on this subject at the launch of his latest book a while back.
His approach is quite reductionist, addressess a specific class of service-related problems, and would appear to be most applicable to situations related to the right hand (ordered) side of the Cynefin model.
Posted by Sally Bean | May 21, 2009 5:11 PM
Posted on May 21, 2009 17:11
Hi Sally,
If the Cynefin model has merit (as I think it does), every dimension in it requires attention. Both ordered and unordered. I think you are right in that Seddon's approach focuses on the simple and complicated domains. However, I don't think Seddon is a reductionist: he is a passionate thinker and doer who wants to get things right, not for himself, but for everyone hit by arbitrary KPI's and KPI measurement and so called quality control and such. Like employees and clients, UK tax payers, home seekers, people in hospitals, school children. Perhaps Seddon doesn't know about complexity (I have the feeling he doesn't), but he is smart and passionate and does a great, great job. I really think CE practitioners would benefit from knowing the work of Seddon, and he vice-versa from knowing Cynefin.
Best, Mireille
Posted by Mireille Jansma | May 21, 2009 7:49 PM
Posted on May 21, 2009 19:49
Hi Mireille
I agree with you that every dimension of Cynefin needs attention and that John Seddon has an impressive body of work to show in this domain. I didn't mean in any sense to be pejorative when I used the word reductionist - it's just that I seem to remember seeing him use that word himself in one of his books. I got a sense when I heard him speak that he doesn't have a lot of empathy with complexity ideas and maybe he was using the word reductionist to distinguish himself from complexity people.
Sally
Posted by Sally Bean | May 22, 2009 9:13 AM
Posted on May 22, 2009 09:13
Hi Dave
Sincere thanks for lifting the lid (not for the first time) on the duckspeak that bedevils the relationships between government and public services, and sadly between public services. In essence returning us once again to the quote attributed to Einstein - "Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted, counts."
So a few additional comments from my perspective (services for children, young people and families, England).
a. There is an illusory certainty for politicians (national and local of that ilk) in what they present and glorify as 'hard facts'. It is far easier and more comfortable for those within the 'Tyranny of self interest' to introduce regimes of counting something (however meaningless) than to explore what counts. So what this creates is a hyper-reality (Baudrilliard) or 'Emporer's New Clothes' - hard facts being used by politicians to prove things are getting better; when such'things' are demonstrably felt to be false by users of the service (or we spend time and effort creating 'work arounds' to make things work.
b. Counting provides a covert means for regulating the activities and practices of people doing the work (ref Point 1 of the blog above) - teachers teach to the target because that's what the work is; if it isn't counted or countable by the counting regime it isn't 'work'(and thus is that dreadful word 'inefficient')
c. The scale of resources expended at national and local level on the counting of meaningless numbers staggers belief - for example the amount of 'data' that local authorities are required by law to provide to government every three months about children in the care of the authority and young people in the youth justice (Oxymoron alert) system. Almost every piece of that 'data' is about processes, not stories/personal narratives (as distinct from 'case studies' to illustrate 'best practice') of how the service systems actually enabled young people to live outside their family (for whatever reason) or stop/reduce their offending behaviours.
d. The pernicious disease of re-organisation that afflicts public services offers the illusion of activity masquerading as action (actually doing something productive). Sadly, I know of one Primary Care Trust that is currently on it's 3rd re-organisation - in 4 years! Just imagine the financial and emotional costs of that on people trying to do the work
Sycophantic I know, but once again, excellent blog - many thanks
Dave
Posted by Dave Hoyle | May 22, 2009 1:21 PM
Posted on May 22, 2009 13:21
Don Berwick (CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Innovation) paraphrasing Joseph Juran said that "health care has developed a very long leg in measurement, and a short leg in managing change, and therefore it is walking in circles."
I couldn't agree more - I have a kind of visceral reaction to the phrase "change management" becasue it is used so often and so badly.
I recently completed a project at our hospital where I combined training in very basic Lean tools with training in Crucial Conversations - when you strip out the hyperbole there is some very good stuff in both - and invited 25 staff to participate and required them to complete an improvemnt project within 90 days, working in small teams. The choice of project was entirely up to them; the only constraints were that he project had to:
1. have the patient experience at the centre.
2. be a legitimate "stone in the shoe" of the staff that would be participating in the project.
3. be completed within the normal course of work.
They experienced some wonderful results in building capacity for change, improving social networks, finding new mental models, and, yes, some significant cost/time savings. All in 90 days for a total cost of about $32,000 CDN.
So, using Lean tools at a grassroots level actually enhanced dialogue among people who usually stay in their professional silos - who knew...!
Posted by Susan Morrow | May 25, 2009 10:04 PM
Posted on May 25, 2009 22:04
Hi Dave,
This is a very usefull and insightful post. I'll forward it to some governmental contacts of mine. I think this could be the start of an interesting debate.
Posted by Jochum | May 27, 2009 10:14 AM
Posted on May 27, 2009 10:14