"As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way.
"Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs.
"Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow."
Monday, 15 December 2014
Wednesday, 4 December 2013
Bored bored bored bored
The more astute among my gentle readers will have spotted that I have not written much about the company for which I purport to work lately.
There are two reasons for this. One is that it hasn't been very interesting. Life has carried on, with the dreaded rain of brown envelopes, asking for the normal collections for birth and marriage (though not death). There has been canoeing down the Wye for charity and people's children running marathons for other people's children who have (take your pick) need of a mouth-operated wheelchair, a cancer ward, or a memorial charity for drug rehabilitation.
I could discuss the difficulty of making people redundant and the effect it has on company morale, or perhaps whether the privatisation of the NHS is going to bring us in as much money as we hope. But the second reason that I haven't written about the company is because currently I am totally and utterly bored by it. Everyone is working very hard, and their little foibles are more concealed than usual. It is intriguing to see who is browsing which websites on the run-up to Christmas: is it amazon or ebay? Hunting for a job or trying to move house?
I myself am spending more time researching the latest discussions on the benefits of U/X thinking than is required for working through the tests I have devised for the latest products.
I don't know whether it is the time of year, the shortage of daylight hours, or just an overwhelming weariness with the futility of life and the avarice and laziness of a vast proportion of the populace.
Perhaps it will improve when the child has its wheelchair, and a few more teenage souls are reclaimed for hard-working family values.
Come cheer me. remind me that applied cognitive psychology is not merely about making it easier for people to do what you would like them to do, but can also be used to, somehow, encourage people in those seasonal pastimes of good will towards mankind.
There are two reasons for this. One is that it hasn't been very interesting. Life has carried on, with the dreaded rain of brown envelopes, asking for the normal collections for birth and marriage (though not death). There has been canoeing down the Wye for charity and people's children running marathons for other people's children who have (take your pick) need of a mouth-operated wheelchair, a cancer ward, or a memorial charity for drug rehabilitation.
I could discuss the difficulty of making people redundant and the effect it has on company morale, or perhaps whether the privatisation of the NHS is going to bring us in as much money as we hope. But the second reason that I haven't written about the company is because currently I am totally and utterly bored by it. Everyone is working very hard, and their little foibles are more concealed than usual. It is intriguing to see who is browsing which websites on the run-up to Christmas: is it amazon or ebay? Hunting for a job or trying to move house?
I myself am spending more time researching the latest discussions on the benefits of U/X thinking than is required for working through the tests I have devised for the latest products.
I don't know whether it is the time of year, the shortage of daylight hours, or just an overwhelming weariness with the futility of life and the avarice and laziness of a vast proportion of the populace.
Perhaps it will improve when the child has its wheelchair, and a few more teenage souls are reclaimed for hard-working family values.
Come cheer me. remind me that applied cognitive psychology is not merely about making it easier for people to do what you would like them to do, but can also be used to, somehow, encourage people in those seasonal pastimes of good will towards mankind.
Net promoter score (NPS) - or how do you think about customers.
First of all, I'll start with the credits: The Net Promoter Score, or NPS® was developed by Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix in 2003. (See The One Number you Need to Grow). It assumes that all customers can be divided into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.
It seems that the big idea was who you should concentrate your marketing on. There are your loyal recommenders, who will buy your stuff pretty much whatever, there are the people who don't really care one way or another, and there are the people who had a bad experience with you. Given a limited budget, where should you concentrate your efforts?
You will notice some sympathy with triage. I think the human brain is naturally comfortable dividing things into three groups. Like Gaul. (For anyone who has neither read Asterix or De Bello Gallico, that is a reference to Caesar. Caesar's title is not a reference to his summer holiday in beautiful Gaul, but to the Gaulish wars. I love faux amis, or in this case, armies.) Back to triage. This used to be the battlefield technique used to decide who to save and who to leave. The ones that you saved were the ones that you could save and who would not survive if you did nothing. How does this relate to customers?
You don't want to spend much effort on your loyal supporters. They don't need it. You don't want them to resent you (see the bad publicity that accrues when people realise that new customers are getting better deals than old faithfuls) but you don't need to woo them either.
The people who hate you hate you. There are those who bad-mouth you, which has a major effect on your business, and those who only chose you because you were the last one left in the playground. Who can you safely sacrifice and who is worth turning around?
This is where one number doesn't cut it. Bye bye NPS. It's a fair measure if all the bodies on your battlefield are privates, but we all know that what counts is the power that the body wields. You're obviously better getting a loyal high-spender than a low-spender, turning round the opinion of someone who whose opinion is listened to than that of a dead end Derek. The thing is, you can never be quite sure who that is. First, you can see who in the middle section has money and is worth investing in. Secondly, you can see what the cost of attempting to fix the problems are. If it's going to cost more to fix than you're going to gain in sales or spend in support, then consider leaving the problem as a straightforward problem. People do it all the time. Look at the list of known bugs. Look at that well-known bug category of "won't be fixed". So long as it isn't a deal breaker, you can ignore it.
Finally, be honest to yourself. Remember that everyone likes to think that they're important. If you can convert someone, they may turn out to be your strongest supporter.
It seems that the big idea was who you should concentrate your marketing on. There are your loyal recommenders, who will buy your stuff pretty much whatever, there are the people who don't really care one way or another, and there are the people who had a bad experience with you. Given a limited budget, where should you concentrate your efforts?
You will notice some sympathy with triage. I think the human brain is naturally comfortable dividing things into three groups. Like Gaul. (For anyone who has neither read Asterix or De Bello Gallico, that is a reference to Caesar. Caesar's title is not a reference to his summer holiday in beautiful Gaul, but to the Gaulish wars. I love faux amis, or in this case, armies.) Back to triage. This used to be the battlefield technique used to decide who to save and who to leave. The ones that you saved were the ones that you could save and who would not survive if you did nothing. How does this relate to customers?
You don't want to spend much effort on your loyal supporters. They don't need it. You don't want them to resent you (see the bad publicity that accrues when people realise that new customers are getting better deals than old faithfuls) but you don't need to woo them either.
The people who hate you hate you. There are those who bad-mouth you, which has a major effect on your business, and those who only chose you because you were the last one left in the playground. Who can you safely sacrifice and who is worth turning around?
This is where one number doesn't cut it. Bye bye NPS. It's a fair measure if all the bodies on your battlefield are privates, but we all know that what counts is the power that the body wields. You're obviously better getting a loyal high-spender than a low-spender, turning round the opinion of someone who whose opinion is listened to than that of a dead end Derek. The thing is, you can never be quite sure who that is. First, you can see who in the middle section has money and is worth investing in. Secondly, you can see what the cost of attempting to fix the problems are. If it's going to cost more to fix than you're going to gain in sales or spend in support, then consider leaving the problem as a straightforward problem. People do it all the time. Look at the list of known bugs. Look at that well-known bug category of "won't be fixed". So long as it isn't a deal breaker, you can ignore it.
Finally, be honest to yourself. Remember that everyone likes to think that they're important. If you can convert someone, they may turn out to be your strongest supporter.
Sunday, 20 October 2013
The arthritic kitchen
First exciting information. I have an MSc certificate. With a hologram.
Second less exciting information. I have early-onset arthritis. In my right hand (I'm right-handed). As I said to one of my friends, this wasn't in my life script.
There are many good things though. I'm not saying that in a "cancer is a gift" sort of way, but in a "well, if this had to happen" sort of way.
First of all, I realised it was happening while I was designing the kitchen rather than afterwards. This meant that I chose nice big handles for my cupboards, rather than those invisible finger-tip numbers. Note well, kitchen designers: if your hands are swollen and painful, you cannot hold those dainty handles, your pinch grip is not what it used to be.
Secondly, I can still type.
Thirdly, pain-killers are brilliant.
Fourthly, I can find it funny that I'm running my hand sensuously along the cold edges of the cabinets in the supermarket because it eases the pain. Hot bodies, though probably more appealing, are less capable in the anaesthetising department.
I've had a functional kitchen for nearly a week now.(yes, that's terribly terribly exciting). Big handles (remember the big handles), iroko worktops, soft-close shiny white units.
I'm already discovering lots of things I got wrong. The most crucial of these is the distance from the oven to the sink. It's delightful, there is space in the kitchen, I can have friends in and all that jazz, but if, as I have done, you suddenly realise that you cannot carry a pot of boiling pasta to the sink to drain one-handed because it hurts too much, those extra steps are a total waste of space.
Next week, the exciting limitations of posh kitchen utensils. Send me your incredibly expensive item, and I'll review it from an ergonomic arthritic perspective. I'll even show you the hologram on my MSc certificate. If you don't, I'll just have to review what I already own, starting, perhaps, with the Samsung fridge.
Second less exciting information. I have early-onset arthritis. In my right hand (I'm right-handed). As I said to one of my friends, this wasn't in my life script.
There are many good things though. I'm not saying that in a "cancer is a gift" sort of way, but in a "well, if this had to happen" sort of way.
First of all, I realised it was happening while I was designing the kitchen rather than afterwards. This meant that I chose nice big handles for my cupboards, rather than those invisible finger-tip numbers. Note well, kitchen designers: if your hands are swollen and painful, you cannot hold those dainty handles, your pinch grip is not what it used to be.
Secondly, I can still type.
Thirdly, pain-killers are brilliant.
Fourthly, I can find it funny that I'm running my hand sensuously along the cold edges of the cabinets in the supermarket because it eases the pain. Hot bodies, though probably more appealing, are less capable in the anaesthetising department.
I've had a functional kitchen for nearly a week now.(yes, that's terribly terribly exciting). Big handles (remember the big handles), iroko worktops, soft-close shiny white units.
I'm already discovering lots of things I got wrong. The most crucial of these is the distance from the oven to the sink. It's delightful, there is space in the kitchen, I can have friends in and all that jazz, but if, as I have done, you suddenly realise that you cannot carry a pot of boiling pasta to the sink to drain one-handed because it hurts too much, those extra steps are a total waste of space.
Next week, the exciting limitations of posh kitchen utensils. Send me your incredibly expensive item, and I'll review it from an ergonomic arthritic perspective. I'll even show you the hologram on my MSc certificate. If you don't, I'll just have to review what I already own, starting, perhaps, with the Samsung fridge.
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
And finally, assignment of blame
I was discussing the natural progression of projects with an experienced friend. Here are the real project stages:
The easiest technique for blame assignment is, of course, to blame the absent. They are safely out of the way, and it will not harm them. Second is to blame the customer and the boss. This does not damage the team. Finally, blame may be placed on whoever appears most vulnerable to it. This has no relation to responsibility
- Planning (have an idea)
- Estimation - always wildly optimistic
- Design - this stage may be done while implementing
- Implementation - project starts to overrun
- Private discussion with customer introduces a few trivial changes
- Design is finally written down - this stage may be omitted if time pressing
- Changes are discovered to double the project time and budget
- Project starts over-running severely
- Features start being cut, but are replaced by new features
- Project now massively over-running
- Features cut again
- Project released in beta
- Steady set of bug fixes
- Blame assigned
- Testing carried out - this stage can be omitted if customers desperate
- Innocent punished
The easiest technique for blame assignment is, of course, to blame the absent. They are safely out of the way, and it will not harm them. Second is to blame the customer and the boss. This does not damage the team. Finally, blame may be placed on whoever appears most vulnerable to it. This has no relation to responsibility
Thursday, 5 September 2013
Costing projects
I'm very aware that I should put keywords in my blog. I'm also aware that I'm not attempting to monetise my blog. Anyone who reads it regularly, leave me a comment and I will be most grateful. Anyone who doesn't read it regularly: you're missing out.
I was comparing the fantasy of Agile management to the joys of converting a house.
Firstly, no matter how tightly you plan your project, it won't work. The tyres get punctures, the render doesn't go off because it's cold, the plaster sets too quickly because it's warm and so on and so on. One of the illusions that computers peddle is that values are fixed and unchangeable. Over years of experience one discovers that an apple this year is not the same as an apple last year: it may be smaller, sweeter, less common and so on and so forth. In the same way, programmers get ill, libraries get updated, life turns out to be a little difficult. It's fine if you're building on a greenfield site, but in the real world you may not be.
So we are dealing a non-representative series of events. Estimates are based on normal - that frictionless set of billiard balls or that perfectly rational economic creature... Life is imperfect, unbalanced, frustrating, and driven by chance. People on the top want to believe that it is driven by skill. They wish to confirm that it is their qualities that have given them their privilege, and others' failures that have denied it. When talking about becoming a premier league footballer, people are willing to admit that some people are born with more talent than others. You rarely hear the fact that given a couple of X chromosomes, you'll never make it. One sperm over another. Your chances ruled out, just like that.
Given the innate unpredictability of life, you need a reserve fund to cover the likely overruns in time and cost and temper whenever you're planning a project. You also need a contingency plan.
This is one of the things I find most interesting. What do you do when a project has overrun? At what point are you prepared to say "pull the plug/cut the costs"?
It is my belief that life is much simpler if you have a hard deadline, chosen in advance, such that when you go over it, the project is pulled automatically. I would be curious to see how many things would get sacrificed if you knew that at fifty per cent above the original estimate, or at twenty per cent above the original time, consequences dropped in.
When I was in a partnersip, I rekember bidding for a contract. We honestly told the buyers "It's not possible to do y in the time, but we can do x". We didn't get the contract. We were correct, of course, but people want to hear that they can do y in time t. Anyone who says "No" will lose out to anyone who says "yes". You therefore need heavy penalties for misleading on contracts.
There is less temptation to gain a contract bby being over-optimistic if you know there is an automatic penalty for getting it wrong. But how may customers prefer illusions to truth?
I was comparing the fantasy of Agile management to the joys of converting a house.
Firstly, no matter how tightly you plan your project, it won't work. The tyres get punctures, the render doesn't go off because it's cold, the plaster sets too quickly because it's warm and so on and so on. One of the illusions that computers peddle is that values are fixed and unchangeable. Over years of experience one discovers that an apple this year is not the same as an apple last year: it may be smaller, sweeter, less common and so on and so forth. In the same way, programmers get ill, libraries get updated, life turns out to be a little difficult. It's fine if you're building on a greenfield site, but in the real world you may not be.
So we are dealing a non-representative series of events. Estimates are based on normal - that frictionless set of billiard balls or that perfectly rational economic creature... Life is imperfect, unbalanced, frustrating, and driven by chance. People on the top want to believe that it is driven by skill. They wish to confirm that it is their qualities that have given them their privilege, and others' failures that have denied it. When talking about becoming a premier league footballer, people are willing to admit that some people are born with more talent than others. You rarely hear the fact that given a couple of X chromosomes, you'll never make it. One sperm over another. Your chances ruled out, just like that.
Given the innate unpredictability of life, you need a reserve fund to cover the likely overruns in time and cost and temper whenever you're planning a project. You also need a contingency plan.
This is one of the things I find most interesting. What do you do when a project has overrun? At what point are you prepared to say "pull the plug/cut the costs"?
It is my belief that life is much simpler if you have a hard deadline, chosen in advance, such that when you go over it, the project is pulled automatically. I would be curious to see how many things would get sacrificed if you knew that at fifty per cent above the original estimate, or at twenty per cent above the original time, consequences dropped in.
When I was in a partnersip, I rekember bidding for a contract. We honestly told the buyers "It's not possible to do y in the time, but we can do x". We didn't get the contract. We were correct, of course, but people want to hear that they can do y in time t. Anyone who says "No" will lose out to anyone who says "yes". You therefore need heavy penalties for misleading on contracts.
There is less temptation to gain a contract bby being over-optimistic if you know there is an automatic penalty for getting it wrong. But how may customers prefer illusions to truth?
Monday, 2 September 2013
Project management and priorities
As detailed before, I have the hardback book (it's green - anyone else remember the Porridge quote). It has pages and pages of lists, all neatly sorted into four sections, interspersed with scribbles, diagrams of flues, back of the list calculations and so forth.
Approximately once a day we have the discussion.
The discussion consists of:
1. What can we cross off yesterday's/this morning's to do list?
2. Oh, what did you do then?
3. Oh
Long pause
4. Well, I'll add them to the list and cross them off.
5. Where are they in the list of prioritites?
6. OK, these are my priorities
7. What do we absolutely have to get done before we move in.
8. OK, we can survive without a shower.
Heated drawing up of two lists: one of things that must be done and one of things that are nice to have
We end up with three things crossing the line (insulation, decoration and chimney cowls if you must know).
9. So when you say do floor, what exactly does that involve?
Calmer and much longer list of all the components of the "things that must be done" list. During the discussion, we discover other things that must be added to said list.
What user interface design point am I demonstrating (or any other point)? I would say that it's a technique that is a refinement of Bill Buxton's Sketching User experience.
It is only when you have your ideas out there in some form that you can discuss them. I cannot stress this enough.
What I have in my head is non-negotiable because nobody knows about it.
What I say is somewhat negotiable, but it is often not clear what I mean.
What I sketch or model or put on paper is utterly negotiable because there is something to negotiate over.
Here is a mock-up of the stairs to the basement. It's a starting-point.
They're not on the priority list though.
Approximately once a day we have the discussion.
The discussion consists of:
1. What can we cross off yesterday's/this morning's to do list?
2. Oh, what did you do then?
3. Oh
Long pause
4. Well, I'll add them to the list and cross them off.
5. Where are they in the list of prioritites?
6. OK, these are my priorities
7. What do we absolutely have to get done before we move in.
8. OK, we can survive without a shower.
Heated drawing up of two lists: one of things that must be done and one of things that are nice to have
We end up with three things crossing the line (insulation, decoration and chimney cowls if you must know).
9. So when you say do floor, what exactly does that involve?
Calmer and much longer list of all the components of the "things that must be done" list. During the discussion, we discover other things that must be added to said list.
What user interface design point am I demonstrating (or any other point)? I would say that it's a technique that is a refinement of Bill Buxton's Sketching User experience.
It is only when you have your ideas out there in some form that you can discuss them. I cannot stress this enough.
What I have in my head is non-negotiable because nobody knows about it.
What I say is somewhat negotiable, but it is often not clear what I mean.
What I sketch or model or put on paper is utterly negotiable because there is something to negotiate over.
Here is a mock-up of the stairs to the basement. It's a starting-point.
They're not on the priority list though.
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