How Goodhart’s Law Makes Us Aware of the Downside of Measurement

Goodhart’s law basically says that ‘When a measure becomes a metric, it ceases to be a good measure’. This is quite powerful, and observable on a daily basis in all sorts of settings.

This law has profound implications about target-setting in organizations and many other situations. In the very recommended post ‘Goodhart’s Law and Why Measurement is Hard‘, the author explores measurement in complex situations. And in effect, complexity ruins the interest of measurement, because of the retro-actions of measurement on the system. Goodhart’s law is thus fundamentally an observation from complex systems that evolve as a result of self-measures.

Goodhart’s law is mostly important in organizational settings: it is important to measure, but as soon as a measure is in place, it becomes a target and therefore, drives behavior – sometimes in a unfavorable manner. The only response is either, to measure but not publicize the metric; or use some version of a balanced scorecards with several balances metrics.

In any case, beware the Goodhart’s law when defining metrics in your organization!

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How to Organize an Executive “Retreat” (or rather an “Advance”?)

I love Seth Godin’s post on how to organize a company retreat ‘How to organize a retreat‘.

It starts by remarking that the word itself is a bit strange – it looks a bit like executives are trying to hide. Seth Godin proposes rather to use the term ‘Advance’. We could also use the term ‘Re-centering’.

An executive retreat is about taking some time building the team and thinking about the future of the organization, or some bold initiative. It is thus mainly about connecting at the emotional level, and I invite you to read Seth Godin’s recommendations again about how to achieve this and not some kind of boring event.

I would like to add a recommendation: keep it small, keep it tribe-like. Don’t envisage huge events, but make sure connection happens at the right level.

Careful when you think about your next executive “retreat”. Take some time to think about how what you want to achieve, and “Advance”!

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How the Priority of a Company Should be to Survive

I noted this interesting quote: “a business professor at INSEAD, the renowned global business school, hammering to his students: “You know what should be the priority of a company? It’s not growth, or anything else. It is to survive!”” from a post on Facebook business model by Frederic Filloux. In my experience as an entrepreneur and wathcing also our industrial clients be born, live and die, I find this assertion quite true.

In particular, over-extension in growth is often a very fatal situation: the burden of debt can’t be repaid when the industry comes down or when execution does not follow. Focus on survival, prudent management should definitely be essential priorities.

I am always amazed on how tough it is to be profitable and build substantial reserves to cover downturns, and how quick things can go down when there is a downturn. There is an essential non-symmetry that is very difficult to overcome even when ones reacts quickly and massively to a downturn, cutting costs.

Finally it is all about natural selection: extinction is the rule, and survival is the exception. Substantial growth is the uber-exception, so when it happens, care should be exercised!

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How Good People Don’t Wait for Opportunities, they Create Them

I like this post from Om Swami ‘Four Traits of Successful People‘. The post is mainly about the fact that you should not wait for opportunities, but create them.

“I meet brilliant people all the time who could do a lot more in their life. But, they are stuck, they feel. Life hasn’t been fair to them or they are waiting for the right opportunity, they tell me.”

Of course it may sometimes be easier to say than to do. But, “If you say, I can’t do it, you are right already. If you ask, how can I do it, at least your mind will shift from denial to a thinking mode.”

We need to shift more often to ‘how can I do it’ mode and create opportunities. Some will work, some won’t, you might get lucky or unlucky, but at the end you’ll have created your way.

When do you start?

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How Non-Compete Constraints on Employees Are Non-Productive

There is always a heated debate on the interest for an organization to introduce non-compete clauses in its employment contracts. I truly believe that those clauses are counter-productive.

As an aside to an interesting post explaining why Facebook’s business model is flawed and won’t change ‘“Do no harm” to Facebook’s business model’, Frederic Filloux quotes “A Stanford professor told me once that the absence of a non-compete clause in California’s labor laws has been a key factor to the rise of Silicon Valley against the startup ecosystem of the East Coast.” And indeed, it appears that California does not allow those clauses, whereas in the rest of the US and of the world they tend to be widespread (in France their impact is limited by the fact that the employer must compensate for the application of the clause, which makes it onerous).

I believe those clauses are stupid, in part because they stop innovation, they are difficult to apply in reality, and they create all sort of resentment between the employee and the employer. They should be limited to issues of commercial nature. In the collaborative Age, any impediment to the creation of teams to innovate and solve complex projects should be removed for the system to be effective.

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How the Concept of Postal Address is Being Overturned

We are all familiar with the concept of postal address and postal code, at least in developed country. A new way of describing the physical location is on the way: read ‘This Startup Slices the World Into 57 Trillion Squares‘.

The logic behind postal addresses differs substantially between countries, and this was an important factor of complication (Japan having a very different logic from Europe, the UK having a postal code per main building, etc) and less developed countries ares struggling to cope with the speed of urbanisation to implement a postal address system.

And the best with the proposed new system is that each point (actuall each 3m square) is designated by 3 words and not a difficult list of numbers. It is quite interesting to visit their website What3words. You can figure out easily how your location is designated.

Of course the 3 words combinations are not always great, but at least they are quite memorable and practical. A great way to replace postal addresses worldwide!

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How Skim Reading Changes our Ways of Thinking

Skim reading is the new normal. We scroll down on content and often do not take the time to read in detail what is written. Even worse, we often just don’t read at all! (see my post ‘How Most People Sharing Links or Commenting Don’t Read the Posts‘). In this excellent Guardian piece, ‘Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound‘, the issue is analysed further. The author concludes that we need a new literacy for the digital age.

The point developed in this paper is that a specific learned capability of humans is getting deeply modified. As a result, “the result is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes, like inference, critical analysis and empathy, all of which are indispensable to learning at any age“.

A specific focus in the article is about our diminishing empathy: “The subtle atrophy of critical analysis and empathy affects us all. It affects our ability to navigate a constant bombardment of information. It incentivizes a retreat to the most familiar silos of unchecked information, which require and receive no analysis, leaving us susceptible to false information and demagoguery.”

One interesting aspect is that it seems that reading on screen (even on a Kindle) compared to physically handling a book creates less attention and more skimming.

Anyway, for sure the younger generations are learning differently from older generations and might not develop exactly the same approaches. I am not sure if that’s good or bad, but it will certainly be different. Exciting times!

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What Makes an Expert Really Different

We hear so much about expertise these days, that it becomes important to remind ourselves what features distinguish an expert from someone simply experienced in a field. In short: an expert is not only very experienced, but he/she must be able to:

  • transmit knowledge
  • change the policies and the rules.

And this is a very operational criterion used by many organisations to define the expert level in a trade.

The ability to transmit knowledge is essential, as it demonstrates reflection and full understanding of the material. In addition, transmitting knowledge is an excellent way to deepen one’s knowledge, so this is clearly a self-accelerating competency.

The ability to change policies and rules is another feature of being able to transmit knowledge, albeit this time in a more institutional setting. It demonstrates the ability to stand for one’s knowledge, work out the internal politics and convince the organisation to change based on knowledge.

Of course, the issue of expertise in a complex world is that it is mainly based on consideration of the past, however I find this definition of what makes an expert special quite useful and operational. Are your experts really ‘experts’?

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How Dramatic The Effect of Our Daily Physiological Rhythm Is

Following our previous post ‘How We Can Choose The Best Timing for Certain Activities‘  and the excellent book by Daniel Pink ‘When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing‘, one of the issues which come out is the dramatic influence of our daily rhythm on our activities.

In particular, Daniel Pink exposes several dramatic examples of poor decision-making in the afternoon. And that many cognitive tasks should better be done in the morning. “Afternoons are the Bermuda Triangles of our days . Across many domains , the trough represents a danger zone for productivity , ethics , and health.”

“In short , all of us experience the day in three stages — a peak , a trough , and a rebound . And about three – quarters of us ( larks and third birds ) experience it in that order . But about one in four people , those whose genes or age make them night owls , experience the day in something closer to the reverse order — recovery, trough, peak .”

Of course I was aware of the effect of our circadian rhythm, but what struck me is how significant that can be: “these daily fluctuations are more extreme than we realize . The performance change between the daily high point and the daily low point can be equivalent to the effect on performance of drinking the legal limit of alcohol“. Food for thought!

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How We Can Choose The Best Timing for Certain Activities

In the excellent book ‘When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing‘, Daniel Pink investigates the importance of Timing in what happens in our lives.

The take of the book is that “Timing , we believe , is an art. I will show that timing is really a science — an emerging body of multifaceted , multidisciplinary research that offers fresh insights into the human condition and useful guidance on working smarter and living better.”

The book covers timing issues at different time scales: day, week, month, year and even decades. It shows that certain timing issues can be predicted, linked to our physiology. Some others can be predicted thanks to our psychology (for example, “Negotiators with a deadline are far more likely to reach an agreement than those without a deadline — and that agreement comes disproportionately at the very end of the allotted time“.

I was a bit frustrated by the fact that the role of luck in timing was not sufficiently developed when it comes to the timing of single events of major importance in our lives. However the guidance given on the part of timing we can control – when best to take decisions, learn, be creative makes it a worthwhile read.

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How An Appeal Process Should be Guaranteed When Your Account Gets Cancelled by a Major Internet Player

Monopolistic services such as Facebook, Amazon, Google have to strike a fine balance between fighting abusive usage of their services (of which there is a lot), and providing the opportunity to access them to all. Recently a few papers about Amazon switching off the account of some authors publishing on the platform have raise the issue in this particular remit: ‘Amazon self-published authors: Our books were banned for no reason‘ – and I am particularly sensitive to that particular area, being active in publishing.

The capability offered by Amazon to self-publish is an amazing opportunity for would-be authors. It is possible to publish without going through the selection criteria of publishers, do it electronically only and not have to bother about hardcopies. Some self-publishing authors have become professional, deriving significant income from their books. It has created vocations and allowed many people to write and publish that would not have otherwise.

As with any system there are ways to abuse it – part of the compensation provided by Amazon is based on the number of pages read by readers of the e-book. There are ways to inflate this number. And Amazon will ban abusers… and maybe some that do not intend, or do not abuse the system, but have a usage pattern that is too close.

The issue here is not that Amazon or the likes cancels the account of abusing users – they should do it – but that if you have not abused the system there are no clear ways to appeal. It is very difficult to reach the client support service. It is the same for other services as Facebook, etc.

This situation is quite similar to being condemned without having had a fair hearing. Dominating internet services should be mandated to set up appeal processes where users can raise their issue, if needed publicly, so that they can receive due consideration. The availability appeal process should be mandatory and this right protected by law.

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How Changes from New Technology Will Lead to Unexpected Results

In this interesting article ‘Uber and Lyft Are Overwhelming Urban Streets, and Cities Need to Act Fast‘, unexpected consequences of new technology (more streets getting more car traffic) are discussed with recommendation for a single solution: more regulation.

For sure, apps like Uber, Lyft or even apps calculating less jammed drives such as Waze or the likes necessarily change the pattern of road utilisation (Waze for example typically increases the usage of smaller, previously underutilised streets). It thus creates change and possibly at a massive level.

The new apps and services do respond to a need, which normally should decrease individual automobile utilisation; but is also creates new usage for better and more comfortable transit than public transportation on a point-to-point basis.

The interesting lesson here is that when one would think that those new services would rather decrease congestion, the actuel effect, due to the complexity of the situation, is observed to be rather the opposite. Therefore, one should not attempt to forecast what a new service will do when it scales.

Also, expecting regulation to provide a solution may be a way to go, but it needs to be considered with care, because the impact of a regulation might be equally unpredictable and the outcome may not be as expected. Welcome to a complex world!

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