I'm the sort of person who has favourite Laws of Social Science. To be specific, my two favourite Laws of Social Science are Goodhart's Law and Campbell's Law. To summarise them, Goodhart's Law states that if a measurement is used as a goal, the meaning of that measure changes (usually for the worse). Campbell's Law … Continue reading Measuring RTO
Category: Hobby horses
I've banged on for many years about the weird cult that is Net Promoter Score, a magical metric with organisational healing powers. In one number, it is claimed, the mysteries of business can be unlocked. Ask your customers their likelihood to recommend you and wealth and prosperity will be yours. Except... The world of recommendations … Continue reading Just recommend!
I'm the sort of person who has favourite Laws of Social Science. Don't judge me. The two "Laws" (let's be honest, they're rules of thumb) are Goodhart's Law and Campbell's Law. The first, Goodhart's Law, is best described in paraphrase from Marilyn Strathem:When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. … Continue reading Goodhart, Campbell and Elections
As a part of my current mini side project #NotAWebinar I was watching a clip from the psychologist and former NBA star John Amaechi. In it he talked about how behaviours that would be otherwise unacceptable in modern life are tolerated if not positively encouraged in the world of sport. He talked of a hypothetical … Continue reading Management by decree
Imagine that tomorrow your government announced that a new App was to be released. That every citizen over the age of 16 would be obliged to install this app on their phone, and would be duty-bound to carry the phone around with them at all times. Travelling without a phone with the active app install … Continue reading Hard choices
Back in the autumn of 2016, in those few months after the the EU referendum before everything went completely hatstand, I wrote something that described the UK's leaving of the EU as being akin to a lobster leaving a lobster pot. The idea was that whilst many people who believed in the UK's departure from … Continue reading Off Ramps
Something strange is going on in Westminster. Actually, a whole lot of strange things are going on in Westminster, but there's one in particular that is leaving me concerned. It's the way that it appears that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock has taken on responsibility for policy around the … Continue reading Is Social Media a Public Health Issue?
Back in those strange days when I worked at Microsoft there was a concept of giving and receiving kudos. This wasn't a soft skills thing that encouraged people to face the fear and start giving rich and rewarding feedback to one another. Kudos was a system that allowed for the automation and measurement of the … Continue reading Kudos where kudos is due
Our world is dominated by ideas of problems and solutions. Of questions and answers. And I'm beginning to wonder if there are cognitive biases at play that prevent us from being able to contend with the complexity that often arises from the answers that are required to solve seemingly simple questions. The trigger for this … Continue reading The Simple Question Fallacy
So apparently Theresa May has asked her Brexit subcommittee to go away and think a bit harder about their two proposed solutions to the post-Brexit EU border and customs problem. One of the two approaches has been summarised as: A 'highly streamlined' customs arrangement - This would minimise customs checks rather than getting rid of … Continue reading Problem-less solutions
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