My Digital FootPrint

This post is about being lost — without realising it. source: https://earthsky.org/space/x9-47-tucanae-closest-star-to-black-hole/ I have my NorthStar, and I am heading for it, but somehow the gravitational pull of a black hole we did not know existed got me without realising it! I am writing about becoming lost on a journey as I emerge from working from home, travel restrictions, lockdowns and masks; to find nothing has changed, but everything has changed. The hope of a shake or wake up call from something so dramatic as a global pandemic is immediately lost as we re-focus on how to pay for the next meal, drink, ticket, bill, rent, mortgage, school fee or luxury item. Have you become so wedded to an economic model that we cannot see that we will not get to our imagined NorthStar? I feel right now that I have gone into a culdesac and cannot find the exit. The road I was following had a shortcut, but my journey planner had a shortcut that assumed I was walking and could hop over the ga

Whilst our universe is full of hostile places, and they are engaging in their own right, I want to unpack the thinking and use naturally occurring hostile environments as an analogy to help unpack complex decision making in hostile to non-hostile work environments. ---- I enjoyed reading Anti-Fragile in 2013; it is the book about things that gain from disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb . " Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness , disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk , and uncertainty . Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. " When writing this, I have the same problem looking for a direct opposite of a Hostile Environment, as in an extreme ecosystem (ecology),   and whilst I have opted for a

The title might sound like a movie but this article is about unpacking decision making. We need leaders to be confident in their decisions so we can hold them accountable. We desire leaders to lead, wanting them to be early. They achieve this by listening to the signals and reacting before is is obvious to the casual observer. However, those in leadership who we hold accountable do not want to make the “wrong” decisions. A wrong decision can mean liability, loss of reputation or perceived to be too risky. A long senior leadership career requires navigating a careful path between not takingtoo much risk by going too “early”, which leads to failure, and not being late such that anyone could have made the decision earlier and looking incompetent. Easy leadership does not look like leadership as it finds a path of not being early or late (the majority) When we unpack leadership trends over the past 100 years that include ideas such as improving margin, diversification, reduction, spee

In the week where the worlds “leaders” meet to discuss and agree on the future of our climate at  #COP26 , I remain sceptical about agreements.  At #COP22 there was an agreement to halve deforestation by 2020 ; we missed it, so we have moved the target out.   Here is a review of all the past COP meetings and outcomes. It is hard to find any resources to compare previous agreements with achievements.  Below is from the UN.  The reason I remain doubtful and sceptical is that the decision of 1.5 degrees is framed.  We are optimising for a goal.  In this case, we do not want to increase our global temperature beyond 1.5 degrees.  Have you ever tried to heat water and stop the heating process such that a temperature target was reached. Critically you only have one go.    Try it. Fill a pan with ice and set a target, say 38.4 degrees, use a thermometer and switch off the pan when you think the final temperature will be your target. Did you manage to get within 1.5 degrees of your target? 

We spend most of our waking hours being held to account between the guardrails of risk-informed and responsible decision making.  Undoubtedly, we often climb over the guardrails and make ill-informed, irresponsible and irrational decisions, but that is human agency. It is also true that we would not innovate, create or discover if we could not explore the other side of our safety guardrails.  Today’s perception of responsible decision making is different to that our grandparents held.  Our grandchildren will look back at our “risk-informed” decisions with the advantage of hindsight and question why our risk management frameworks were so short-term-focused.  However, we need to recognise that our guardrails are established by current political, economic and societal framing.    What are we optimising for? ” I often ask the question, “ what are we optimising for? ” The reason I ask this question is to draw out different viewpoints in a leadership team.  The viewpoints that drive individ

For the past 50 years, most business leaders in free market-based economies have been taught or trained in a core ideology; "that the purpose of business is to serve only the shareholder". The source was #MiltonFriedman . Whilst shareholder primacy is simple and allows businesses to optimise for one thing, which has an advantage in terms of decision making, it has also created significant damage. It does not stand up to modern critique and challenges such as ESG. Importantly there is an assumption that a shareholder group was a united and unified collective. There is an assumption: shareholders are united and unified The reality is that in a public or investor-led company, the shareholders are as diverse in terms of vision, rationale, purpose and expectation as any standard group of associated parties. Shareholders as a group rarely have an entirely homogeneous objective. Given the dominance of shareholder primacy, how do we know this concept of non-homogeneous actors is genu

Can we live at the peak paradox? Peak Paradox is the middlemost point of the model. It is the point where everything has equal weight in terms of policy, priority, resources, commitment, interest, data and consequences.  It is the area of a perfect storm.  It is a magical (or imaginary) place where you can have everything, everyone else can have everything, no one is fighting for survival, and every work situation thrives.  In reality, the converse is probably also true. It is where everyone fights for survival; I cannot get what I want, others have nothing and work is just meaningless. It is in between these two states of euphoria and despair that we spend our time.  Never reaching utopia but somehow constantly individual’s individual’s feeling one step closer to dystopia.  In this state, we have to decide how to allocate the limited resources we have to be able to change the situation (for the better.)   Whilst hard to accept, we actually don’t have the data, model or ability to al

The purpose of this post is to plot where some ( there is way too many to do them all ) different investment measures align on the Peak Paradox model. It is not to explain in detail what all the measures means and their corresponding strength and weaknesses.  This is a good article if you want the latter for the pure financial ones. Key ROI , Return on Investment. IRR Internal Rate of Return.  RI Residual income. ROE Return on Equity. ROA Return on assets. ROCE  Return on Capital Employed.  ROT Return on Time. IR Impact return.  SV  Social Value.  AR Asset Returns. PER Portfolio Expected Return. SROI Social return on investment.  The observation is that we have not developed with any level of sophistication the same ability to measure or report on anything outside of finance, which we call “hard.”   By calling other important aspects of a decision “soft” we have framed them as less important and harder to agree on. 

Right now, in your current situation, you are asked to or informed to, undertake or perform certain actions.  When these instructions and activities align with your natural instinct it is easy.  When there is a lack of alignment we know that there are tensions, contradictions, conflicts and compromises created.  Often these creep up on us, where one small thing leads to another until the snowball is in full avalanche mode.   When you feel that comfort blanket of alignment, you should use the peak paradox framework to look for paradoxes, because you are aligned.  It does not mean everyone is aligned or you are doing the right thing, but it feels easy.  The sense of natural alignment is a conformational bias that is hard to fight, but it is time to focus on where paradoxes can exist. When that comfort blanket is missing and we are in the open white waters of turmoil, the Peak Pardox framework is designated to unpack where and from who and what decision means you feel destructive tension

Questions to help frame your own paradoxes Leadership must be able to recognise the paradoxes created as they decide on “ what they are optimising for. ” The last article described two different starting points for the Peak Paradox model; finding paradox and living with paradox .  It is evident that the compromises we elect to live with become more focused as we agreed or decide on what we are optimising for.  Such a focus has a benefit insomuch that the narrower and more articulate our view of optimised becomes, the more decisions can become aligned . However, the counter is that whilst a sharp focus and alignment will require less compromise for some, but it will equally increase the paradoxes/ compromises and tensions others will have to live with.  One team can be aligned to a vision but not necessarily on how to get there or live with the chosen “optimised” approach.  Stress is created by these differences and can create cracks and weaknesses in the team and culture. One visio