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On AV, Bees, the Delphi Method and Other Voting Systems

For those who know me well, they will know I keep bees. Last week I caught the first swarm of the year in a tree in the local town – which was very satisfying. I also have another blog at http://beelore.com In one of my posts on that blog last year I noted the amazing way that bees vote for a new home.  This research even has its own site

Funny thing is that in the UK we have to decide between the current so-called “First Past the Post” system and the “Alternative Voting System”.  Pretty bi-polar.  Pretty bonkers.

What would the bees do?  The scouts would look at many and several voting systems and would (depending on the amount of energy exhibited for each system) come back to the 95% in the swarm and dance the story with a waggle.

It is such a strong idea that a guy called Thomas.D. Seeley actually wrote a book about it last year called “Honeybee Democracy”.

Here is extract from a review:

“In the late spring and early summer, as a bee colony becomes overcrowded, a third of the hive stays behind and rears a new queen, while a swarm of thousands departs with the old queen to produce a daughter colony. Seeley describes how these bees evaluate potential nest sites, advertise their discoveries to one another, engage in open deliberation, choose a final site, and navigate together–as a swirling cloud of bees–to their new home. Seeley investigates how evolution has honed the decision-making methods of honeybees over millions of years, and he considers similarities between the ways that bee swarms and primate brains process information. He concludes that what works well for bees can also work well for people: any decision-making group should consist of individuals with shared interests and mutual respect, a leader’s influence should be minimized, debate should be relied upon, diverse solutions should be sought, and the majority should be counted on for a dependable resolution.”

So I vote for a new kind of democracy based on 50 million years of wisdom!  The trouble is, I don’t think such an option will be on the ballot paper in the UK elections this Thursday!   I am still not sure whether AV is a step in the right direction – but it seems to be closer to the system that the bees have developed than the current First-Past-The-Post system.

If the internet age is going to really impact democracy in a useful way, then the Delphi Method is a much closer match with what the bees do than the currently proposed AV system. Here is an extract from Wikipedia:

The Delphi method (pronounced /ˈdɛlfaɪ/ DEL-fy) is a structured communication technique, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts.

In the standard version, the experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the “correct” answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a pre-defined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results.


Other versions, such as the Policy Delphi, have been designed for normative and explorative use, particularly in the area of social policy and public health. In Europe, more recent web-based experiments have used the Delphi method as a communication technique for interactive decision-making and e-democracy.

The outstanding issue for me is how do we reform democracy quickly and effectively to keep pace with the challenges the planet faces?  The bi-polar choice we have been given in the UK elections avoids the issue of how we reshape the Western democratic system to become much better at decision making.  I would vote for the bees or the Delphi system over any First-Past-The-Post or AV system.  But this Thursday we are not being given that choice!  All of your thoughts gratefully received!

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The Trouble with Our Education System

A keen fan of the Royal Society of Art’s Animate series, I saw this yesterday and thought it would make a great Thursday Thought:

A great analysis of the problem – but I wonder what readers think the solutions might be? Please add your comments below!

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Escaping Flatland Thinking

I came across this short excerpt from the great film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” – in which Dr Quantum visits Flatland.  Makes you think!

And if you enjoyed that, you might enjoy this – which will begin to stretch your brain quite a bit:

And if you are still with me, come with me to the tenth dimension!

And if you are still with it, then you must be thinking: “Aren’t there really 11 dimensions?” – well here we are for a final brain stretcher:

And if you have gotten this far, I’ll next meet you in anti-time with Rob Bryanton!

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Space: The Final Frontier

I live in the country. I live in the so-called Final Third. Ofcom call it a “Market 1” area – because BT is the only fixed-line service provider providing the physical lines that broadband and telephony run across.

This week, three different views hit me that have changed my whole view on how we roll out broadband to the final third. I expect many of my readers will have switched off by now – but bear with me – because I think it might interest you.

The first view was from Adrian Wooster’s blog – where he has produced a really interesting picture of what the spread of the UK’s broadband looks like by postcode – one image of which I have copied below:

Click on the image on Adrian’s blog site to see each scenario – it loops back at the end to highlight the gulf between where we’re starting from to where we need to get to.  Each spot of light represents a postcode.

At the moment the image only covers England and Wales – Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own statistical output area systems which individually need resolving to postcode level.

The interesting thing is that most of the “final third” remains in the dark – even at 95% coverage!

That got me thinking.  What will be available from WiFi/Mobile/Radio technologies by 2015?  Regular readers will know that I am interested in LightPeak – but there have been two other announcements this week that are very interesting and makes you think differently about broadband for the final third in 2015.

The first was from Alcatel Lucent – who have just announced the launch of the lightRadio cube which can be installed wherever there is electricity.

So this little device will dramatically reduce the costs of deploying mobile phone base stations – whilst allowing extended coverage of 3g networks to areas that are currently far too expensive to cover.

The second was from an In-Stat Report – stating that a new Wi-Fi technology standard called 802.11ac has been developed to provide Gigabit speeds across WiFi networks.  The report predicts 1bn devices shipped with this technology by 2015 – which will allow streaming of high quality video to the TV set – or downloads of BlueRay DVDs in 6 seconds.I expect that many, if not most, will be mobile devices of some sort.

Add these two developments together and you get a very interesting set of technologies that may be able to provide 1Gbps speeds (depending on availability of backhaul) to most households in the country that are not provided with a direct link – i.e those who are in the dark areas on the map.  That is 500 times faster than our current unambitious target for 2Mbps….and will require the cooperation of mobile operators and fixed-line operators who can provide much faster backahual speeds.

Exciting stuff – but I wonder if today’s #digitalbritain thinking is really embracing such ideas as these to create a truly competitive infrastructure for those in the power of the Dark Lord?  As these new technologies are enabled, the bottleneck may well move to the backhaul.  Which is why the current ideas around Fibre to the Community or “Digital Village Pumps” will become even more important.  Then again, I would prefer to redefine FTTH as Fibre to the Hamlet – like the one I live in – or Fibre to the Clachan – as they say in more Celtic countries!

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Hereafter and History Homework

Last night I went to see the Clint Eastwood directed movie – Hereafter.  I thoroughly enjoyed it as I had a near-death experience in the 1980s – and it sang true to many of the things that happened to me at the time – but which I have not really been able to articulate since.

The ironic thing was that I had attended a parents evening the night before and found that my son was struggling with his History and English essay writing. I took my son out to dinner before the film and explained to him that when I sit down to write something of any length, I always do it back-to-front. “Begin with the end in mind”. That sort of thing. I also use this very powerful tool in the work that I do. Some call it envisioning. I call it “Back-to-Front” Thinking. I then thread the important threads through the storyline to create drama, interest and tensions that get resolved at the end (which I have already written). I am no great writer – but I find this technique is so powerful, it has allowed me to express my ideas much better than any technique I was taught at school. I suppose in tech-speak it is like reverse engineering….but on original work and not copied from someone else.

Now when we got out of the film, the two pieces fitted so neatly together! The writer of the Hereafter movie, Peter Morgan, must have written the script back-to-front. How else could he have done it?

Like reading a good book, the film has three threads – a man with psychic powers, a woman writer-journalist who lives a near-death experience and a young boy who….well I don’t want to give too much away! The three threads dance through the film until they resolve each other’s tensions and stories at the end. What good movie or book doesn’t?

So back to Homework. I wondered why I was never taught this technique at school? I think of all the painful experiences where I had to sit down and write – without being told how it important it is to design before doing? I wonder why we don’t talk about the “how” of the structure to produce fine art – and make it much easier for young folk to succeed in what is really quite a simple technique.

Thinking of the UK government and the UK economy, I wonder if it is time for a bit of back-to-front thinking there too?

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Resolutions and Revolutions

It is the time of year that many of us make New Year’s Resolutions.  As the snows have melted and the weather has warmed, tiny spears of spring-green shoots from the bulbs that I planted in the Autumn are now starting to appear in the garden.

It is a time of the year to reflect on some of the natural cycles as we (in the Northern Hemisphere) move from shorter, darker days to longer, brighter days.  We also have the confluence of a New Political Cycle, a New Decade, a New Earth Year as well as many companies having New Financial Years.  The beginning of the current cycle is also probably one the most fundamental shifts that we have seen in a while – exacerbated by the very cold winter spells and financial crisis.  Some would see it as a the start of a revolution with the new coalition government (in the UK) which is set on decentralisation and localisation.

It is strange that the term “revolution” has become to be associated more with revolt than with revolving.  Yet the two ideas of revolution and resolution are inextricably linked.  Yet there is only one letter that is different in each word and that one letter changes everything:

From my own point of view, I have one New Year’s Resolution: I have resolved to reduce my body weight.  Nothing new there, you might say!  After the excessive eating I have done over the holiday period, I now weigh more than I have ever done.  The position is  unsustainable and I have now decided to go on a diet.  But a diet with a difference.  Actually, I prefer to call it conscious living, rather than dieting.

I have downloaded this great application onto my i-Phone called My Fitness Pal (www.myfitnesspal.com) and I am already shedding pounds – just by being conscious about (and recording) everything I eat in the day.

So by becoming conscious of the food we eat (and where it comes from), we can really make a difference – one letter at a time.

In a sense, mankind weighs more on the planet than it has ever done:

  • More people on the planet than history has ever seen
  • More consumption of raw materials (especially oil)
  • More overweight people than we have ever seen
  • More pressures of financial debt than we have seen in several ifetimes

Perhaps it is time for us all to start living more consciously…

Perhaps this is the start of the real revolution….

Anyway, the good thing about the beginning (and end) of any new year is that it makes you think…

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Economies of Scale, Cows, Cats and Dogs

Twenty years ago, I was sent by my company to do an MBA.  It was a qualification that every young and inspiring manager wanted to do.  I was fortunate to be selected.

Looking back, there are a few tools and techniques I remember being taught.  One was the infamous Boston Consulting Group Matrix.  The BCG matrix relates to marketing. The BCG model is a well-known portfolio management tool used in product life cycle theory.  It is often used by big companies to prioritize which products within company product mix get more funding and attention.

It struck me that this tool is probably one of the things that has done most to encourage the other myth that I learnt on the course: Economies of Scale.

It has taken me the past 20 years to both challenge and prove these institutionalised models to be wrong.  not just wrong, but actually very damaging.

So firs, the BCG matrix.  The theory is that you should prioritise your investments into stars and further invest in your cash cows.  You should divest questionable parts of your portfolio and kill-off any dogs you have.

I live in the country, and killing off dogs is definitely not the answer.  Although we don’t have one, I think my neighbours would be very upset with me if I went on a dog-killing spree.

And therein lies the problem with the Matrix.  It has encouraged what one of my City friends calls “rolling up” or aggregation.  It creates industry consolidation and actually destroys innovation.  A good example is Toyota – and this article which is well worth reading.

The matrix also creates right brained caetextic thinking (see previous entry “Why do some organisations drive us totally bonkers?” ) as Fat Cats sit on top of Cash Cows and ultimately caused the corruption that turned into the financial crisis.  I saw this picture of fat cats this week and laughed:

At the same time, the cash cows were herded into larger and larger fields with more and more cows to create the financial equivalent of modern “economies of scale” farming techniques in the US milk production industry.  The industrialisation of cash-cows and the murder of dogs.

It might have made some bankers and investors a lot of money – but has it left the planet a richer place?

We have a similar struggle with Broadband in the UK.  The government, by all accounts, has given into the “economies of scale” argument that BT has produced a plan to protect the cows and kill the dogs (local schemes).  Cash cows don’t innovate.  Only Dogs and Question Marks make Stars.  BCG didn’t understand the true value of dogs.

And this economies of scale argument is probably the myth that is at the centre of the whole melt-down of both the financial framework AND the way in which the UK government has been mismanaged in the past 10 years.

No clearer was this brought out for me than when I attended the Vanguard Leaders Summit a few weeks ago.  If we continue to believe in the myth of economies of scale and encourage the industrialisation of cows and the murdering of dogs, we are surely doomed.  Images of witches being burnt at the stake in the middle ages come to mind.

John Seddon of Vanguard says it is Economies of Flow, not Economies of Scale that actually deliver true growth and sustainable, effective organisations.   So rather than cows and dogs, perhaps a better model is a fish in water?

But if we have to choose between cows and dogs, then I’m for the dogs.  And in the case of broadband and media, it is the dogs I support.  New, local organisations that don’t want to scale.  New social enterprise structures to do local things that are not necessarily highly profitable.  Voluntary organisations that are creating new energy in societies that have been sucked dry by global industrialisation.  They are changing the world for the better far quicker than the industrialised cash cow machines.  They will become the more interesting investments in the future and some will become stars.

I would rather kill the cows off and have a dog as a companion.  For starters, you can’t keep a cow in your sitting room!

Diagram from: http://www.maxi-pedia.com/BCG+matrix+model

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Assange, Argyris and Aristotle

At the end of the week where Julian Assange was locked up and everyone has been commenting on the value (or threat) of Wikileaks, I thought I would reflect on what I see is going on here.

Assange is a deep thinker – perhaps even an Autistic Savant.

In researching the subject I came across a quote which summarises what Assange is trying to do with Wikileaks (from piece of writing (via) (via):

“To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not. Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective action.”

Julian Assange, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies”

It struck me that Julian Assange’s reasoning above was very similar to some of the ideas of another great thinker of our time – Chris Argyris.

I often use Argyris’ ideas (particularly single loop and double loop learning) in the work that I do – and I know that they have helped many others in creating effective change over the past fifty or so years.

For those who are interested, there is a good summary of Argyris’ work HERE.

Basically, Argyris outlines two two models – Model I (Single Loop Learning Organisation) and Model II (Double Loop Learning Organisation) to highlight the potential for organisational learning:

The governing Values of Model I (Single Loop Learning) are:

Achieve the purpose as the actor (or boss) defines it

Win, do not lose

Suppress negative feelings

Emphasise rationality

Primary Strategies are:

Control environment and task unilaterally

Protect self and others unilaterally

Usually operationalised by:

Unillustrated attributions and evaluations e.g.. “You seem unmotivated”

Advocating courses of action which discourage inquiry e.g.. “Lets not talk about the past, that’s over.”

Treating ones’ own views as obviously correct

Making covert attributions and evaluations

Face-saving moves such as leaving potentially embarrassing facts unstated

Consequences include:

Defensive relationships

Low freedom of choice

Reduced production of valid information

Little public testing of ideas

Most of the larger organisations that I consult with exhibit many, if not most of these Model I  characteristics and I am sure that most governments around the world are not that much different.  It is not unsurprising, therefore, that the current concerns over the latest Wikileaks are clouded in language that is imprecise and have overtones of Julian Assange being a “traitor” as well as the actions of Wikileaks being seen to be threatening to existing command and control establishments.

Aristotle had a similar set of ideas in his ethics.

He differentiated between technical thinking and practical thinking and the similarities with Argyris and Schön are striking…

In the article (Aristotle’s Etihcs) the two types of thinking are described:

“The former (technical thinking) involves following routines and some sort of preset plan – and is both less risky for the individual and the organization, and affords greater control.

The latter (practical thinking) is more creative and reflexive, and involves consideration notions of the good. Reflection here is more fundamental: the basic assumptions behind ideas or policies are confronted… hypotheses are publicly tested… processes are disconfirmable not self-seeking….”

So, in one sense, the Wikileaks drama is acting-out an age-old problem: How can we rise above the inadequacies of what Aristotle called “technical thinking“ within an organisational system and encourage more “practical (or ethical) thinking”.  This is what Argyris called the attributes of Model I organisations and what Assange calls “the aspect(s) of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove”.

Aristotle’s view was that the development of “practical wisdom” cannot be acquired solely by learning general rules.  We must also acquire, through practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enable us to put our general understanding of well-being into practice in ways that are suitable to each occasion.

Interesting.  Try and explain those ideas to someone with autism…

So enough of the analysis.  What makes an effective learning organisation?

Argyris cites the following attributes for a Model II organisation:

The governing values of Model II (Double Loop Learning) include:

Valid information

Free and informed choice

Internal commitment

Strategies include:

Sharing control

Participation in design and implementation of action

Operationalised by:

Attribution and evaluation illustrated with relatively directly observable data

Surfacing conflicting view

Encouraging public testing of evaluations

Consequences should include:

Minimally defensive relationships

High freedom of choice

Increased likelihood of double-loop learning

Which brings us back to Julian Assange and Wikileaks.  It is clear, for me, that Assange’s has developed a reasoned approach to changing the attributes of what might be called Big Government and Big Business.  The main question for me, is, could he be more effective?  Has he created his own Model I organisation to effect the changes he outlines he wants to achieve?  Or is Wikileaks a new model II organisation for journalism that uses the internet to help change the belief  system of the organisations that information is leaked about?

Argyris & Schön (Argyris, C., & Schön, D. (1978) Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective, Reading, Mass: Addison Wesley) say that change only comes through a collaboration between the change agent or interventionist and the Model 1 organisation.  They suggests moving through six phases of work:

Phase 1 Mapping the problem as clients see it. This includes the factors and relationships that define the problem, and the relationship with the living systems of the organisation.
Phase 2 The internalization of the map by clients. Through inquiry and confrontation the interventionists work with clients to develop a map for which clients can accept responsibility. However, it also needs to be comprehensive.
Phase 3 Test the model. This involves looking at what ‘testable predictions’ can be derived from the map – and looking to practice and history to see if the predictions stand up. If they do not, the map has to be modified.
Phase 4 Invent solutions to the problem and simulate them to explore their possible impact.
Phase 5 Produce the intervention.
Phase 6 Study the impact. This allows for the correction of errors as well as generating knowledge for future designs. If things work well under the conditions specified by the model, then the map is not disconfirmed.

.

Given that most of the work that I do is, in one way or another, trying to deliver  effective (and collaborative) change, I wonder whether the latest developments in the Wikileaks drama will become the most effective way to use modern internet technology to bring about the changes so vitally needed in this world to challenge the corruption, waste and continuation of so many Model I organisations…..

…….or whether there is another, better, more effective internet-based Type II model which creates a collaboration between the change agents and the Model I organisations to make the change happen more quickly and effectively….

I suppose only time (and more thinking and action) will tell……

Makes you think, anyway!

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Working Through the Big Freeze

I had a commute-from-hell to get home on Tuesday night with a train being broken down in front of mine and my train taking the side-track via a suburban frozen waste.  Not fun.  I decided to stop commuting for the rest of the week.

For the past two days I have greatly benefitted from the efforts in the past ten years to provide broadband to our country and community.  It has allowed me to work from home and do email, Skype calls and productive work from my home office.  When I had my own business in 1996 we had dial-up, the internet was very basic, and working from home was a combination of very slow email with very slow browsing on an internet that had very little information.  It was so slow, in fact, that I had to go back and get a “proper job”.

Today’s internet experience is now very workable– even though my meagre 2-3Mbps kept on dropping in and out with the pressure of other home workers using the internet in the village.  I was actually much more productive, spending the 4 or 5 hours that I might have spent on a train (had the trains been running) doing real work in the warmth of my home.  That said, when I mentioned to a friend of mine (who lives in Reigate and gets 50Mbps) that we had only just got 2-4 Mbps and he laughed out loud as they now say!

In some senses, what we have now is SO much better than what we had before (in the mid 1990s), that there is room for complacency and a sense that we have enough broadband….

But in the new world – (the world we are now creating) – the jobs will have to be (globally) competitive and will require a completely NEW superfast broadband infrastructure for the UK.  It will have many of the basic characteristics of what we have now – such as browsing, internet, e-commerce and video, but it will become safer, faster, more stable, much more interactive, have a lot more video (where you can see the people you are talking to) and have a far greater global reach.  Smartphones and HDTV are likely to hasten the innnovation.

So we must invest in the Next Generation Broadband TODAY.  That means putting fibre optic cables much closer – and eventually into the homes we live in and businesses we work in (often, as I proved today, the same thing).  With climate change, the weather is likely to become more unpredictable  (how many times in our memories have we had commuter-disrupting snow in November?).

Sure, some jobs, like food distributors can’t work on the internet alone.  But many new jobs can be created that can take the shocks of climate change and economic fluctuations.  Perhaps the Big Freeze will have made people think a bit more about the potential of new forms of work and the relationship between work and travel.  Much like the Fax did in the 1980s when we had a postal strike.

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How to be Positive about the Cuts

This week is GEW – Global Entrepreneurship Week.  There have been lots of events around the world.  There are some interesting gaps and statistics from their site:

The Ambition Gap

Over 50% of the population want to start a business but only 5.8% do

The Demographic Gap

Young people (18-24) are 5 times more likely to be unemployed than starting a business

More than twice as many men start business in the UK as women (in 2009, approximately 1.5 million men and 650,000 women started a business).

The Skills Gap

Enterprise Education doubles your chances of business success yet it isn’t a staple of the education system

I also attended a meeting at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills this week.  They have cut 10% of their staff already and are about to take another 20% cuts.  With all these (presumably) senior civil servants unlikely to get another job, what a great opportunity to create a whole new generation of entrepreneurs…..and cut the National Debt.

Did You Know

A rise of just 1% in self employment (less than 300,000 entrepreneurs) would boost the UKs GDP by £22bn and cancel out the Government cuts for 2 years

One of my godsons, who recently graduated from Edinburgh University wrote to me on Wednesday and said he was looking for a job.  I wrote back to him saying that he should make a job, not take a job.  He has not replied to me yet!

If we helped both the older (retiring civil servants) AND the more recent graduates by giving them an incentive to start their own business, then we could really make a big difference in cutting our debts rather and move towards a more positive way of looking at the cuts.  I started my own business 2 years ago and have never looked back.

Make you think!  I hope my godson will be up for it!

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