Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The current credit situation has seen our politicians and financial leaders on the tv and in the news on a daily basis.  The one thing that connects each and every opinion is that none of them ever admit to making a mistake, to doing anything whatsoever wrong.  It’s cringeworthy.  Even if they are caught on camera making the mistake, such as Gordon Brown declaring the end of boom and bust, they still try to wriggle out of it.  Is it any wonder that so few people have any faith in our politicians (this Home Office survey here pins the figure at around 25%).

So when is a good time to admit your mistakes?

Clearly it takes a degree of bravery and humility to admit ones mistakes, perhaps why so few do it, but is it beneficial to do so?  Apparently yes.  I read a piece of research by Fiona Lee, a social scientist, this morning that compared company’s that blame failures on internal issues came out ahead, both in terms of public perception and profitability than those that blamed external factors.  Ms Lee gave participants two annual reports, the first of which blamed a drop in earnings on strategic decisions the company had made and gave an explanation into them.  The second report blamed the external economic environment for the poor results (sound familiar Msrs Brown and Darling?).

Pretty much without fail the participants found report A to be favourable, largely because it appeared that the problems the company faced were both known and concquerable by the company themselves.  Company B by contrast seemed to be at the whim of externalities.

Where things get interesting however is when Ms Lee then goes back over hundreds of annual reports from years past.  They collected statements from 14 companies over 21 years.  Those like company A had higher share prices a year later than those company B’s.

If it’s so right, why do so few do it?

As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, it takes a brave person to admit their mistakes.  It’s far more common to try and divert blame to others than take it on the chin ourselves.  This research should provide ample evidence to support owning up, and if more were needed think about the trustworthyness of our politicians and consider whether you’d be happy to be lumped in with them.  If you make a mistake, own up to it and put in place a plan to rectify the situation.

I’m sure many of you have made mistakes in the workplace, or worked on projects that have failed for whatever reason.  But how many of you have subsequently conducted training on those mistakes, analysing what happened, why it happened and how the same mistakes can be prevented in future?

Obviously a key facet of knowledge management is the flow of information within an organisation, both good and bad.  Freedom of expression is key, but there seems to be a lack of regular dialogue concerning project failures, at least within the companies I have worked for.

As Einstein said, insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The reason for this blog was a study I read last night concerning the training given to a bunch of firemen in America.  The researchers wanted to determine whether training that focused on the mistakes others had made in the past worked better at minimising errors than training that focused on best practice.  Two groups were given case study based training, with one group receiving case studies of failed missions, and the other receiving case studies of successful missions.  When the data was analysed it was found that the firemen that received the training on failure had improved judgement on missions than those that didn’t.

In a corporate environment this is often tricky because by pinpointing failures it can feel as though an employee is being picked upon.  Perhaps in an individual setting this can be intensified, but if the project team are given the opportunity to analyse performance collectively and improvements made then it could go a long way to stopping those failures occurring again.

It would be good to hear from you.  Does your organisation conduct training on failed projects as well as successful ones?

Super day in Trafalgar square today as the British Olympic team were paraded in front of the nation to congratulate them on their achievements.  It was lovely to see all the guys and girls in the flesh, and equally lovely to see the nation come out en masse to celebrate the successes of the summer.

I did attempt to take some photos with my phone, but sadly the event proved that my skills as a photographer are sorely lacking as the large majority turned out to be rather awful.  Which is all rather a shame as I had hoped to get some snaps of the cyclists and swimmers in particular.  Alas I’ll have to make do with these slightly better snaps from the BBC website and try to pretend they’re mine.

Becky Adlington with Mark Foster

Nicole Cooke, Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton

Anyway, it was a fun morning, and to cap it all off Boris gave a typically raucous speech to leave the crowd in raptures as only he can.

Boris giving his speech

Cashback websites are well established now and with Microsoft deciding last month to start rewarding people for using their products it seems that incentivizing people to use a service is an effective means of honing behaviour.  But could it be done better?

The whole notion rests on that of reciprocity.  Game theory went to great lengths to investigate just how people react in such circumstances and by and large found that a tit-for-tat approach is taken.  In a gift exchange game, where two persons in turn determine how large gifts to give to one another, a large gift by the first mover is reimbursed by the second mover.

In incentive schemes however the onus is very much on the user to complete an action, and for them then to be rewarded for so doing by the website.

Whilst this clearly works to an extent, could it work that much better?

Another theory that appears to support the giving by the website in return for action by the user is Endowment theory.  The endowment effect suggests that the value assigned to an item rises once a person has ownership of it.  So in other words, we value things more once they’re ours than when they are not.

So in this context the user would be rewarded outright and would then have to earn the right to keep their reward.

Incentivized websites are big businesses at the moment, with the cashback sector drifting wholesale towards a 100% cashback model.  Is there room for something a little bit different in the market?

I’m sure we’ve all seen messages deriding the population for flying too much or generally wasting electricity. Most of these messages seem to be framed to highlight the sheer amount of waste we produce, something like “10 million Brits fly each year producing 1 billion tonnes of co2 per year”, or something similar.

It got me thinking, does this kind of message actually encourage people to fly rather than the intended result of discouraging people from taking to the air? I read a psychology study yesterday from America that seems to suggest just that. The study focused on Petrified Forest National Park, and the theft of petrified wood from the forest by visitors.  The park had a number of signs dotted around saying:

Many past visitors have removed petrified wood from the park, changing the natural state of the Petrified Forest

The theory goes that because the signs highlighted how many people stole wood it reinforced that behaviour.  So a study was setup whereby an extra sign was added, along with areas with no warning sign at all.  The new sign said:

Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest

With an image of a lone theft and a red warning sign around his hand.

The results were quite staggering.  The old sign saw theft at just under 8%, no sign at all saw theft at just under 3%, and the new sign saw theft fall to under 2%.

So, the point of this post.  Are all the environmental messages that highlight the sheer scale of the damage we’re doing to the environment having the adverse effect of highlighting just how many of us do it, and therefore supporting the activities involved rather than discouraging them?

Nebbiolo over at GrandOldTeam highlighted this morning the bourgening encyclopedia of philosophy project being created at Stanford.  The project attains content courtesy of noted experts in a particular field, who contribute entries based on their field of expertise.  Given the clout of the institution it would seem to be an excellent project in the making.  Clearly by taking this approach the entries are taking a little longer to fill up than on something like Wikipedia, but no doubt the thinking is that when completed the encyclopedia will be an exceptional resource for all things philosophical, written as it was by some of the finest minds in the field.

Now then, this got me thinking.  I’ve always been a free market advocate but it wasn’t until my brother gave me a copy of Emergence, by Stephen Johnson, that I started to appreciate just how bottom up systems worked.  Around this time I was also studying things like neural networks at university and we would often hold debates with our lecturer regarding how systems evolve from simple beginnings to complex creations, mostly with minimal input from the ‘creator’.

From this small acorn grew an interest in libertarian philosophies and so forth into crowd sourcing, complexity science and modern incarnations of roughly the same idea, that of complex systems forming with little over arching control.  Obviously Wikipedia is an example of just such a creation, with editors not required to display their credentials prior to writing an entry.  Despite the various inter-user politics at play on the site, it is by and large a meritocracy with content judged on its own merits rather than who penned it.

With any such project there will undoubtably be errors present, and these are often pounced upon by those that wish to belittle the Wikipedia project, but I feel that despite its flaws it remains an astonishing piece of work that has added tremendously to the pool of knowledge available to us all.

James Surowiecki coined the phrase Wisdom of Crowds in his book of the same name.  I guess only time will tell whether the crowds at Wikipedia can really trump the venerable experts over at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I’ve been a member of the GrandOldTeam.com Everton forum for a little while now under the sudonym Bruce Wayne (long story), and a moderator for the past few months.  It’s a really great community for all things Everton, with some lovely folks from around the world.  Danny and Dylan have done a super job in creating the place from scratch and turning it into one of the best Everton communities on the web.

Anyway, enough bum licking.  Hopefully some of those guys will find their way over to this humble blog.  In which case, hello to all.  Good to have you here

I see a bit of a trend developing here, but another ambition of mine has been to learn to swing dance.  I’m not really sure where my interest in swing came from but I suspect it stems from the time my brother lent me a copy of Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies.  Having played the trumpet (badly, really badly) in my youth I had an inkling of this sort of thing, but whereas the teachers of my youth stuck to staid old Glenn Miller numbers, the ‘Daddies seemed to light a rocket under it all, bursting forth with vitality and irreverence.

I managed to hunt down some clips of swing dancing (pre-YouTube here folks) and was instantly hooked.  Sadly the Isle of Wight isn’t a hotbed for less mainstream artistic pursuits so there was nowhere really to strut my stuff.  I remember however going to the Cabinet War Rooms for a dinner party as guests of the Made in Britain association.  The whole event was 40′s themed and they had some swing dancers as entertainment.  Whooping with joy wouldn’t really have been the done thing, but rest assured that internally I was giddy with excitement.

Anyway, I am now safely resided in London where there appears to be ample opportunity to partake in a bit of jiving, so I am hauling myself off to a beginners class this Wednesday at a Jitterbug club near Marble Arch.  Cannot wait.  Hopefully the event shall go down a storm and before you can say Boogie Woogie I’ll be jumping and jiving like these amazing folks from America.

I’ve long had a soft spot for America.  The entrepreneurial spirit that seems to flow through its people strikes a chord and despite the battering the country’s reputation has taken under the Bush administration it has remained dear to my heart.

And so it was with some relish that I looked forward to the series that sees Stephen Fry travel around each of the 50 states in his own homage to the land that was almost one he could call home.  The prospect of the wonderful Fry and the wonderful America so enticed me in fact that I shelled out for the accompianing book.  Both the book and the initial program on Sunday night were nice tasters of just what it is that makes America a special place.  It would have been nice if one or the other had given a little more depth.  After all, each state is almost akin to a European country in size and variety so I was sometimes left craving more.

I guess the answer to that would be to take the plunge and embark on a road trip of my own, or more couragesly to try and get into Stanford to do the MBA that I have so often dreamt about.

A MBA from Stanford is something I’ve dreamt about ever since I got bitten by the technology bug around the turn of the millenium.  I don’t know whether it’s the lure of Sillicon Valley and the wonderful inventive spirit that seems to flow throughout the region, or indeed a sort of academic snobbery that sees me so often in awe of those that attend the worlds premier academic institutions.

Whatever the reason it has indeed been a dream of mine for a little while.  Alongside the lofty position Stanford holds in my heart however is the feeling that little ol’ me is largely unworthy of a place in its hallowed halls.  So the dream has been on hold whilst I’ve attempted to learn all that I can, gaining the odd qualification and nuggets of experience along the way.

Anyway, I felt like I was getting closer to a position where I could at least have a stab at entry now.  I feel I’m perhaps smarter than the average bear, and have saved up enough to cover the course fees.  So with a latent confidence the Stanford site was opened and all facets devoured.  Now perhaps my aforementioned awe of the institution isn’t enabling a particularly qualified point of view here, but the course does look outstanding.

Browsing through the entry requirements and it all seems like good fun.

• Bachelors degree – check
• A GMAT – not sure what this is but it sounds like a test I would have to complete, no huge fears there.
• Academic record – no specifics required (which is good considering the horror show that was my first degree) but an expectation that you ‘challenged yourself throughout your academic career’.
• 3 letters of reference

Bugger.  There always has to be a snag and I fear this last one could be just that.  They ask for 3 references; 2 from employers (1 from direct supervisor and 1 from A N Other that evaluates your work), and 1 from a peer.  I felt I had a great relationship with my peers at TMN, and indeed initially with the bosses.  But (the royal but), as time went on, such was the gap in professional philosophy between myself and both the company and my boss that working together became pretty tough.

Now I won’t pretend to be perfect, far from it, but I have studied marketing and management an awful lot and would like to believe that what I have learnt has merits in practice.  So whilst I will no doubt take things from my time at TMN that I can use to improve, I also like to think that my convictions are worthy of sticking up for in a professional context.  Alas it seems unlikely that TMN will offer up a glowing recommendation to support my application, which somewhat leaves me in a quandry of what to do.  What to do indeed.