How Capable Blog Started

Four years ago I started this blog. Capable People was young and acquiring its leads very much by word of mouth (which it still does, of course). I was researching ways to increase the visibility of our corporate website, get it higher up search engine rankings, more visitors, and so on – for fairly obvious reasons. I think my research started by googling a phrase something like “how to get more visitors to your website”, then trawling through what came up. Anyway, a recurring theme was “get a blog” so, on a whim, I did. That lifted the lid off Pandora’s Box somewhat as I then immediately needed to populate it with something – but what? Back to google … “the do and don’ts of blogs” (or something). Rudimentary though this research was, it actually gave me a useful set of guidelines within about 30 minutes that I still use today. I followed the same path when I started using twitter too, although this continues to be very much a work in progress. We also have a LinkedIn discussion group, but we do not use Facebook.

Rules is rules

The main point I am making in this post is that there are rules (or established conventions, to be more precise). Following the rules make it more likely that social media will work for you, while ignoring or breaking the rules may be worse than not using social media at all. In social media we have a newish vehicle by which companies can interact with their customers or user group. The vehicle has rules and conventions that are established by the user group, and companies have to understand and accept this. So rule 1 is that the company doesn’t make or dictate the rules. Any attempt simply to use your blog and twitter feed as a direct advert for your services will be rejected. You are, in effect, inviting yourself into the virtual social lives of your user group, and they will tolerate your presence only up to the point that you start to become a nuisance, and being a corporate nuisance in the world of social media is a very dangerous thing to be

It has to “add” something

Let’s get one thing straight, adverts are adverts. Adverts have been around for a while and we all know what they are. Corporate websites are the same. More or less an on-line advert for the day job. Anybody who thinks integrating social media applications as part of the same mix is on completely the wrong page. That is not how it works. Let’s start with blogging. If you think you can just cloak an advert for your services under the cover of a blog article, forget it. Few people are so stupid that they can’t see through it, and nobody likes being talked to like they are stupid. Blogs have to be interesting, funny or valuable in some way, preferably with genuinely original content and well written. The rules of blogging are quite straightforward, actually

The best uses of twitter, on the other hand, in my opinion anyway, is where the company actually tries to use twitter to add something to the way they interact with the customer. The best examples I have come across recently are @DellCares and @DeltaAssist. These corporate entities actually use twitter to pick up rapidly on gripes and grumbles of customers (like me) not only to respond to them, but also to actually resolve the problems via Direct Messages. For example, I have changed flights with Delta using twitter alone, and had a faulty printer replaced by Dell again simply via 2 or 3 tweets. They don’t use twitter merely as a means of sweeping cyberspace for gripes and then passing them on to the normal complaint handling people, they actually pick up the problem and DEAL with the problem at one fell swoop. The first time this happened to me (Delta) I thought it was incredible. I was on a KLM code share to the USA and found that everything KLM managed to screw up, I could tweet @DeltaAssist to get sorted, even in transit. KLM had no such equivalent process. Their twitter account merely routed you to a number you could spend the best part of a day on and still not get a result. Since then I have found the same smartness applies to @Dellcares

Anyway, the point is that social media CAN play a highly effective part in the customer relationship, but it has to ADD something. Merely using it to repeat or duplicate something that happens on your website, well, does that really add anything? I don’t think so

The final observation I will make about social media (from a commercial perspective) is that it tends to be quite fair with you. You get out of it about as much as you deserve, by and large. I think that’s a good thing

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Smart Use of Social Media

Why Information Risk is a Board-level Issue

• Every organisation, whether public or private sector, handles information. This information must be appropriately controlled and protected against the threats, non-technical as well as technical, that can affect it

• Compromised information can cause enormous damage to an organisation’s operations and reputation. Information not appropriately protected can lead to serious compliance and legal failures

• Good Information Risk Management helps an organisation get the best out of its information and to move forward and develop, confident that its risks

Read more …

www.capablepeople.co.uk

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Information Risk – It’s a Board Room Matter

Seasons greetings to everyone who has read and supported this blog over the past 4 years. It started as a hobby and has grown into … a hobby. That said, it has brought me in touch with a range of very nice, intelligent and interesting people so, for that reason alone, it has been worthwhile

To add a little festive cheer to your lives, I have linked to this wonderful example of dynamic incident management. To appreciate it in all its splendour, you have to have the sound turned up so you can hear the commentary

Meantime, I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012. Please don’t worry that the world will end. It won’t. The Mayan calendar only had 360 days so, given that they clearly could not even accurately predict the end of a solar year, the chances of them being any more successful predicting the end of days I would say is remote

Shaun

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Seasons Greetings from Capable Blog

There is a discussion in process within the Capable People LinkedIn discussion group at the moment, started by Craig Cartmell. Craig initially asked whether anyone had seen much evidence of any practical application of ISO 9004:2009 by companies. Naturally, I’ve added my ten cents, but the issues, I think, deserve an airing on here too, as I think, at best, ISO 9004:2009 is an enigma

So, two years on, where are we with it?

When ISO 9004:2009 was released, I think it is fair to say it took a lot of us by surprise. I posted a review of it soon after I had first sight of it, but at that time it was a bit early to judge its practical impact. What struck me first was that it was fundamentally a different document to its predecessor both in content and intended use. It no longer gave you clause by clause help on the intent of ISO 9001. In retrospect I now see that as a big retrograde step. Whatever we might feel about the weaknesses of ISO 9001, the old ISO 9004 did at least reduce the chances of inappropriate application. So, that useful “help” document is gone (or at least withdrawn). Whatever the intent of ISO 9004:2009 was or is, I do think that at the very least the old 9004 should have been allowed to retain its position within the series. The baby, in my opinion, went out with the bathwater. At the time I remember thinking, based on the general bemusement of the community with ISO 9004:2009, who asked for this? Time would tell, I concluded – let’s see who is actively using it two years down the line. Now I believe it is fair to conclude that appetite for the document is limited. I get around more than most and do not find people using it at all in a business context, and the only chatter about it is in an academic context such as this

Now I do appreciate that hindsight is 100% accurate, but I also believe that it is not that difficult to vox pop the user group and get a feel for demand beforehand. I simply cannot accept that this could have been done properly in this case. There are people who believe that it was developed with a view to craftily sliding in a “higher than ISO 9001″ level of QMS certification by stealth, but I’ve not seen any evidence for this. Moreover I don’t think the document reads like a certifiable standard, so I don’t buy into that conspiracy theory. In summary I am still left scratching my head after two years, lamenting the loss of the old style ISO 9004 and wondering how much time and money was spent (I won’t say wasted) developing something which, to me, seems like a complete white elephant

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ISO 9004:2009 – Is it any practical use?

The performance of a system is affected in no small way by the behaviour of the people in it. They are affected in turn by variousl factors, their health and well-being, their state of mind, their competence and, last but not least, their motivation. This somewhat inconvenient situation is nevertheless recognised in its own somewhat clumsy way within ISO 9000. Involvement of People is listed as one of the 8 underpinning principles of quality management. The only problem is the auditable standard does not devote much effort towards defining any required system attributes that are likely to promote the principle, save perhaps for a bit of training (clause 6.2.2). It stands as a principle more or less absent of requirements

The main reason for the omission, perhaps, is that the subject is DIFFICULT. It’s tough. The concept of motivation is supported only by a lot of theories. Not laws or rules, just theories. None are proven and not all are necessarily consistent with one another. So dare I suggest that ISO 9001 takes the convenient option of side-stepping the issue for the time being? Let’s face it, many of us do the same. How often do we see adverts for “self-motivated individuals”. What should that tell us about the job? Don’t expect excitement? Don’t expect any thanks, recognition or encouragement? Maybe it should set the alarm bells well and truly ringing as we could often read between the lines “Mug required for god-awful job”

Deming, however, believed people do actually carry an inherent motivation. So maybe this concept of a “self-motivated individual” is no fallacy, after all. He believed each of us holds a desire to do a good job and we take pride in doing so. If true, that’s has to be a good thing, hasn’t it? Because, as leaders and managers, it gets us off to a bit of a flying start

But hang on a moment, we need to be careful. “Inherent” does not mean “unconditional” or “indestructible”. Motivation can be destroyed. It is destroyed – all the time. How often have we seen first day enthusiasm systematically crushed and replaced by seasoned cynicism and apathy? And here’s the rub. Who always gets the blame for this loss of motivation? Yes, the poor old worker

Good old blame. The management tool of choice for the terminally inept, as easy as credit and as versatile as a Swiss Army Knife

Anyway, whatever theory of motivation we subscribe to, it is underpinned by a fundamental law
People get pissed off

This links nicely back to an earlier post relating to the role of leaders in amongst all this malarkey. A key role of a leader, according to Deming, is to continually seek ways to make it easier for people to do a good job – remove the barriers. This post on Curious Cat refers to Deming’s views on this matter and calls on managers not to motivate but to “Stop De-Motivating Employees”

In other words, people are already inherently motivated – all we as leaders can do is mess it up … but sadly mess it up we usually do

In a very early post I highlighted the practice in a US Army Garrison of rewarding staff for making improvement suggestions. Deming was not one for that sort of thing at all. He deemed that to be extrinsic motivation, and you only need extrinsic motivation if you have failed to build intrinsic motivation into the job. He saw extrinsic motivators like that as a work-around and an indicator of a deeper, more under-lying, system malaise

Anyway, to summarise, we can perhaps take a useful and practical lesson from this great imponderable. That is, if the subject of motivation is so big and complex so as to freak us out, could we come at it from another, perhaps easier, angle, and focus on the identification and removal of demotivators?

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Deming on involvement of people

A couple of weeks ago I promised my twitter followers that I’d do a short blog post about my trip to Western Siberia. After all, it isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence

How it came about

About 2 years ago a man called Gerry attended a lead auditor course I was delivering in the UK. He was working for an engineering company based in Noyabrsk (about 3.5 hrs flight north east of Moscow). Like most people who attend public training courses, he disappeared into the ether once the course was over. Then, in September, Gerry called me out of the blue on my mobile. He asked if I wouldn’t mind coming over to Siberia to train his team of internal auditors as it would be easier and cheaper to get me a visa and travel to them than it would be for them to come to me

The Journey

The journey out to Noyabrsk involves a flight from the UK to Moscow, followed by an internal flight from Moscow to Noyabrsk by UTAir (which was fine, actually). This journey puts you 6 hours ahead of GMT, and into another world. A world where planes land in all weathers and can offer you a landing experience unlike any you’ve had before

Life and work in Siberia

With 9 months of winter, nothing else for thousands of miles, and temperatures of -40, Stalin knew what he was doing when he identified the punitive potential of a stint in Siberia. There is little chance that anyone could mistake it for a treat. People live and work there because of the oil and gas reserves and, because of the value of the resource, the actual facilities and infrastructure are quite good, as are the calibre of people you work with. It is the elements you need to watch out for. At -40 (so I am told) you have to guard (amongst other things) that the fluid in your eyeball doesn’t freeze. There’s a scary thought.  The worst I experienced was a very mild -12. My eyeballs did not freeze

Photos

On a whistle stop tour, photo opportunities are limited, but here are a few to give you a flavour of things

A good idea for any office in Russia, so I am told

View from my bedroom window, Park Hotel, Noyabrsk

The general terrain

Siberia sunset (about 3.30pm at the end of November)

I took a telling off by a gentleman who looked like Klinger from M*A*S*H for taking this

Cheery Noyabrsk Airport

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Siberia Travelogue

Many people use the word “efficiency” without really understanding what the term means. Even fewer understand how efficiency works – the dynamics of efficiency, if you will. So here’s a crash course. You can thank me later

In an earlier post I outlined the difference between efficiency and economy. An economy is spending less money (making a cut, in other words, which often results in doing less in order to make ends meet) whereas efficiency is the ratio of productive output in relation to the inputs to the system. An efficiency could therefore mean producing a similar quantity of productive output with a reduced input, or it could even mean doing more for less – which is more difficult. Anyhow, that’s what it is. Now to talk about how it works, because I worry that some people don’t understand some simple facts of efficiency life

Efficiency and the simple facts of life

There is one golden rule to appreciate if you are to fully understand the dynamics of efficiency

Efficiency never happens by accident or without a reason

What I mean by that is that systems are NEVER accidentally or naturally efficient. A system will ALWAYS gravitate (given the choice) to the easiest possible life. Efficiencies will never fall out of the sky and on to your lap. You have to go and find them and drag them kicking and screaming from their hiding places. Systems generally resist efficiency because it means a hard life. That means that you seldom find real efficiency in uncompetitive markets, and the most efficient systems you will find will always have competitors just half a step behind them snapping at their heals

My eureka moment

I was once at an event where a man called David was describing a recent and dramatic turnaround where his company managed to rescue itself from a seemingly terminal decline. In the Q&A that followed a member of the audience asked “How did you deal with resistance? How did you manage to get staff buy in? That is usually very difficult”. David paused for a moment and then responded “There was no resistance. We did not give them the option. Nothing polarises your strategy more than a lack of alternatives”. As I write this, I heard those words 7 years ago and it was a eureka moment. Maybe my biggest eureka moment. In that instant I understood how efficiency worked. I realised it was not about culture change models or quality management tools, it was more like an evolutionary event, obeying very simple evolutionary rules. A certain set of circumstances existed that allowed survival under certain conditions, and you either found a way of meeting those conditions, or you die. David’s company accurately assessed their options and found they only had one option remaining. So they followed it, and anyone who didn’t like it was told they could lump it.  They learned, and they lived to pass on their wisdom. Others are not so fortunate

Anyway, to cut a long story short, if you are a quality manager with a passion for your job, tearing your remaining hair out asking yourself how your system can be so inefficient, and why other people can be so ambivalent towards it, I give you this word of comfort. It isn’t your fault. There may not be that much you or anybody can do about it. The simple fact is that your system is most probably the way it is, and your people are the way they are, because they can be. The real fun will only start when that option ceases to be available – when things get tougher

So be careful what you wish for

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A crash course in efficiency

I first posted this blog link in 2009. The video clips that it links to catalogue the disaster that occurred on the North Sea Piper Alpha rig on 6th July 1988. 167 men died. It is a fascinating and sobering document that shows, if nothing else, how a combination of apparently individually innocuous failings contributed to a cataclysmic and devastating failure in the management of safety on that rig, with terrible human consequences. It remains Capable Blogs most consistently visited post.

The story has taken on added poignancy for me lately. During a couple of assignments with Chevron earlier in the year I was fortunate to meet a number of experienced North Sea workers who gave me some first hand insights into the course of events on that night. I met people who lost friends, and also people who were working on that night, but on neighbouring rigs. One of the most unnerving facts that came to light during our discussions was that those terrible events that occurred on that night on Piper Alpha could easily have happened on any of the other rigs on that Occidental network. The message for us all being that the lack of a disaster does not necessarily mean a sound safety system, it could just mean a run of good luck …

Click here to view the embedded video.

Part 1

Click here to view the embedded video.

Part 2

Click here to view the embedded video.

Part 3

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A Case Study in Accident Investigation – Piper Alpha

A chance encounter

Let’s start the story at the beginning. Sometime in 2005 I was on my way back home on a Thai Air flight from Jakarta to Heathrow, via Bangkok. In Bangkok I was joined by a casually dressed, youngish Englishman. One look told me he had some money because his clothes and shoes looked expensive, as was his seat on the plane. After a while we got talking. I told him what I did, he told me what he did. Turned out he was a professional gambler living in Thailand. I was immediately captivated by the glamour of his chosen profession, he seemed keen to talk and while away the hours, I was keen to listen. So in the intervening 12 hours or so I got a pretty good insight into the life of a professional gambler

Well, surprise surprise, it’s not all glamour and it’s not all luck. That was lesson number one and two. The man was a statistician by education, a former mathematics teacher of all things, who had turned a knowledge of statistics to his advantage in the arena of sports betting. The trick to making a profit in the longer term was, apparently, to have an ability to identify when the bookies have got the odds wrong. That’s when you place your bets. They don’t all come off, but the odds start slanting your way as opposed to the way of the bookie. Being able to identify when the odds were wrong involved a working knowledge of statistics, and a better knowledge of the event than the bookie appeared to have, and that usually involved some very painstaking research. He was based in Thailand because the bookies in South East Asia get the odds wrong more often than they do elsewhere. Makes sense

So what were his strategies? Well, here are some that I can remember:

* Bet with a clear head. If you have a favourite team, leave it alone
* Avoid accumulator bets. With each accumulated event, the odds lurch further the way of the bookie
* Do your research. Pick, say, ten football teams a year and study them continually. Find out which games they tend to win, which they lose, which players appear to be key, injury situations etc. This will all give you a clear advantage over the lazier bookies
* Stick to sports you like and understand. You’ll have to study hard, but it will be easier for you if you happen to enjoy the game
* Steer clear of boxing

There were a few others, but that gives a feel for it

Get to the point, Sayers!

Very interesting, you may say, but what’s this all got to do with quality? Well there is a point to this tale, and here it is

Remember in the earlier post, Deming’s inconvenient truth, I suggested that Deming taught that management decisions should wherever possible be based on hard facts and evidence? But also that a lot of management information is both unknown and unknowable? Well that summarises in a nutshell that business is one big lottery. There are no certainties, and for every success there is a failure. If all management information was knowable there would be a scientific formula to remove all elements of risk from the decision making process. But it isn’t and there isn’t. That is a lot like the world of professional gambling. All bets carry an inherent risk, and professional gamblers accept risk and occasional failure as an unavoidable fact of life. HOWEVER the most successful gamblers use as much Management Information as they can get their hands on to slant the odds their way

That, I propose, is probably as close to an absolute definition of “Management Information”, its uses and limitations, that you’re ever likely to get

As definitions go, it is a bit on the long side. Sorry

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Making sense of Quality

(With thanks to Chris Baker, Technical Director, Institute of Internal Auditors)

Changing risk profile

The head of internal audit needs to know whether anything has changed in the risk profile of the organisation to create the desire for the audit. Since management is responsible for managing risks, the head of internal audit will discuss with the management responsible for the information security risks their assessment of the effect of the recent events on the organisation’s risk profile

The considerations to take into account relate to the evaluation of the risks and of the responses that management believes are in place to address these risks. They include:

1. The size of a risk depends on the impact on the organisation if the risk event crystallises and the likelihood that it will crystallise. The evaluation of the size may therefore have changed because:

• The projected impact of losing personal data may now be thought to be higher than before because the damage to reputation could be greater given the publicity and public interest in the issue, and the potential sanction demanded by the data protection regulators may be higher than before
• It is possible that the likelihood of this happening might be changed – perhaps there will be increased interest of external parties in trying to force an incident or perhaps managers have decided immediately to follow the actions of HM Customs and Revenue, to remove the drive bays and connections ports and thus to terminate the possibility of moving any data onto digital media
• The actual effectiveness of existing responses to the risk may change – e.g staff may be more sensitive to the risk as a result of the publicity.
• The perceived effectiveness of responses to the risk may also change – managers may have been relying on technical access controls to protect access to confidential data, not taking into account the vulnerabilities related to transferring data outside the organisation

All of these may change the relative priority of data security issues and the appropriate treatment in the internal audit plan Source of assurance and skills available to internal audit. The internal audit plan will take into account not only the risk analysis but also those areas on which those responsible for governance want the independent and objective assurance that internal audit can offer as well as the skills available to internal audit to provide that assurance

Given the greater focus on data security issues, senior management and the board may feel a need for more independent and objective assurance. This would be a reason for including a new project in the internal audit plan

However, the head of internal audit may be able to minimise the work to be done by internal audit by reviewing the work being done by other assurance sources. Internal audit can assist the organisation by helping senior management and the audit committee to understand all the monitoring and assurance activities that the organisation undertakes and by providing a bridge between the data security specialists and the audit committee, if one is needed

Although in an ideal world, all internal audit activities will have the skills necessary to address data security issues, it may still be the case that some organisations do not have those skills available. The head of internal audit will have reported this to those responsible for governance and obtained their approval of the implications – that certain assurances could not be provided. Given the changes in the perceptions of data security issues, this may no longer be acceptable. In that case, the head of internal audit will be required to identify and source skilled resources from elsewhere

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A risk-based approach to internal audit planning