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Reasons Managers and Business Decision Makers MUST Understand Basics of Research: Stop Bandwagon Jumping With These Eight Steps
Reasons Managers and Business Decision Makers MUST Understand Basics of Research: Stop Bandwagon Jumping With These Eight Steps There's so much bad information, pseudo-science research and much of it is repeated endlessly in blogs and in social media. Don't get diverted from what works to what is a fad. In this article we explain the problem, and suggest 8 steps all business decision makers should take. And, for that matter, any intelligent thinking person.
Performance Appraisal Goofs - Common Managerial Mistakes Series
Performance Appraisal Goofs - Common Managerial Mistakes Series In this column we look at perhaps the area where managers make the most mistakes--in performance appraisals.
Leaders Who Refuse To Lead - Common Managerial Mistake Series
Leaders Who Refuse To Lead - Common Managerial Mistake Series When managers or formal leaders refuse to take on the responsibilities of leadership, some very nasty things can happen to organizations.
Interactive Chat Everywhere: Website, Email and Social Media for E-Commerce and Online Customer Service
Businesses around the world are using live chat to boost online sales, reduce customer service costs and increase customer satisfaction. Now, new developments in chat technology make it possible to extend chat beyond your web site to online advertising, email marketing, press releases and even social media. Learn how you can use rich media chat to leverage social media, and transform traditional one-way marketing campaigns into interactive conversations that reach more customers.
Elevating the End User Experience in Travel and Expense Management
Technology innovations in social media and networks, mobile devices and applications, together with cloud computing have turned the consumer marketplace on its ear, changing the way we think with more resources than ever before at our finger tips. More and more consumers today are asking, "Why can't the applications I use at work be this simple?" Explore how this social shift is changing T&E technology developments to focus on the end user experience with this on-demand webinar from IDC and Concur.
Ever get frustrated because you can’t find what you want using Google? Or some other search engine? Us too. Many people are feeling that, over the last year or so, the results they get from searches on the Internet have become less and less useful and the more Google tries to improve them, the worse they seem to get. Is it because Google is intentionally trying to get you to click on ads in pursuit of profit? Probably not. It’s more likely the result of Google falling into the trap of creating a super-complex system that is, in essence, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.
Super-Complex Systems Explained in Plain English
A super-complex system is a system that has many INTERACTING variables, where the variables AFFECT each other. For example, the human body is a super-complex system. Let’s say you have a thyroid condition. The level of hormones secreted by the thyroid interact with hundreds of other factors, such as the secretion of adrenaline, and how the other organs in your body function. Not only does thyroid function affect other organs, but other things in the body affect what the thyroid does.
That’s why treatment is challenging. If you “disable” the thyroid to counter-act hyperthyroidism, you have to replace its function with medication, and therein lies the rub, since if you get the levels wrong (and the exact level for each person is an unknown), you create other problems. The appropriate levels “depend” on a good many things.
It’s the same for the brain, or other super-complex systems like the economy, both of which are so complex because everything affects everything, perhaps the best way to put super-complex systems “in a nutshell”.
Back To Google Search
As Google as evolved, that challenge of giving you what you want in search results has gotten more difficult, because the Internet has grown, and changed, become more complex itself, with the advent of social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc), and the ability for anyone to publish anything, with no oversight or quality control. The amount of content to be searched is so huge it’s mind boggling.
In response to this, Google has added more and more factors (called signals) to determine the quality of websites, so that’ there are now over 200 interacting signals used to rank websites. Couple the issues of “quality”, with the difficulty in having machines figuring out what’s “in your head”, and you end up with a super-complex system.
And that means that not only are the search results getting less useful, but they are not likely to get better.
The Google “Wall” And Super-Complex Systems
At some point, when a complex system becomes a super-complex system, several things happen:
Nobody, not even those that create the system or maintain it, can predict how any specific change will affect the final outcome. For that reason, the effects of trying to “make a super-complex system better” can only be determined by actually trying things out. There is simply no way to predict whether any change, let’s say in how Google determines quality,except to actually make the change, put it in production as a limited test, and then evaluate the results. Which is what Google does. The problem is the change-test-evaluate cycle is relatively slow and may need to be done thousands of times until one gets reasonable improvement because there are so many variables to test.
On top of that, a change may yield better results for some searches, but create a nasty mess for other kinds of searches, and all that has to be evaluated.
It simply doesn’t work. Change something, and some things may get better and some things will get worse. And that’s the core of the problem.
Google has hit the wall.
Is It Fixable?
In a nutshell, no. You can’t fix a super-complex system by making it more complex. Worse, though, because nobody understands or can predict what a super-complex system will do, case by case, how do you fix it? You can’t, and it goes back to the law of unintended consequences magnified. Make one thing better, and make seven things worse. Try to fix the things that got worse, and you might have two things that get better and some new problems cropping up.
Are Other Search Engines Better?
In a way. Bing is slightly better in terms of search quality, at least from what can be seen by a user, and there are other engines that appear to provide better results, because they use less signals, and their algorithms for displaying search results are simpler. Ironically, it may end up that the simpler a search engine is (within limits), the better it will be, except that complex systems tend to grow more complex, not more simple. However, what’s interesting is that if it’s the case that simpler is better, there’s a suggestion about where search must “go” it it’s to become and stay useful to end users. But that will have to wait for another time.
Conclusions On Google Search Results and Super-Complexity
It isn’t going to get better by making things more complex.
Nobody, not even the Ph.D’s at the Googleplex, can predict how their search engine will behave.
If you can’t predict behavior, you can’t control it, except on a trial and error basis, which, it appears, Google is trying to do.
The more you try to “fix” super-complex systems, the less likely you are to make them better.
The future of search engines lies in smaller, less complex systems.
One of the issues with complex systems is that they overload our brains, so that not only can we not understand them fully, but they produce a sense of being overwhelmed.
A system is a bundle of “things” that work together to produce a result. So, for example, you car is a system — a set of parts that function to provide the benefits (when the system works) or failures (when the system doesn’t work). You have the body, the tires, the steering wheel, the gas, seats, engine and it’s parts, and so on, and those all make up the “car system”.
The limits of a system are defined somewhat arbitrarily. That is, a system can be broken down into sub-systems, or you can think of the system in a broader way. So, for a car, the “drive train” is a sub-system. Or, you can broaden the “car system to include the gas vendors, the roads, and so on. Theoretically one defines a system in terms of it’s function, but there’s no one way to draw the line between one system and another.
A complex system is one that has many many parts to it, where the parts not only combine to provide a function, but interact with each other so that one part actually modifies the function of all the other parts. The more parts, the more they affect each other, the more complex.
Complex Systems and Real Life
Complex systems are not just something theoretical. They have profound effects on almost everything. For example, our economy is a hugely complex system, as is the Google search engine, as is our feed chain. So, understanding complex systems helps us understand why so many things go wrong, or don’t function as we want on a consistent basis.
So, to help us understand complex systems, I’ve formulated a few laws of complex systems that can be applied to the real life situations we will be talking about in this series of articles.
Laws of Complex Systems
Systems naturally evolve into complex systems, and in rarer cases into “super complex systems” over time. For example, most things, like how we get our food, or how the price of gas gets set, or our computers, have gone from simple (ie. the Commodore 64 to our Windows based systems), to the much more complex. Some systems, like the Google search engine have gone from simple to complex to super-complex.
As a system gets more complex the ability of individual people to understand every aspect of the system gets diminished until, particularly with super-complex systems, nobody understands the system, nobody can control it, and nobody can predict how any one change in one part of the system will affect how well the system works.
As a system gets more and more complex, and fewer people understand the system or can control or predict what it will do, it becomes less stable, less efficient, and more error prone. For example, ever notice that using your computer on the Internet will yield countless small errors on web pages, links that don’t work, ecommerce systems that work most of the time but not all of the time, or web pages that will work in one browser but not another? That’s complexity.
Physical systems (your car, the space shuttle) can be complex, but because they are not dynamic (they don’t change on their own), it’s possible to understand them sufficiently to operate them, or fix them. When humans are involved, it changes the game entirely. Human systems (e.g. the stock market, economy, relationships, etc) ARE dynamic, because people change and they act inconsistently. A car can be fixed if it breaks, but if you define the “personal transportation system” as a car + driver, all of a sudden we can’t predict what will happen on an individual basis. So, if you want to reduce accidents by looking at this personal transportation system, it becomes hugely difficult because the driver sometimes does this, and sometimes does that. The car tends to do that same thing under the same conditions, but the human doesn’t.
Complex systems are affected by the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is simply that when you fiddle with one part of a complex system, no matter how small, it may yield the results you want, and it will have unintended consequences that you do NOT want. Make a car go faster, sure, but then you use more gas.
As complex systems get more complex, they require more work to build, run and fix, and because of that become hugely inefficient.
Well, you do, if you want to understand why you spend more and more time maintaining your “stuff” and more and more time getting frustrated when things don’t work properly, and even why our democracies seem to get crazier and crazier. In other additions to this series, we’ll explain why people often appear “stupid”, why customer service has gotten worse, and look at the application of these laws of complex systems to our lives, on an everyday basis.
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Bacal To Teach At Internal Communications Conference in Ottawa January 23, 2012
I’m pleased to announce that I will be doing a pre-conference 3 hour workshop on metrics related to evaluating the effectiveness of internal communication strategies.
The general conference information follows:
Strategic Internal Communications for Government:
How To Use Social Media And Traditional Communications To Engage Employees, Drive Performance And Add Value
*******************
January 23 – 26, 2012 ~ Ottawa, Ontario
January 23 & 26, 2012: Pre- & Post-Conference Workshops
January 24 & 25, 2012: Plenary/General Session Presentations
SOME TOPIC SUGGESTIONS:
Engaging employees at all levels by connecting them to your organization’s goals and strategic plan for the future
Reinventing the role of the communication function from tactical implementers to strategic change managers
Using leadership communication to build employee trust
Overcoming limitations of tools and tactics to implement your strategy
Motivating employees at all levels of your organization to be committed to and carry out your strategy in their daily jobs
Creating a social media (blogging, podcasting, wikis, etc.) strategy to drive performance-based communications
Setting measurable communication objectives that connect internal and external communication activities with bottom-line results
Linking communication objectives and goals to your strategy
Fostering mission-focused employee behavior and culture to support agency goals
Measuring the impact communications has on relevant performance measures such as quality, service and cost
Integrating an employee engagement campaign into your communications plan to positively affect the bottom line
Determining the right metrics for key strategies and deliverables
Involving the right partners (Communications, HR, Marketing, Operations, etc.) across your organization to engage employees and drive results
WHO WILL ATTEND?:
This conference has been researched with and designed for FEDERAL, PROVINCIAL, and MUNICIPAL Managers, Directors, Analysts, Leaders, Officers, Administrators, Specialists, Advisors, Coordinators, Staff, Assistants & Consultants involved in:
Employee Communications – Employee Relations – Human Resources – Program Management – Strategic Planning – Executive Communications – Change Management – Publication & Web Content – Organizational Transformation – New Media/Social Media – Public Affairs – Communication Consulting – Communications Research – Electronic Communications – Intranet Communications – Public Relations – Training & Development – Quality Improvement – Marketing – Business Development – Organizational Development
Performance Management – A Briefcase Book (2nd Edition)
Performance Management – A Briefcase Book By Robert Bacal One of The Premier Books On Performance Management Has Just Gotten Better If you need help getting your performance management and appraisal system to work and contribute to the success of your organization and the su.. Price: $11.56
Making Strategic Planning Work LearnBytes Helpcard
Making Strategic Planning Work Helpcard Most strategic planning fails miserably. This card, and it’s companion, How To Make Strategic Planning work will help you create dynamic strategic plans that are relevant. The fate of strategic plans.
An Integrated Strategic Planning Model LearnBytes Helpcard
An Integrated Strategic Planning Model Helpcard Strategic Planning – A powerful business tool that almost inevitably ends up as a waste of time .This card, and it’s companion,
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