We’re back!
Following a positive response to our first Easier Inc News we are back with a second edition. Do continue to share your feedback:
- What would you like more of/less of?
- Would you like to contribute/share some news of your own?
- Is quarterly often enough/too often?
- Etc.
Putting the ‘Ass’ in Assessment
It’s been a pretty stressful few days in the Brogan household. My son received his AS level results and - put bluntly - the algorithm done him over! That’s behind us now of course, as the government’s assessment approach got downgraded to a U (turn) and Brogan Jr found his hard work and smarts being justly recognised in the end.
This experience though, is an object lesson in how to (or how not to) design work that works.
When attempting to cope with the enormous human variety that our organisations face into, should we see the primary design challenge as being about:
- How to create the right algorithmic response/standard process?; or
- How to create the conditions for good human judgement and informed discretion?
This may seem like one of those false dichotomies (e.g. can’t it be both?) but it’s worth bearing with the thought. Too often we see service designs that put procedure ahead of discretion, subordinating professional judgement to standards that lack context and creating service responses that are so misaligned to the everyday needs and expectations of customers that ‘computer says no’ has become a meme.
I’m not arguing that we should ignore data or become luddites and refuseniks of all that technology can do for us. I’m not arguing that we should naively trust to individual judgement and accept that anything goes either.
BUT…
When faced with the abundance of human variety, such that doing the right thing relies on deep context and nuance, we should bias towards a “human by default” approach; adopting the design principle that ‘algorithms and processes exist to support human decisions’ and not that ‘humans exist to support procedural, algorithmic decisions’.
Somewhere in all this lies the means to more effective work, and to more purposeful and rewarding work too.
Human By Default
Having seen this sort of dysfunction manifest across different organisations and services for many years, Easier Inc. partner Jeremy Cox has had enough. In response he’s leading an exploratory session about how to take a Human By Default approach to digital and service design. It’s happening on Sept 23rd and is open to all.
In this session Jeremy will use stories, exercises and discussion to explore:
- What it means to take a 'human by default' approach.
- Why this leads to better services, better work, better tech and better performance, delivered faster and cheaper.
- How to get started with a 'human by default' approach.
On A Roll
Jeremy’s session is part of a series of webinars and workshops we’ve been running on various themes. We’re on a bit of a roll, having run several already and it’s not too late to sign up for others, such as:
- EASIER Performance - Rehumanising Performance Management (on 25 Aug)
- EASIER Assurance - Generative learning for real assurance (on 01 Sept)
- EASIER Commissioning - Achieving results through relationships (on 15 Sept)
- EASIER Leadership - From followership to fellowship (on 22 Sept)
NB You can also find videos, slides etc of the sessions we’ve already run over on our blog page here.
Leeds Kindness Festival
Also under Jeremy’s charge is work we are doing to support the Leeds Kindness Festival, coming up in September. Thanks to COVID it’s moved to being an online affair but will be packed with so much great stuff you really should take the time to explore. Although the festival is rooted in Leeds, it is open to all.
Each day of the festival has a theme: Kinder to Self, Kinder Relationships, Kinder Spaces, Kinder Business, Kinder Communities, and Kinder to our Planet. Jeremy is curating the Kinder Business theme, which will focus on why high-performing organisations are 'kinder by design'. Come and join the conversation!
Candid Camera
Above I mentioned some videos that you’ll find over on our blog page. Amongst those, I feel I have to call special attention to the two below.
Mark Smith and Saskie Dorman very kindly joined us for our session on “Recovery and Reinvention In Practice”. There they gave an overview of how they’ve put Easier Inc’s sense-making and service design approaches to work in their work. Both videos provide a brilliant, brief and candid account of what doing this work is like in the real world.
Thanks Mark and Saskie!
What Is Leadership?
The same session that these videos came from was attended by a contingent from Strathclyde University who are leading the development of Early Years practitioners in Scotland. Following the session they got in touch to invite me onto their Leadership module as a guest speaker. I was delighted, of course, and recorded this video segment as a working prototype of things to think about under the theme “What is leadership?”
Exploring Aloud
In return, as part of Easier Inc’s work to support the Next Stage Radicals, the course leader for Strathclyde Uni’s Leadership module - Nicky Shaw - has agreed to run an “Exploring Aloud” session, doing a deep dive into the incredible parallels between developing responsible children in Early Years settings and developing excellent leadership in any context. This online session is coming up soon (16 Sep) and is totally free to attend.
A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words
Jumping back a bit, in case it isn’t obvious in Saskie Dorman’s video above, working with her has been awesome. When we first started working together we talked about adopting the practice of ‘working out loud’; capturing our work and learning publicly so that others could learn with us. The amazing images in Saskie’s video are the result - all hand drawn by her and part of a hugely engaging series of sketchnotes that she produced during our work together.
We’ve found this to be such a powerful way to drive engagement that we now make it a routine part of our work at Easier Inc. Knowing this and ever the good sport, Saskie offered to capture an “essence of Easier Inc” sketchnote for us, which really peaked our interest about where she saw our value and how she would articulate it. We really LOVE what she came up with…
NB see Easier Inc. fellow Katie Merrien - our ‘artist in residence’ - if you want help to create similar sketchnotes, infographics, etc for your work.
Sticking With Saskie
As if all of that hasn’t been privilege enough, I’ve also had the huge pleasure of writing some stuff with Saskie. A while back we were published together in the BMJ and then more recently, we made the transition to real world print in a book that you can actually hold and get your coffee stains on! You can find us in “ABC of Dementia (second edition)” which you can order below.
NB In it you’ll find our chapter alongside others by brilliant people like Rod Kersh who, if you don’t already know him, you can find over at Almond Emotion where he keeps a brilliant blog.
Putting This Work On The Map
Last edition I wrote about the collaborative work we are involved in with others under the mantle Human.Learning.Systems. As part of that collaboration we helped to create a map of places where Human. Learning. Systems. work is happening. You can find it here.
We were so impressed with the technical support that David Jamieson and his team provided to create this map that we asked him to do one for us too. We will be integrating this into our website but in the meantime you can find a map of our clients with their case stories and other linked resources behind the button below. Thanks David!
Performance Management You Can Bank On
A late edition to this newsletter… amongst the case studies on the map you’ll find some work we did with Lloyds Bank. Amongst other things, we helped them with a new approach to performance management, which they titled ‘Your Best’. You can read a bit about this here. We’ve just heard that the approach is up for some industry awards so we are sitting here with our fingers crossed for them.
NB If you’d like to find out a bit more about the thinking and practice behind this then don’t miss our upcoming webinar on EASIER Performance mentioned earlier in this newsletter. It’s coming up next week (25 Aug) and is free to attend.
And Finally…
In the previous edition we welcomed a couple of new fellows to the Easier Inc. fold (Richard Moir and Richard Jackson). These are guys we’ve worked with in various capacities over many years and it’s been great to welcome them more fully into the Easier Inc. fellowship.
Since doing so we’ve been continuing to nurture connections with other people who do great work and that we’re really proud to work with. Joining the Easier Inc. fellowship in the last few weeks are J. Kim Wright, Jose Leal, Paul Jocelyn and Yvonne Fullwood.
A huge welcome to them all and do take the time to read their profiles over on our ‘People’ page.
Thanks for reading (and watching)!
Format: News
Tags: Client Story , Results
Comments
No comments on this post yet.