Archive for the 'Science' Category
Generalisations and Transformations
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
In seeking to understand complex issues, we need rich data sets, not broad generalisations. So says Bill Lewis, founding director of McKinsey Global Institute, just a few years ago in “The Power of Productivity” (McKinsey Quarterly 2004 number 2).
Lewis asserts that the consensuses about economics at the end of the Second World War and at the fall of the Soviet Union have proved wrong. These consensuses at the end of the Second World War concerned infrastructure, technology, education and health care. After the fall of the Soviet Union the consensuses focused on inflation, price control, privatisation and corporate governance. In both cases it was believed resolution of these issues would advance economies, in particular the economies of poorer countries. In considering these “failures” Lewis draws an analogy with astronomy and cosmology.
The problem was, according to Lewis, that the consensuses were grounded in an analysis of economies at the aggregate level. That was like trying to learn about the physical universe by using only the telescopes of astronomy. Most real understanding in physics, however, has actually come from studying the interaction of the tiniest particles in the universe. In economics, Lewis says, it is necessary to understand why individual companies operate as they do, not national data sets and complex econometric tools that yield qualified answers at best.
Lewis proceeds to analyze some of the productivity data from around the world, drawing some challenging conclusions, particularly that economic growth principally flows from competition, not from education or technology or better governance and so on. The data which Lewis analyses comes from studies by the McKinsey Global Institute of individual companies.
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Of more specific interest are two articles in the McKinsey Quarterly in 2006 dealing with change management and managing organizational performance on the basis of evidence. Both are topics which I have previously dealt with. Both articles contain information of relevance to museums. (There are also interesting conclusions in a number of papers in the 2007 issues of the McKinsey Quarterly and these will be summarized in a forthcoming post.)
The McKinsey studies show that the most successful transformations of business performance occur when executives mobilize and sustain energy within their organizations and communicate their objectives clearly and creatively.
Strong organizational performance is really fueled not by isolated interventions but by a combination of three or four carefully selected complementary ones, what McKinsey calls management “practices”. Managers, according to McKinsey researchers, should concentrate most of their energy on a small number of practices that, introduced together, typically produces the best results. Doing more doesn’t add much value and involves disproportionate, not to mention wasted, effort.
Many executives struggle to design structures, create reporting relationships, and develop evaluation systems that make people accountable—in other words, that require them to take responsibility for the results of the business. However “companies seeking to improve in this area are much more likely to succeed if they concentrate on giving individuals clear roles rather than resorting to other options, such as consequence management.”
“… executives who set broad, stretching aspirations that are meaningful to their employees have a better chance of achieving the outcome they want than do executives who resort to conventional, dominant, or detailed top-down leadership… the best way to promote high-performance behavior in organizations is to emphasize openness and trust among employees.”
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There is an important point relevant to these findings. It is that if we are going to be concerned about understanding the workings of individual enterprises and we are gong to demand management based on evidence, as indeed we should, then the ongoing dominance of what is called New Public Management (NPM), needs to be more than seriously questioned. NPM seeks to have public activity decreased and, if at all, exercised according to business principles of efficiency. It is based on the belief that all human behaviour is motivated by self-interest and, specifically, profit maximization. Governments pursuing NPM have failed to deliver a more effective state better serving the citizenry, they have failed the accountability test! One of the bases of NPM is self-interest. Self interest was one of the three key themes of eighteenth century Scottish moral philosopher and pioneering political economist Adam Smith. But this term is used in the context of NPM in a way quite different from that in which Adam Smith employed it in his treatise, “The Wealth of Nations“.
The reaction to the run down in services, the decline in infrastructure and the perceived problems of the State’s infrastructure which we see in many western industrialised countries outside continental Europe, derives, it is asserted, from the failure of the bureaucracy to function effectively and of politicians to correct the failures. This affects the majority of museums as well as arts and heritage organizations. The translation of the best of business practice to nonprofits, not the translation of the profit-making motive of business, has been a central theme in the pages of this site.
Making government more businesslike has simply involved a set of assertions, not any real understanding. That is not the approach Atul Gawande, award-winning professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, surgeon and author, took in exploring what makes a good doctor and how hospitals can be improved. Gawande says, “I would love to know who really are the best in the kinds of operations I do, who had the lowest complication rates, the highest survival rates? And if I knew that, I would go and watch them and I’d learn from them”.
The problems with NPM and the mistranslation of Adam Smith’s work will be taken up in a forthcoming short note.
Continue to article.
New publications
Thursday, August 9th, 2007
Two new publications have appeared in the last few months.
2007: With Janette Griffin, Lynn Baum, Jane Blankman-Hetrick, Julie I Johnson, Christine A. Reich and Shawn Roe, Optimizing Learning Opportunities in Museums: The Role of Organizational Culture. Pp 153-165 In John H. Falk, Lyn D. Dierking and Susan Foutz (editors) In Principle, In Practice. Lanham MD: Altamira Press. (Go to Publisher’s site.)
This chapter, in a volume which comes from a conference organised by the Institute for Learning Innovation in Annapolis MD, explores the relationship between successful exhibitions and the culture of the museum, the proposition that a cohesive organisation is significantly more likely to produce better exhibitions. The proposition is almost naïve yet not frequently explored and not an approach to which much attention seems to be paid in museums themselves.
There has been great attention recently to exhibitions however. One of the more interesting is the volume “Are we there yet? Conversations about Best Practices in Science Exhibition Development” (K. McLean and C. EcEver (eds). San Francisco, CA: The Exploratorium). When the Exploratorium brought people together to discuss “best practice” in science exhibition development, Kathleen McLean made the point that while various items could be identified which characterised good exhibition development, ones which promoted good outcomes for the visitor, these could not be considered a checklist for success or a panacea for exhibition development. Jay Rounds (University of Missouri, St Louis) pointed out, “a rigid standardisation of practice is a recipe for disaster. What worked yesterday probably will not work tomorrow and we have no reliable way of predicting what will. Such times call for experiments and innovations that might work well in the new environment we need strategies that can counter these initial tendencies and foster innovation, exploration and discovery of new possibilities”.
2007: with M. Abraham, The Effective Management of Museums: Cohesive Leadership and Visitor Focused Public Programming Chapter 7 in Richard Sandell & Robert R. Janes (editors), Museum Management and Marketing. Leicester: Routledge. (Reprinted from Museum Management and Curatorship 18 (4), 335-368 (2000): go to Publisher’s site.)
This paper was the final paper in the series dealing with the study of some 30 museums around the world which aimed to find what characterised the “most effective museums”. The study is summarised elsewhere on this site.
Why did the European Space Agency Mission to Titan succeed? And Why does it Matter?
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
There always has been, and probably always will be, argument about what factors contribute to the success of a firm or enterprise such as a museum, a scientific organization, an orchestra or a company. There is even argument about how one recognises success: what does an excellent company look like, an outstanding orchestra sound like, and so on? The pages of this site deal fairly extensively with this, for instance in discussing performance indicators.
One factor which seems to be critical is, as mentioned in two quite different articles, the way people work together and how decisions get made. And a major contributing factor must surely be the attention paid to recruitment of those who are to join in the enterprise. That is the principal conclusion of the study, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. (Please look halfway down the page for the commentary on the study.)
A forthcoming article will deal with this further. It is important to note, however, how little agreement there is so far as government and business enterprises are concerned and how little attention is paid to the actual research findings on this issue. Some of it seems to be like the exhortation that if we want to achieve better outcomes from our school system then we should have more rigorous tests, something akin to pursing an increase in the growth of large cabbages by weighing them more regularly.
In the meantime, consider these questions:
Why did the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn’s moon Titan succeed? In its planning and execution it spanned some 25 years, it involved some four successive directors, the last of whom had served only a few months when Huygens landed – a point he made when announcing the success of the landing.
Why has the Airbus super jumbo project, another cooperative European project, failed (so far)? Does the argument that Boeing is making - about government subsidy of the Airbus - have any real basis in fact, by the way?
There are similar questions relating to the success or failure of Apple, Hewlett Packard pre and post Carly Fiorina, the BBC briefly until Iraq came along and Tony Blair checked his intelligence at the door.
Here is some further information and relevant links to the Huygens/Cassini venture.
A Masterpiece of Collaboration: The Huygens probe lands on Titan.
“The Cassini/Huygens venture is a masterpiece of collaboration, uniting NASA, ESA, ASI and scientists and engineers on both sides of the Atlantic.”
The European Space Agency website
THE MISSION:
A NASA/ESA/ASI mission to explore the Saturnian system. The ESA component consists largely of the Huygens probe, which entered the atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and descended under parachute down to the surface. The Cassini spacecraft is currently undertaking a four year exploration of the Saturnian system.
To reach Saturn, Cassini-Huygens used a series of gravity-assist manoeuvres, with swingbys from Venus (2x), Earth and Jupiter.
On 1 July 2004 the spacecraft entered into orbit around Saturn after being captured by the planet’s gravity.
The Huygens probe successfully landed on Saturn’s largest moon Titan at around 11:30 UTC 14 January 2005. This event makes it the only landing to take place in the outer Solar System and the furthest from Earth.
To the Orbiter, built in the USA, ASI (Italy) contributed telecommunications equipment. A Europe-wide industrial team constructed the Huygens probe. European scientists lead two experiments in NASA’s Orbiter, and participate in all of them. Conversely, US-led teams supply two instrument packages in ESA’s Huygens, and American scientists contribute to three others.
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To elaborate the BBC issue. An inquiry chaired by Lord Hutton into the statements made on a TV program implicated a senior scientist who later committed suicide and led to the resignation of Andrew Gilligan, the journalist responsible for the initial Today programme broadcast. Gavyn Davies resigned his chairmanship of the BBC, Greg Dyke, who was Director General, offered his resignation, which was accepted by the governors. Huge crowds of BBC staff appeared at the various offices of the BBC to farewell Dyke who had shown himself in only a few years to be an outstanding leader in the real sense of that word. (There is a reference to and partial transcript of an interview with Dyke here.)
The Hutton inquiry was denounced by critics as a kangaroo court and there have been threats of legal action over the findings. (I think this is defamatory of kangaroos.) Hutton’s criticisms were alleged to be extreme and unbalanced.
The incoming Chair and Director-General oversaw considerable downsizing which was protested by strikes. The responsible Minister talked of difficulties with funding. (Finding links to relevant articles on this topic is easy: newspapapers like the Guardian UK have very full coverage.
There is an interesting controversy about the extent to which the BBC has been constrained in its coverage of issues like criticism of the Prime Minister at Labour Party conferences. The ABC has dealt with this in its programs.)
We now know the statements on the BBC program were correct! The Prime Minister remains in power, albeit for not much longer..
Global Climate Change
Monday, February 5th, 2007
It is a truism to say this has become a major issue! It is, however, an extraordinary feature of the modern world that, despite a huge and increasing scientific literature leading increasingly to the conclusion that the world’s climate is warming and becoming more unstable and that it is our activities which have contributed to this, especially since the beginning of the industrial “revolution” and its reliance on fossil fuels, people are still prepared to deny these conclusions.
My contribution was an attack on the ridiculous views advanced in December 2004 by free trade advocate, climate change sceptic and consultant to the developing world Alan Oxley.
“Global warming is happening right now” On Line Opinion Monday, January 31, 2005
“December 2004 saw the partial collapse of support for the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol at the Buenos Aires Conference of the Parties. Only limited and informal talks were agreed on for the future. As environmental groups objected to the “obstructionism” of the US attempts to kill off the Protocol altogether, Alan Oxley, well known Free Trade advocate and opponent of the Protocol gleefully reported, “The United States, China, India and the rest of the developing countries have taken over the UN climate process and sidelined the Kyoto Protocol”. More, “… the Howard government is now in the international mainstream of climate change policy”. And, “The science used to justify the Treaty has been steadily unwinding”.
“In fact, European countries are enlarging their carbon trading, science reveals increasing evidence of warming, and Britain’s Tony Blair is committed to progressing solutions to warming described as “in the long term, the single most important issue facing the global community” and to involving the US in finding solutions. Saudi Arabia will endorse the Protocol even though it will lose billions of dollars as a result of emission reductions by industrialised countries. Meanwhile, the US Administration has removed or watered down protection for the environment, promoted high energy use and ignored inefficiencies. Australia is simply following along after the US wherever it goes…”
It is absolutely imperative that governments, business, the scientific community and we, as ordinary people, do everything we can to reverse the trends. We are told that while it is unlikely that action now will have have much effect in the next few decades, it may alleviate the situation later. It is not reponsible for people to say, as the Hon Malcolm Turnbull, recently appointed Minister for Environment and Water, did, that there is little Australia can do but adapt to it.
The “Stern Report” for the British Government made important points about pricing carbon emissions: the reaction of some was to protest that any imposition of prices would lead to economic decline, job losses and more. This is despite many studies showing that moves to alternative and renewable energy sources and more efficiencies in energy use would be economically positive.
The latest report by the International Panel on Climate Change “The Physical Science Basis: a Summary for Policymakers”, was released February 2, 2007 in Paris and adopted in a line-by line review by the governments of 113 countries, including the United States. The Report is here. It is worth going to the Report and examining the graphs of increase in concentrations of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide.
Too many groups in the community which have attained influential views are too reluctant to face the consequences of inadequate action now. How will their reluctance be viewed by our chidren and grandchildren, should they survive? And too many people are not listening closely enough and are too prepared to make their own broad claims, unsubstantiated by the evidence, about the views and positions adopted by others, for instance on issues such as nuclear energy. Calling for debate about nuclear energy does not constitute endorsement of nuclear energy.
Too much argument centres around exaggerated claims about negative economic impacts of taking remedial action, searches for single solutions to the phasing our of coal and oil and the assertion that little effect will flow from actions of smaller countries like Australia until large devleoping nations like China and India take action. There is insufficient attention to the savings to be made by increasing efficiency in the heating and cooling of buildings of all kinds, the gains from more efficient public transport, especially off-road transport.
An example of on going denial is yet another item on how the world is not warming on the site of Jennifer Marohassy which has links to the Fraser Institute in Canada. You may care to read the comments on the post as well!
Undoubtedly there will be further posts on this issue.