Tag Archives: consequences

When is the Exam?

By John Evelyn  |  May 26, 2010  |  General

Ever been caught in a situation for which you were not prepared? Ever dream where you forgot to attend a certain class at school, did not go for months, and then remembered, and the exam was to be in one hour, forgot the room, hadn’t studied, and then … panic? It can be unnerving. It evokes a very special anxiety, an unforgettable sensation. This type of anxiety is different than a surprise calamity that came from nowhere and it was something you could not have prepared for. The anxiety that comes from being unprepared is different because the consequences are typically very severe, sometimes disastrous, but very possibly preventable, had we prepared for it or to be surprised. It is but one dimension of the cost of unreadiness. That cost of unreadiness is terrible, nightmarish, fraught with self doubt and remorse, and becomes overwhelming when it is basking in the public eye. Sometimes, others suffer because of our unreadiness.

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Throwing the Flag

By John Evelyn  |  October 26, 2009  |  Blind Spots,Capability,Competition,Diagnosis,Risks,Technology,Transparency,Winning

Those who follow sports know that the quality of officiating is receiving much needed and overdue attention. In fact, there is one officiating team in NCAA Football that is currently sitting on the bench for terrible calls in very important games. In fact, the poor officiating may have determined the winners and losers. Sports are a great place to talk about poor measurement because we’ve all seen it. With the advent of better technology and high definition instant replays some of the boo-boos are much more evident. Competent people in the business of evaluating performance of any type are very aware of the impacts of measurement and very skeptical of any decisions people make …. Measurement issues surround us …. I used the word competent intentionally because those that don’t pay serious attention to the quality of measurement and render opinions, advice, or recommendations on data or information are dangerous people to have on board
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Mean Times

By John Evelyn  |  August 17, 2009  |  Adversity,Agility,Blind Spots,Capability,Diagnosis,Execution,Fit for purpose,Lean,Rigidity,Risks,Six Sigma,Transparency

We like symmetry. Most of us do. There is something in our wiring or programming that finds symmetry attractive, pleasing, and embodying some balance that might actually communicate harmony. We see it in the YinYang and the Taoist philosophy. We often characterize justice as a balanced scale, and countless studies have measured our perceptions of beauty among individuals and found facial symmetry the driving attractiveness variable. When we measure and analyze to find meaning in data, there is also an underlying “hope” that we find symmetry. When we see a “normal” distribution, or bell curve, we enter a comfort zone. In fact, I know countless people who work terribly hard at converting data that is not symmetric or normal into a set that is. Some, actually too many, take out data that does not fit the beauty of symmetry, proceed to insult it with names like outliers and dismiss them from our view.
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