Tools I use - Instapaper as a GTD capture and review bucket

I’ve been a long term user of Instapaper, especially of Marco Arment’s excellent iOS app. I understand there is even an Android application available. Let me illustrate how I use it in my workflow.

Gathering inputs

I have a rather long commute to work. It takes me about 15 minutes by car and then another 45 minutes by train, followed by a 10 minute walk. What is great about it is that the two times 45 minutes by train per day give me the time to write and read. As the 3G availability on the train is bad to non-existent, I usually read what is in my reading queue. Enter Instapaper.

My Google Reader and Fever client (Reeder, subject for another review) allows me to easily send articles to be read to Instapaper (i.e. the capture phase). I do this for articles I would like to read, instead of articles I need to read, which I put into Evernote (yet another review). Instapaper is my true ‘to read sometime’ review bucket. Before I started to commute by train I never got around to review this bucket, now I am fairly up to speed.

Up to date at all times, with minimal effort

Instapaper’s geolocation support allows for easy synchronisation when I am close to a friendly wifi source, so I really don’t have to worry about synchronisation. My articles are with me at all times, on my iOS device (usually my iPad).

From bucket to to-do list in one simple step

So, I’m on the train, with my synchronized articles which I want to read. I go through them one by one. Instapaper has a choice of fonts and lay-outs, some of which are optimized for the iPad’s retina display, if you care about that. It’s kinda nice you have this level of customization available to you, on the other hand, as with many tools, too many buttons and features may actually distract. Marco Arment has erred on the side of caution here ... but still I am sometimes distracted into tweaking my Instapaper set-up.

Going through my articles, I apply a simple GTD algorithm: it’s either a next action which I can do here and now (using the 2 minute rule), a next action which needs to land into my task list, a task to be delegated or a document to be thrashed. Let’s go over how Instapaper supports each of these choices:

1. Next action now: this is not necessarily directly supported in Instapaper, but iOS makes it easy to switch between an article and any other application. Instapaper allows me to copy the full text which I can then easily paste into any text editor I want to use.
2. Next action later: Instapaper allows for very easy export to Omnifocus or Evernote. As I use both tools, I’ve usually worked with export to Omnifocus. One (small) gripe is that this function only exports the URL, and not the text in its entirety. I’ve recently adapted my workflow and for those situations in which I need direct access to the document, I send the task through Evernote with a ‘review’ tag attached to it. This in combination with a script on my iMac at home makes sure it gets processed and send to Omnifocus with a link to Evernote.
3. Delegation: As Instapaper allows for email full text, I can easily send an article with some comments to a collaborator or a client and have them work on it. Of course, good delegation practices apply.
4. Thrash document: Of course, documents that I’ve read and that have no further direct value can either be deleted or archived into the Instapaper archive queue.

In conclusion

Instapaper is my one and only “want to read” bucket. Given the functionality of the tool and its many export functions, it is an excellent bucket application. It integrates well in my workflow.

Instapaper article interface

Instapaper's update location menu, highlighting its geofencing usage

Instapaper's 'share' interface

The impact of learned helplessness on audit recommendations

Learned helplessness in organisations has become an agent of the resistance

Ron Ashkenas wrote a very interesting article on the HBR blog a while back: in "Learned helplessness in organisations" he addresses the "external" excuses that process owners manage to come up with in order not to change their process. To quote him:

"This phenomenon — which one of my clients has dubbed "learned helplessness" — has the power to permeate the culture of an organization. Like a spreading infection, managers pass on learned helplessness from group to group and level to level. Eventually the standard response to any initiative is some variation of, "We'd love to do that, but we really can't.""

Auditors are frequently confronted with change resistance

It’s a statement very familiar to internal auditors, especially during the recommendation phase. Proposed solutions are rejected or never implemented because the process owners use this phrase as a defense (less frequent) or are genuinely convinced (more frequent) they are not able to change and optimize a process because of external constraints.

It gets worse: lack of or inconsistent understanding by supervisory bodies which are tasked to check compliance with certain rules and regulations, either internal or external, often leads to requirements being imposed on process owners which are (at best) not conforming to the intention of the rules and regulations or (at worst) diametrically opposed to the rules. Let me share a real life situation I once encountered:

During a process reengineering project we were interviewing clients of the organisation we were reengineering. As it was a government organisation with a significant role in checking compliance of actors active in their regulatory space, we wanted to determine the relevance of their compliance requirements. The client of the organisation told us that they had adapted their procedures to comply to the requirements as imposed by one inspector, only to find that these requirements were overturned by the next inspector that visited them. Both inspectors came from the same organisation.

How to approach change resistance

Well, it takes persistence. Ron Ashkenas recalls:

”Undaunted by their response, my colleague asked the managers to simply list all of their reports, approval procedures, reviews, audits, metrics, decision forums, standing meetings, and other management processes. He then had them identify which ones the government required, and which had been created internally. Much to the managers' amazement, the vast majority of these management processes were self-generated — which meant that they could streamline much more than they had thought.”

So the key challenge to the internal auditor is whether you accept the statements of your auditees as to their capability to change certain processes, or whether you are critical enough to challenge aspects that may actually lie beyond the scope of your audit or indeed even beyond your technical capabilities. Another story:

We were once auditing an organisation which did some of its technical testing using certain crystals in a destructive testing procedure. These crystals were either worth a lot or nothing at all, depending on the quality of the crystal. According to the engineers, there was no way to value the crystals other than destructive testing. The value of an individual crystal was material to the financial statements of the organisation. We consulted with an expert, a university professor, who was nice enough to give us his opinion for free, and he pointed us to some recent research which allowed for non-destructive testing and hence better valuation of the crystals. The engineers at the organisation had not been aware of recent developments, and had assumed the only way to test was destructive.

As far as I am concerned, the value of your audit is of course the reasonable assurance that can be derived from the auditing work itself, but also, and often ignored, the added value of relevant recommendations. These recommendations need to be as relevant as possible, and where required need to break through certain assumptions that have been underlying the current procedures, often for years, that are no longer valid.

How many possible worlds can you see?

I’ve been thinking about the entire subsection of GTD which relates to better definition of outcomes and ultimately better results. The storytelling and delegation post can be considered as a couple of ideas aiming to solve a subset of that entire issue, which can pretty much be summarized as follows: “How do I make sure that I define my projects, even single action projects, in such a way that I myself or those I delegate to are most likely to succeed?”

The easy solution

There is an easy solution to this ... make your outcome definition as weak as possible so you can check off the project action as done or achieved without lying to yourself. Of course, this is how you shoot yourself in the foot over the long term. If you continually undermine your own outcomes, your achievements will not amount to much. Then you can blame the methodology for not supporting you, and it won’t be on you. I’m starting from the assumption that you, dear reader, are not that kind of person. Although sometimes we all are.

The difficult solution

Defining your outcomes, what you want to achieve, is very much about having a clear view on what the outcomes can be, and what you believe the outcome should ultimately be. Fully understanding what the outcomes can be requires you to be able to see multiple future worlds. And therein lies the rub.

The quality of outcomes

When conducting brainstorming exercises, the number of ideas the group is asked to generate is often a multiple of the actual number of ideas used. There’s a reason for this: if you ask a group of people for their best five ideas, they are likely to give you their first five ideas or at most the best of their first ten ideas. This is why we often ask people to generate 50 our more ideas.

Our self-imposed educational limitations

The reason is simple: we tend to settle for less, as a group and as individuals. The same goes for outcomes. When we define them, we tend to look for one relevant outcome, and not the breath nor width of options available to us.

By the way, I strongly believe that our current educational system is limiting our children in their ability to see enough worlds out there. The insistence on keeping them occupied as well as the truly ancient way of educating people to conform to standards of performance which are only useful in a production, not a knowledge worker context, is robbing our children of their inate natural flexibility of seeing multiple possible outcomes. But that’s another post.

The interesting thing is that some people that choose to ‘adapt’ the educational structures for their own purposes, such as Steve Jobs and Marc Zuckerberg, have succeeded in keeping that capacity for broad visioning alive. It’s a trait sorely lacking in a lot of so-called business and other leaders today.

What we lose if we don’t define better outcomes

If our outcomes are limited by our daring to be creative, our lives are limited by the quality of those outcomes. So, we really owe it to ourselves to provide our projects with high quality outcomes which take in account that the environment and the context in which we try to achieve these outcomes may change.

How to

Alright, but what can we do to enhance our outcomes? I’ve made a shortlist of a couple of key ideas which will get you started:

1. Look further than first outcomes: when defining a project, look at other possible outcomes of your actions and how they will count to furthering the achievement of your project.
2. Quantify some kind of metrics around your larger project outcomes: what do you consider good enough? You should not necessarily go for 100% perfection, but you need to know when you can count on your results enough to further the achievement of your broader goals.
3. Self-evaluate regularly: regular self-evaluation will help you in checking where you are in terms of the achievement of your goals. I like journaling for this purpose, but there are many other approaches that are as good or better. See what works for you, but stick with it.
4. Close out your projects when your outcomes are within the brackets you defined: sometimes we tend to continue on in a project even when we have achieved what we needed to achieve. This is often the case if we fear shipping our results. Committing to closing a project when we have achieved what needed to be done, when it is good enough, is another element which really helps me.

If you try to do at least these things in a consistent manner for your larger projects, I’m certain you will see a marked improvement in your results. Good luck.

The advantages of risk and evidence based reengineering

I've expanded on a post I wrote for my old reengineering blog in 2010. Enjoy!

I’ve seen a lot of failed reengineering attempts. There are a lot of reasons why reengineering exercises fail and it’s not the purpose of this blog post to evaluate all possible reasons. What I do want to discuss, briefly, is why evidence based reengineering is a relevant, different and I believe more successful approach.

Reengineering 101

Traditionally, the top line activities in reengineering are executed according to the following pattern:

1. the assessment of the current, or as-is situation
2. the establishment of a wanted, future, or to-be situation
3. the analysis of the differences between what is now and where we want to be, or the gap analysis
4. the development and execution of an action plan to change the current into the wanted, future situation.

For anyone who has ever looked in awe at a consultant, well, this is pretty much what reengineering experts do. They’ll tell you it’s much more complex than this, but in essence, this is what it really boils down to.

Reengineering failures

Among the reasons why a project potentially goes awry is the very blatant one of starting from the wrong assessment of the as is.

How is that possible? Lack of validation is likely to be one, but a more likely one is a situation where the findings were validated by the management, but ultimately proved to be wrong anyway, because management did not have all information or was not aware of certain issues. After all, management is not deity (although behaviorally, this tends to be assumed in some cases) and therefore management can fail.

This is exactly where evidence enter the picture.

What is reengineering evidence and how do you use it?

Evidence is most certainly not interviews, especially not internal interviews. Most as is assessments are based on interviews with management and close collaborators of management. Consultants often assume that this information is complete, accurate, relevant and timely, but often this is anything but. Especially interviews with internal collaborators tend to confirm whatever it is that the collaborator thinks his management thinks or wants to hear.

Now, any auditor can tell you that internal evidence is the weakest of all evidence material, and reengineering interviews confirm this. Therefore, if interviews are the only information source, execute interviews with multiple independent sources with a clear view on the actual situation of the enterprise. Think clients, suppliers … even competition.

Oh, by the way, interviewing competitors to learn better practices under the guise of "research" is a common practice among some of the better known consulting organisations.

Relevant evidence

Better yet, start gathering hard data. Payroll data, other direct and indirect cost data, information from internal systems but also information gathered from banks, other lenders or financiers when it concerns financial information.

Go outside to clients and suppliers. A supplier will tell you if there are payment delays. A client will inform you of quality issues with products or services, of delay in delivery, of issues with execution … former clients are often a source of highly relevant information.

I remember a reengineering project I was involved in a couple of years ago where, in response to a simple request for information on payment terms and reasons for late payment by the specific client, we received an envelope full of evidence on very operational and quality issues. Following up with this third party, we finally understood what management was reluctant to share with us: significant quality control issues after a production line moved to a new location with lower labor cost and more manual interaction in the production process. None of the managers, afraid for the resulting backlash, was willing to share this.

Risk models as a basis for evidence gathering

A good means to structure the work is around risk models. I am a very big fan of risk based reengineering, and using risk models as a basis for reengineering is a good way to approach this exercise. Risk models allow for structuring of potential exposures in an organization, and will result in targeted exercises where the cost of reengineering is balanced as compared to the added benefit it entails.

Wall Street traders are hackers→

A quick post on a very interesting article I recently read by the hand of Mark Cuban. It compares Wall Street traders to hackers. You can find the link by clicking on this blog post title.

I found it quite interesting to learn that any regulatory measure runs way behind. From an internal control point of view, it says a lot that the regulatory framework is out of touch with the actual business that is being conducted. Very worrying and one of the key reasons why lines of defense, such as internal audit, need to remain as flexible as possible.

Storytelling for better delegation

How often have you uttered ‘I can do it better’ and taken back a responsibility you delegated because you felt it was not appropriately executed? How often have you had the feeling that those reporting to you failed you because they did not ‘adequately’ execute a task? If ‘quite often’ is the answer, there may be an issue with your delegation. You may well be the issue here and not their performance.

Proper delegation is one of the most difficult tasks

If that sound harsh, well, I intend to be. Proper delegation is one of the most difficult tasks there is, and we do not, not by far, spend enough time learning it or teaching it to people. As a result, delegation is an archetypical wheel, being reinvented time and again.

Delegation issues sometimes relate to lack of storytelling skills

I’m convinced there is a correlation between issues with delegation and a lack of storytelling skills. Let me explain what I believe good delegation consists of and how it relates to storytelling.

Good delegation requires you to paint a picture

If you delegate a task or a responsibility, you need to paint a clear picture of the future you envision. You need to clarify what you want in as clear and concise a manner as possible. Storytelling is a good way of painting that picture. Happily ever after is usually preceded by a detailed account of how the situation turned out after the witch had been beaten. It describes a to be situation in adequate but not excessive detail. It clarifies both what needs to be achieved while leaving enough room for individual creativity by those aiming for the results.

As storytelling delegators, we are also responsible to make sure those we delegate to know what we want them to achieve, while leaving enough freedom for them to be creative about it.

Good delegation requires you to describe the lay of the land

Describing what needs to be achieved is not enough. Contrary to the outcome, stories go into a lot of detail when describing the lay of the land, the situation and the context in which a certain objective needs to be reached. The witch is described in elaborate detail. The trails of the hero and the adversity he faces are described with loving detail.

As delegating storytellers, we are responsible to describe in as much detail as possible our experiences and our understanding of what they will be faced with when executing the task.

Good delegation leaves room from own creativity

Stories are a powerful medium. They are made more powerful by what they do not tell. They leave a lot of room for interpretation, hence for creativity. This, in an aside, is what was reduced by radioshows and almost completely lost by tv shows ... our minds are less stimulated to fill in the blanks.

As delegators who tell stories, we are responsible to leave room for creativity, by allowing those we delegate to to bring their own solutions to the table.

Delegation through storytelling requires an investment ... from you

In short, storytelling provides a good framework for delegation. However, it requires some time to tell a good story. Delegation is therefore not pushing away tasks, but it requires a real investment in time and means from your side as well. Doing this will, if you work with motivated people, lead to better outcomes. Try it sometime.

Apple's retina 'mistake'?

A short post, but one I started thinking about when I was reading an article on the new HTC Droid and its 440 PPI display. Reading the article, I suddenly became aware that the retina display was the first time I am aware of Apple tried to differentiate itself on the technology, and not on the use case.

My choice for Apple, however, is not because of the best technology on board. They often don't, and I really don't care. Much as I don't care about the retina ipad 3/4 versus ipad mini debate. What is relevant for me is the usability.

As this excellent review by Patrick Rhone on Minimal Mac has eloquently illustrated, I want my tools to be boring, to blend into the background so I can get on with using my tools. I've been the nerd, hacking my android phone and installing CyanogenMod builds. No more. It just takes too much time to make other tools do what I want them to do.

So I really believe Apple slipped on that one. It's never about the "new", unproven technology inside. It is always, to me, about the ease of use.

Good public governance - the other side of using public means

Having to spend time in bed and at home dealing with a severe bronchitis is a good way of writing out some thoughts in a more profound manner than otherwise possible. I try to avoid gibberish as a result of having to swallow multiple antibiotics.

My former colleague and fellow blogger Simon Perks wrote an interesting post on his Sockmonkey consulting blog. I invite you to read it first, then come back, because I want to present the other side of that quite challenging problem for all public administrations: which money to use and how to use it, or rather, how to account for its use in the most transparent way possible.

Accountability

Simon states, and I entirely agree with his position, that any (public) entity needs to be aware of where they accept money from, as it may well come with some implicit or explicit strings attached. I like his idea on a three pronged approach using a policy, an approval process and a register. These will clearly enhance transparency.

However, there is one key responsibility that comes attached to any use of public means, which is accountability. As head of internal audit of a government agency, I am charged with providing reasonable assurance on good governance, and accountability is an essential aspect of good governance.

When the cure is worse than the disease

In our traditional command and control environment, which is much of any Western structure, be it public or private, we've always implemented the so-called lines of defence, with as much as possible a segregation of duties between the lines. In a command and control environment, this makes perfect sense. The big problem is that these structures tend to disenfranchise the process owners from their right and responsibility to be accountable for the good governance. By building additional control structures, we've taken away the burden of good usage of public funds by those directly responsible for its use. At the operational level, we may have actually reduced the direct feeling of responsibility for good use of means that we all pay for. At that point, the well intended cure becomes worse than the disease.

This is no longer about the process

Before anyone goes off on a rant about public sector, this appears to be one of the key failures of that mother of all private sectors, the banking industry. Too much power combined with too few direct responsibilities to the ultimate stakeholders leads to a real disconnection of the consequences of your actions. You will just think about you or those in your immediate vicinity. And any ex post control activity will either come to late or may not even detect what is going on until the exposure is significant.

If you factor into that the recent HBR article which states that one out of every two managers is terrible at accountability, it becomes clear that this is really no longer about the process. The process may be well tuned to situations where everyone is acting as a rational operator, but reality shows us time and again that that is not what is really going on in the workplace. Behavioral economist Dan Arlely has a wonderful quote up on Explore:

"If you think about the whole financial crisis, we've taken people and we've put them in situations which basically are guaranteed to blind or, at least, to distort their vision. And we expect people to overcome that."

Developing true accountability

One way of developing true accountability is to make the process owners directly accountable to their ultimate stakeholders.

Now, I'm not talking about direct elections here, which are more of a popularity contest than anything else. No, I'm talking about establishing clearly defined metrics which are in line with the expectations of the ultimate stakeholders. The people responsible for the activities or the project are then asked to explain why they achieved certain scores, explain both why they did not meet expectations or exceeded them. The ultimate stakeholders can then either judge the competence and adequacy of the responsables themselves or transfer their votes to an expert which will do it for them. This process has been described at length by Steven Johnson in his excellent book Future Perfect: the case for progress in a networked age

To date, we have failed to do this in our political process, which explains the phenomenon of political free riders that abandon functions when accountability nears to aim for a higher, often better compensated function. I know this phenomenon is also present in larger corporate organisations.

Lessons from development aid

It's my experience that development aid has a long history in developing metrics and evaluations for this type of situation. The Logical Framework, the Results Framework and other similar exercises are all examples of donors or agencies looking to establish accountability for results beyond the easily available metrics of the pure monetary aspects.

Perhaps the business world needs to look at what we have done ... and perhaps they can take some pointers of our industry.

Using Textexpander in setting outcomes for projects

Positive affirmation

I’m sure that most of the GTD practitioners are aware that positive affirmation really tends to work, not because of some magical properties, but because it helps you as an individual focus on a preferred outcome, rather than be all over the place.

Car accidents

A friend of mine recently took a crash course. A real one. A course designed to help you react in the correct manner if you are ever involved in a crash. I’m making abstraction of a lot he told me but one aspect really stuck with me:

Most people, when about to be involved in a multiple car pile-up, look at the accident they are trying to avoid. This apparently contributes to them hitting the other cars. An expert driver apparently should focus on where he wants his car to go. All other things remaining equal (driving ability, reaction time ...) the driver focusing on the way out is less likely to hit the pile-up than the driver focusing on the accident.

Now, I am not an expert driver, and cannot vouch for the relevance of that advice. So while this should not be taken as an advice, and I don’t claim this to be the ideal way to avoid getting in pile-ups, which you really should avoid at all cost, it does make sense. The driver focuses on what he wants to achieve and both consciously and subconsciously focuses on the achievement of that specific goal. In this case, it’s escaping the accident.

A similar approach has been shown to work for any type of higher rates of goal achievement. The Asian Efficiency blog has some great articles on this here.

The TextExpander snippet

I’ve created a textexpander snippet based on that very article. I invoke it through “;outcomes”, but of course you can use any textexpander shortcut you consider relevant. I launch this snippet in the freeform text field of the first action which I enter for each significant project I have in OmniFocus: the “Achieve my intented outcomes” action. It is the last action that gets cleared at the end of each project, and it is the action I check prior to going and doing any action on a project I have not worked on for a while.
Just clarifying my outcomes at the beginning and checking them on a regular basis allows me to ensure that I am formulating the right actions in the context of what I intend to do with that project.

You can see the structure of the snippet in the screenshot below. If you don’t know Textexpander from Smile software, get some more information here.

An (almost) device-independent information capture and treatment workflow with Evernote and Omnifocus

The information capture problem

When I am reviewing the new articles which landed in my Google Reader of Fever feed (yes, I am experimenting with Fever for when Google turns off Reader's lights) I often find myself saving articles to Instapaper. When I read them in Instapaper, I can easily transfer them to Omnifocus, but there I hit a snag ... when I do that, it assumes I can go online and retrieve the article itself, because Instapaper only sends URL information to Omnifocus.

This works fine when I am online, but less so when I have no internet connection. And given that my work takes me to Africa from time to time, and that good internet connections in some parts of Africa are either non-existent or prohibitively expensive, I needed another solution.

Enter Evernote

Reeder, my application of choice for going through my RSS feeds, allows me to send articles to Evernote. Granted, I will need to open Evernote and download the articles onto my device, but when preparing for an audit, that is a standard practice. I make sure I have a local copy available on my system. Granted, I could achieve the same outcome with Instapaper, but it would cost me a lot more steps to do just that.

Linking Evernote to Omnifocus

I was not out of the woods yet. Because now I have these documents in Evernote, but how will I remember I need to do something with them? Enter Thanh Pham from AsianEfficiency, whom I discovered through Sven Fechner's excellent and highly recommended blog "SimplicityBliss", which is an essential read for any self-respecting GTD practitioner with a Mac. In this article, he links to Thanh Pham's automated solution. I just set it up and configured it with no changes.

Whenever I go through Evernote now, and I find a document that needs a next action, I just tag it with a "review" tag. It gets linked to Omnifocus based on the Lingon Script that runs on a regular basis, and I have those links ready in Omnifocus when I need them.

There is an added benefit as well, which I only recently discovered: any links which I made on my iMac remain valid both on my Macbook Air which has a synced version of Omnifocus installed and, to my surprise, also on my iPad. I just navigate to the "notes" field, press on the link in the note field (an evernote:/// link) and if you press long enough, you get the option to open or copy. Pressing "open" launches Evernote and opens the document.

Thanks to both Sven and Thanh for the excellent developments that made my life so much easier.

Apple's device independence: achieved

Yesterday, while continuing to develop a document which I had started work on at the office on my MacBook Air and took with me on the train on my iPad, I suddenly realised the future is already here.

Between my MacBook Air, my iPad, my iPhone and my iMac, I am completely device independent ... as long as the device is a Mac, and when writing in Sublime Text 2, I can work on a PC as well (only not that well ...)

That device independence lies, as far as I can tell, at the core of Apple's strategy. They make great devices, devices which are the best to use by far, but between those devices, information should be and now can be seamlessly transferred.

Whereas before, my set-up influenced my workflow, I can now honestly say that my workflow is determining my set-up.

How cheap are you?

Saying "no" to most things which are being offered to you means valuing your time more.

Everything you say "yes" to is an implicit or explicit engagement of your time.
Time you will not get back.

What meaning is all about ...→

I often find myself wondering why I do certain things and not others, and whether my driver, whatever it may be, is the relevant one. I often 'meta' ask myself whether the way in which I approach this is the best possible way. In the context of one of these researches, I bumped into yet another excellent article by Umair Haque, in which he brings meaning to meaning. Pun most certainly intended. Read this:

Meaning, then, is something like a responsibility — not merely a need. It resides and resounds, like the human experience, between us. It transcends the narrow confines of the self — and connects us, through the power of grace and purpose, to the human world around us. It is the act of investing in what we profess to care about; in caring about what we profess to love; in not merely “expressing our values,” but valuing that which is worthwhile in lasting human terms, and so arcing the trajectory of not just our own tiny lives, but those of the people around us, towards the just-glimpsed sunrise of mattering.

It almost reads like poetry.

You need to go and read the entire article. Now. Really, go! The link is embedded in the title of this blog post.

Okay, now what does this have to do with GTD? Well, think about it. If all you are doing is working in pursuit of a self-centered set of goals which but focus on the me and the now, you will get very effective and efficient in killing the you inside of you.

Perhaps that is not what life is about.

Why failure is nothing to be afraid of

Fear of failure

I have this. You have this. Pretty much everyone around you has it. It’s not about religion, it is not about background. It’s not even about how much money you have in the bank. I’m talking about fear of failure.
It’s always amazing to find out how many people are afraid to do a face plant. Whenever I feel that cold hand sliding up my spine, freezing me to the core, I realize I should try to fail. Or rather, try to do, and if so required, to fail. But we, both you and I, are so very afraid of that failure.

What I realized

The talks I have with my wife are always enlightning to me. She can bring insight into a situation in a way few other people can for me. Recently she said something to me which stuck, and expanded in my mind. Let me set the context:

She recently attended a seminar at an organization we both used to work for. The organization is excellent, but there are, as everywhere, some people that are not as nice as the others. She told me one of our former colleagues had enquired as to how I was, making some disparaging remarks on my recent career choice.

I gave up what some would have considered a potentially highly lucrative career in consulting to work as head of internal audit for the Belgian Development Agency BTC, the Belgian government agency active in bilateral development aid. For me, the job has both an extremely interesting content, a significant human value I craved, awesome and intelligent colleagues and it gives me more time for teaching at a management school I love to work with.

I was very surprised and a little taken aback that this was the first thing this person would have said to my wife after not having seen her for about 7 years. I had not thought about him at all since I left ... and this is where she hit me with one of her deep insights:

“You didn’t think about him because he does not matter to you.”

Which is very true. I had not thought about that person for years because he did not matter to me. I did not have the time to think about him. But, and this is the point I want to get at ... most people don’t think about me. Most people don’t think about you either.

What does that mean?

So, whenever you feel you cannot go through with something because you are afraid what people may think of you, be very aware that they don’t.

Let me spell this out for you again ... they do not think about you ... at all. You, and I, are not important enough in the lives of most people but for a fleeting consideration, not in our successes and most certainly not in our failures.

So if fear of the opinions of others is holding you back, don’t hold back. You just don’t matter that much to them. So why shouldn’t you go ahead with what you really believe in? If you do a face plant, you may be surprised that there is not a large group around you, pointing at you and laughing. Much more likely you will find a very small group, huddling around you and trying to help you get up. Because the people that really care about how you fare are the people that care about you.

One life

This is it. Right here, right now. This is the hand you’re dealt, this is the game you’re playing. No exchanges, no money back guarantee. So you’d better make the most of it. The single most heard regret of people that are dying is not having tried. What a waste would it be if you were not to follow your heart.

329

There is a lot of talk about the $329 which Apple is asking for the iPad Mini. It’s a full $80 more than the Nexus 7, a comparable tablet ... euhm. Well, not really.

You are paying the $80 not as some diehard Android users will point out as the Apple premium, but as the price to pay not to have your device totally outdated in less than one year.

Apple has a reputation for supporting its ‘older’ hardware with its new operating systems, both on Mac OS and iOS, for a very long time. This is why you find people with 6 to 7 year old Macs. Calculate the total cost of ownership on that one, and compare that to any other product. The release cycle for iOS devices is faster. It is a less mature market. Still, I can use iOS 6 on a 3GS, without much of an issue.

How many Android devices are running 4.0? Just saying ...

From the bottom up: four horizons of risk management

Today's post covers two of my pet subjects: risk management and personal productivity. Rather, I apply some ideas which I've become aware of reading personal productivity literature to risk management. This is an iteration of a 2009 article, but with significant changes.

The missing risk management levels

I've recently reread COSO ERM front to back, to make sure I was fully familiar with all aspects which I either had forgotten or had subjectively reinterpreted after spending a lot of time thinking about and working with ISO 31000.

While both methodologies touch the issue of roles and responsibilities, the very pragmatic key question of what to do at what level and with which frequency always seemed to be just out of reach. It was never quite explicitly covered. And that bothered me.

When "Making it all work" started to make sense

Now, in the realm of personal productivity there is an entire movement around GTD, or Getting Things Done, which was developed by David Allen. He followed up on his initial book which is (unsurprisingly) titled "Getting Things Done" with a new book, "Making it all work" where he revisits the concept and further details and explains it. When I was reading the book, all of a sudden some of what he was writing was not only making sense in the context of personal productivity, but actually became the basis for the answer to the question I had been wrestling with for a long time … what risk management focus to apply at what level, by whom and with what frequency.

The risk management horizons

I see risk management now as a set of risk focused activities at several different levels, with different areas of focus and different frequencies, all interacting together, as follows:

The first horizon - Activity Based Risk Management

We practice very concrete, very operational risk management quite naturally every waking moment of the day. These risk management activities occur almost intuitively in our day-to-day activities. They involve very practical aspects such as “Did I make sure I put a lid on that saucer?” or “Did I make sure that person gave me all the required documents to process?”

While the process is mostly intuitive and very ubiquitous, we become aware of it when things of awry, such as situations where responsibility transfers go wrong, or when people trained for a task without understanding the purpose of the task need to deal with exceptions.

Applying all aspects of formal, COSO-ERM of ISO 31000 conform risk management in this context would be below the traditional operational risk management level, which I discuss further below. I've called this level of risk management Activity Based Risk Management. It occurs at the level of the individual activity or even at the level of individual process steps. If we make sure we do not overburden the process of risk management at this level, using a light risk assessment, reporting and treatment approach can be very beneficial to optimizing the results of these individual activities.

The second horizon – Project and Process Risk Management (or Operational Risk Management)

Most of us risk management nerds are familiar with this level. We delve into issues which can be found in either processes (ongoing activities) or projects (one shot activities). This level of risk management is likely to be impacted by the non-mitigated risks at the level of the first horizon.

Quite often we will described the actual process flows at an intermediate to high level and then analyze them for risks. In essence, this second horizon presents the link between the actual execution or the concrete next action, which is assessed for risk at the level of the first horizon on the one hand, and the strategic level on the other.

This type of analysis is familiar for most risk consultants. They tend to spend a lot of time at the process level. However, given this level is significantly impacted by the activity level (the first horizon), we need to make sure that we do not ignore issues flagged at this level by our collaborators, who often understand the processes and related activities a lot better than any external consultant may.

The third horizon – Strategic Risk Management

Ideally, all processes and projects are related to a set of strategic objectives to be reached. We execute processes and projects (horizon 2) (each containing multiple activities (horizon 1)) to make sure these strategic objectives are reached.

Strategic risk management then focuses on risks which can interfere with achieving these objectives. Again, this horizon can be found in most ERM and integrated risk management texts. However, it should not end there. After all, where do you go with strategic risks that cannot be mitigated? How do you capitalize on these? How do you learn from these issues and translate them into an adaptation? You need to take these risks one level higher. Each strategic intent integrates and rolls up into an overarching vision.

The fourth and final horizon – Vision related risk management

At this high altitude level we aim to gain perspective on risks threatening the realisation of our ultimate goal for the organization and even beyond the organization.

And at this point, a risk management tool becomes a key tool for vision and strategy enhancement and improvement. It helps answer the key question: "are we doing the right things the right way?" This is where the true value of risk management really comes forward.

An important caveat

There is a key assumption that is explicitly not made in this approach: I do not assume that all risks roll up to the higher or highest level or roll down from there to the lowest level. On the contrary, some risks may get treated at the higher level, but only because they cannot be adequately mitigated at the lower level.

Each horizon has its own risks, and each horizon has the prime responsibility to deal with these at that level. If they cannot be adequately managed, only then do they need to be escalated.

Who does what and when?

Below you will find a table which gives you an overview of the four horizons, the people responsible at each level, what we aim to achieve with risk management at this level and what a suggested frequency interval for dynamic risk management would be.

The four horizons of risk management

How to get rid of internal controls' Cinderella complex

A high degree of indifference

Whenever you utter the words "internal control" in an environment where COSO is not a household word, you are likely to be confronted with a number of reactions, ranging from boredom over surprise over fear back to complete indifference. Overcoming that reaction is one of the key prerequisites for a successful further development of internal controls in any environment. So let's try to understand some of the underlying reasons for these diverse but not necessarily positive reactions.

High cost, no tangible value?

One of the root causes are expectations regarding internal controls. Implementing internal controls takes a considerable amount of time and means. In exchange for time and means there is an expectation of finding a measurable added value. However, most internal controls do not directly add any measurable value. They only become relevant and prove their value if and when things go wrong. And even then, most internal controls reduce the direct exposure to the impact of the problem. And that's their role, nothing more and nothing less.

That nicely brings us to the second reason, closely linked to the first: what is the cost-benefit ratio? Implementing internal controls most often occurs under pressure from an external source, such as a supervisory structure, an internal or external auditor, a finance inspector, a commissioner to the government, the Court of Auditors … and their point of view is one of control, with less attention being given to the cost side of the equation.

Cinderella

We often find the management team of an organisation under pressure to invest in internal controls against their will, because of external pressure and without much of an expectation of a measurable benefit. As a result, these investments are not really a key priority to this team. As a result, internal controls will be implemented in an incremental fashion, without integrating the controls in processes or linking the controls to one another. This makes these controls often far to easy to bypass or eliminate all together. The already contested added value decreases even further.

Internal controls may be implemented, but they are never really owned or even liked or loved in these circumstances. At the end of the day, internal control becomes the Cinderella of process organisation: hidden, never to come out. And that is a missed opportunity.

The underlying reason for internal controls development

Because what are internal controls really all about? What we aim to achieve is to ensure (within certain limits) the health of a process in an organisation. Our aims are pretty much comparable to what quality management has been working on.

Our origins differ. Quality management was born in production environments while internal controls development saw the light of day in finance and reporting. In essence however, there are few differences. The only real difference is the point of view, the difference in perspective on what in essence comes down to the same challenge: how do we make sure that we develop the best possible product or service with as few problems as possible along the way.

The biggest challenge usually is to identify the correct solution for the specific problem we're trying to address. In order to do this in the most effective manner, we need to dare let go of our dogmatic adherence to a perspective, be it internal control, quality or whatever else exists. We need to look at the challenge from the reality of the user or the person who is responsible for the issue we're trying to address. Once we have clarified the problem, then we can start looking at what framework is best for solving that particular problem. And the best possible way of achieving that is to evolve towards a common approach for risk identification and analysis. ISO 31000 is a clear and welcome step in that direction.

Making it concrete

Let's make this as tangible as possible: let's examine three scenarios, each with a quality approach and an internal control based approach. Up to you to decide which one is most relevant.

Scenario 1 - decreasing client satisfaction

Let's assume a risk assessment has identified a significant decrease in client satisfaction as a key risk.

A quality based approach will develop standardised procedures which aim to minimize deviation in service delivery. Internal controls development will develop a process to timely identify unacceptable deviations as early as possible in the process.

The two approaches are highly complementary and add value to each other.

Scenario 2 - key personnel approaching retirement

Let's assume a risk assessment has identified the organisation is at risk of losing an important part of its competencies because of the existing age distribution, with key personnel approaching the age of retirement.

A quality approach will develop functional descriptions which link into task and process descriptions, while internal control will focus on knowledge management systems builds.

Again, both approaches are highly complementary, in that they focus on retaining and structuring the information.

Scenario 3 - strategic indicators using erroneous information

Let's assume the risk assessment indicates that there is a risk of key indicators being fed with erroneous information. A quality based approach would focus on developing a balanced scorecard, while internal control will develop risk indicators.

Both approaches complement one another.

In conclusion

Internal controls are not well understood. Quality often is more accessible and better understood. As both approach complement each other well, quality can be used to allow for internal controls to ease their way into processes, without the usual resistance.

Government's role as a stakeholder to administrations and agencies

As with some of the articles published in the past week, I've rewritten an article I wrote in 2009. I am trying to integrate all articles from the past into this blog, rewriting them where that appears necessary.

I am very surprised at how relevant it still feels, reading this more than three years after it was initially written. That said, I've rewritten quite a few key passages.

A reactive stance

Public administrations’ and public agencies' effectiveness, efficiency and economy are quite often an unintended victim of the existing interaction model with the elected representatives of the people, the government and the ministers. I’m talking about the often reactive stance which administrations and agencies are required to take with respect to ministerial or governmental decisions. This issue might be solved by a simple change in perception and related behavior at the side of the public administration or the agency, subject to acceptance of this changed approach by the elected representatives.

Striving for efficiency, effectiveness and economy

Public administrations and agencies look at government and ministers as active decision takers in their respective areas of responsibility. After all, the minister is politically responsible. However, the political decision process that guides and directs the government and its ministers can be and often is a bottleneck. This bottleneck in turn influences the speed and direction of actions of the public administration or agency and thus its efficiency, effectiveness and as a result its economy. Whereas this a a very common and traditional situation, this is likely not most optimal position of a public administration to ensure these three objectives.

A minister is not a CEO

Public administrations tend to see their ministers and government as CEO’s. They are not. They are chosen representatives out of an elected body. They are closer to a board of directors chosen from amongst the shareholders.

While they can significantly contribute to vision and mission, they should not adopt a day-to-day role in the strategic or – worse – operational activities of a public administration or an agency. The administration or the agency, which in essence should be a-political in nature and staffed with a competent management team, needs to be able to continue to execute a long term vision, which is being “tweaked” or “influenced” but not or only in very few cases dramatically changed by the government or the ministers.

Administrations and agencies need the flexibility to act now

This is not necessarily different from what is happening today, other than the fact that the administrations spend too much time in limbo, waiting for direction from the government. After all, most of the (operational) activities of the administration will not significantly change no matter what the government’s direction is. Taxes need to be collected, whatever the tax rate or tax structure. Vehicles still need license plates, whether the number is associated with a person or with a vehicle. Food safety needs to be assured whether or not it incorporates the Commission’s REACH objectives or not …

Thus, an administration can commit to a long term action plan of improvement and change, designed by its president and managers, presented to its stakeholders (minister, government, parliament and even the wider population) and tweaked, fine-tuned in view of their feedback. However, and administration should not wait to take action in its areas of responsibility pending a ministerial decision which may be bogged down in heavy political negotiations. This delay is not acceptable to its stakeholders (enterprises and citizens alike) as they have limited to no understanding of or appreciation for this process.

Why sum formulas better reflect the risk appetite in calculating risk levels

How to determine a risk profile and calculate a level of risk?

Introduction

This is a significant rewrite and a first time write-up in English of an article I published in Dutch in May of 2009. I'm revisiting it because I had an interesting exchange with my ERM class at Solvay Brussels School last week, where we discussed the issues related to risk calculations.

As is always the case in this area of risk management, there will be both proponents of the approach and people contesting it. For me, a large part of the value of these posts is in the discussion that follows. For that, I refer to the ERM group on Linked-In, where I will post a link to this post.

Finally, I understand that the number of readers of a post halves with each formula you put into an article. This may actually mean I will be the only one reading this one to the end.

The controversy

Risk analysis tasks you with "measuring" risks. To date, we most often use qualitative information. There are a couple of reasons for that.

First, quantitative information is most often not readily available in sectors other than banking or insurance. Even if it were available, it can cloud rather than clarify the issue. Look for example at risk management failures in the banking sector over the past years.

So, we start with qualitative information. My implicit assumption here is that definitions of scales are agreed upon with all evaluators and are consistently applied in the evaluations. Everyone evaluating should be very clear about what "high", "medium" or "low" risk actually means.

In some cases, simple scoring along the axes of probability of occurrence and impact on objectives is not enough. Some analysis requires a roll-up from these "traditional" scores for impact and probability of occurrence to a single dimension, which we will refer to here as the "risk level".

Now, most of us, risk management nerds, agree that the risk level is a function of impact and probability. However, the controversy starts right after. Traditional risk management usually uses a product formula to calculate the level of risk:

Level of risk = I(mpact) x P(robability) = I x P

The problem with this approach becomes apparent pretty quickly. Risk related events with a high impact and low probability are scored in a similar manner to risk related events with a low impact and a high probability. The assumption these events are comparable in "risk level weight" is an unfounded assumption. Let me give you a concrete example:

The likely low impact even of a fly hitting your vehicle has an overall lesser level of risk than the luckily unlikely high impact event of a deer hitting your vehicle.

However, traditional risk management will yield a same risk level for a event with P=6/6 and I=1/6 as for an event with P=1/6 and I=6/6. Both are valued at 6.

See the problem? Right. Now, what can we do about it?

Alternatives to the product formula

Using a sum formula rather than a product formula allows us to attach a numeric weight to the dimensions impact on objectives (which we'll call impact or I) and probability of occurrence within a certain time frame (which I will refer to as probability or P). This weight is a function of the relative importance of impact and probability to the organisation where we are performing the risk analysis.

How does that work? Well, depending on your risk appetite as an organisation, you can give more weight to one dimension over another, which allows you to tweak the risk analysis to the risk profile of your organisation. This is where product formulas fall short. They cannot be used to integrate this aspect:

W x (I x P) = (W x I) x P. However, W x (I+P) does NOT equal (W x I) + P

You could rightly remark that weighting in the product formula can be realised when applying exponential values to the dimensions. However, it's exactly that exponential nature that will quickly reduce the relevance and weight of the not-weighted dimension to virtually nothing as compared to the weighted dimension. Hence, it makes little sense to take the non-weighted parameter in account. But as it is valued, we do need to take in account the scores that have been attributed to that dimension for the different risks evaluated.

In short, applying a sum formula to calculate the risk level ensures a more transparent calculation which allows the management to better reflect their risk appetite … provided the dimensions are weighted in a manner that reflects the risk appetite of the organisation.

But what do these weights mean?

Weights are applied to a dimension to give that dimension more importance in the calculation of the risk level of the specific risk. If the risk appetite calls for the avoidance of high impact events, impact will be weighted heavier than probability. If we want to reduce the probability of event occurrence, we will put more weight on probability.

There is some, but not a perfect, correlation between impact preferences and organisations with a preference for proactively managing the consequences of risks and probability preferences and organisations with a preference for proactively managing the sources of risks. That however is the subject of another blog post.

If we let W be the weight factor, we can distinguish three different profiles, which depending on the value of X can be more or less extreme.

impact oriented profile

This profile weighs impact as more important than probability of occurrence. This organisation will prefer to work on high impact risks with less attention given to the probability factor. Coverage of frequently occurring, low impact risks, such as clerical errors, is less important.

The risk level calculation is RL = (W x I) + P) / (W + 1)

probability oriented profile

This profile weighs probability of occurrence as more important than impact. The organisation wants to avoid the frequently occurring risks, but sacrifices coverage of high impact, lower probability risks.

The risk level calculation is RL = (I + (W x P)) / (W + 1)

indifferent profile

This profile does not weight probability or impact. Risks with high impact and low probability are treated in the same manner as risks with low impact and high probability.

The risk level calculation is RL = (I + P) / 2

Who gets to determine these weights?

Well, management does. It's there responsibility to determine weights as these represent the risk profile of the organisation. They need to translate the mission and vision into a strategy which is supported by a risk profile. That decision is theirs and theirs alone.

An example

Let's assume we have two situations for which the impact and probability of occurrence have been established. Let's further assume that the impact score for the first situation equals the probability score for the second, and the probability score for the first situation equals the impact score for the second. The traditional calculations using the product formulas will of course show these risks to be at an equal risk level to one another.

Let's further assume that the weighting factor applied will be W = 2. In essence, the parameter it will be applied to will be considered to be twice as important than the other parameter. In this case, we chose for an environment which values impacts more than probability of occurrence, as stated with a factor of 2.

Let's finally assume that the evaluation of each dimension is done on a five point scale and that the final risk level score needs to be normalised to a five point scale.

• Situation 1 is a collusion between a responsible and a supplier to perpetrate a fraud damaging the organisation.
• Situation 2 is a clerical error in the administrative registration of a demand for a service of that same organisation.

We first perform the calculations to get a non-normalised result, which then needs to be brought back to a score on an axis from 1 to 5. We then normalise to a five point scale.

Evaluation of situation 1

the weighted product formula yields: (2 x I) x P = (2 x 5) x 1 = 10

the non weighted product formula yields: I x P = 5 x 1 = 5

The weighted sum formula yields: (2 x I) + P = (2 x 5) + 1 = 11

the non weighted sum formula yields: I + P = 5 + 1 = 6

Evaluation of situation 2

the weighted product formula yields: (2 x I) x P = (2 x 1) x 5 = 10

the non weighted product formula yields: I x P = 1 x 5 = 5

The weighted sum formula yields: (2 x I) + P = (2 x 1) + 5 = 7

the non weighted sum formula yields: I + P = 1 + 5 = 6

Normalisation

As all risk scores need to be brought back to a five point scale, we need to perform a "normalisation", which is just a fancy way of saying we are bringing the score back to a reference scale. Depending on the formula used, the normalization calculation is different.

For the product formula, we divide by the maximum possible score (normalisation to 1) which we then multiply by the maximum value on the scale, in this case 5. This leads to:

2 x Imax x Pmax / 5 = 2 x 5 x 5 / 5 = 50 / 5 = 10

In other words, the normalized risk level for situation 1 becomes:

• for the weighted calculation: 10 / 10 = 1
• for the non-weighted calculation: 5 / 10 = 0,5

The normalized risk level for situation 2 becomes:

• for the weighted calculation: 10 / 10 = 1
• for the non-weighted calculation: 5 / 10 = 0,5

For the sum formula, we divide by (W + 1), where W is the weight given to the dominant dimension. This yields the following normalized results for situation 1:

• for the weighted calculation: 11 / 3 = 3,66
• for the non-weighted calculation: 6 / 3 = 2

For situation 2, this becomes:

• for the weighted calculation: 7 / 3 = 2,33
• for the non-weighted calculation: 6 / 3 = 2

In other words, where the product formula fails to distinguish the two very different risk events, the sum formula distinguishes the risk events and considers the risk with the higher impact as of a higher priority.

The example demonstrates the sum formula better answers the needs of management to reflect its risk appetite in the calculated risk level of individual risks.

Ideas on a project prioritisation system for public sector projects

Introduction

This is a rewrite of a post I published in November 2009 on another blog. I've reviewed and revised the text. While a number of ideas remain valid, I've made quite a number of changes.

Any project executed in a public sector environment has to face - by its very nature - a high level of scrutiny. Laws and regulations have been designed to ensure that the use of public means is as correctly executed as possible. The question that plagues many an administrator is whether he or she has invested time and effort in the right project. And while the decision remains complex, the following decision model aims at assisting the decision takers in a first project prioritisation.

By evaluating projects on the three axes of monetary impact, political feasibility and communicability, these projects can be prioritised in a way which answers legitimate questions on best use of means. These questions can, should and will be asked by the concerned representatives of the people, the politicians. The model which we propose below allows such a prioritisation.

Context

“Is this project the most relevant investment of my available resources, be these financial means, available people or my own limited time?” When prioritising a project financed by public means this is a legitimate question which a politician can, should and will ask of the public administration proposing a project. Whereas the question is legitimate, the answer requires an approach which is not always readily available to administrations.

The administration can answer this question from its own perspective, but runs the risk of missing one or more key elements which do not play a role in its own decision taking but are very important to the concerned representatives.

Method

The following three-dimensional model an administration can use to transparently present different projects or project options to representatives in order to develop a higher degree of buy-in.

The first dimension – estimated monetary impact

This dimension aims at providing a verifiable estimation of the monetary impact a project can have under different conditions. It must answer the question how much the project will actually save, gain or result in, either for the public administration or for the constituency (either citizens or companies).

This most traditional of measurements can be executed by means of different measurement systems, depending on the needs and nature of the project. For burden reduction projects for example, an analysis using a Standard Cost Model assessment of the situation before and after or the Regulatory Impact Assessment is most often used.

The second dimension – political feasibility

The second dimension assesses the feasibility of the project from a purely political point of view. "Can we obtain an adequate level of support to realise all the relevant goals of this project?" Even more importantly, "are there no indications of any resistance to the realisation of the project which can block it even before it gets started?"

This assessment requires a keen view on the current political reality or the expected political reality at the time of project approval and throughout the period of project execution. In order to correctly assess this, the administration will need the input and the support from the appropriate cabinet(s).

This need reconfirms the essential nature of regular communication and information flows between cabinets and the administrations.

The third dimension – Communicability

This dimension is for a politician the most important, and legitimately so. After all, visibility ensures continued political relevance, and visibility is often a function of how well a project can be communicated.

We often look down on politicians seeking the public eye, looking to "score" by going on TV. We actually forget that that is an essential part of the role of the politician. He or she needs to communicate to a wide audience and gauge the reaction of that audience to determine his or her position. I'm not naive in that I do know and realise that party pressure can influence voting behaviour, but I also believe this day and age, with social networks which enjoy a high degree of participation, provides the best possible situation for a politician to get almost real time feedback on his or her performance.

The purpose of this dimension is to evaluate the extent of the communicability of a certain project: how well can the purpose be communicated to a third party (citizen or company) and how large will the extent of political support be generated by this communication? Is it a viable news item? Will it be taken up by the news organisations, both written, spoken and/or tv?

Benefits

The proposed approach allows the public servants to be more proactive in their relationship with the politician(s) and member of the cabinet(s) as argued in a prior article (published on the original posting site, which I will repost later) on correctly treating politicians as stakeholders. It prepares the ground for decision for duly elected representatives without forcing a decision on them.