Synchronicity and Decision Making

Synchronicity by Hassine Saidane   Which I had not heard described before.  A technical and academic view, but intriguing.

" ... In a previous article I argued that in order to ensure the  highest performance, decision makers need to balance the data driven actionable insights with intuition driven insights. In this article a new insight is added to the decision tool box. This insight is represented by an acausal rare, coincidental event that can have a huge impact on the decision maker's enterprise, although absolutely free. Such an event is called a synchronicity, first introduced, defined and modeled by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. 

Most of the ideas presented in this article are summaries and adaptation of excerpts from "Synchronicity", a book by Jessica Satori , and " Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an interconnected universe " by David H. Rosen. Besides integrating the concepts presented  in these books into a decision making aid, the additional contribution here is the derivation of metrics to measure and evaluate whether an event is a synchronicity. Such an evaluation boosts the awareness of these life and business changing events thereby potentially increasing the frequency of their use in decision making and resulting beneficial impact. ... "

McKinsey on the Next 50 Years

A new collection of articles from McKinsey.   Just starting to take a look at this.  For example: " ... Management intuition for the next 50 years ... The collision of technological disruption, rapid emerging-markets growth, and widespread aging is upending long-held assumptions that underpin strategy setting, decision making, and management. ... " 

Dimensions of Portfolio Analysis

Had not seen this particular way of looking at this. Worth a further look.   " ... the various reasons why Portfolio Management is tough to implement with two different Flightmap  clients. Where one of the talks focused on the behaviour side (the role of politics, intuition, culture), the second one was more about the inherent (almost mathematical) complexity. In our view of portfolio management as a decision-making process, it requires the Analysis of a number of options (projects, or better alternative portfolios) against certain criteria to get to better decisions .... " 

Wikipedia's Data Trove for Trends

I have talked to several people who are using the Wikipedia as an ontology of knowledge. Surely there is much more data to be mined there. But what statistics exist about its operation? What trends there are that are indication of markets?  How does that differ from other social media?  The data is freely available.  More  In an article from Wired:

" ... There are websites, and then there’s Wikipedia. The internet behemoth boasts 30 million articles written in more than 285 languages, tweaked by 70,000 active editors and viewed by 530 million visitors worldwide each month. As mountains of information go, it’s Everest. Teasing out trends from the open source encyclopedia’s archives is a task few would even attempt. Yet Erik Zachte did just that.

Zachte used his statistical intuition to create “Wikistats,” an online statistics package that’s more than a trove of charts and graphs for data geeks. It’s the most direct measure yet of Wikipedia’s success in achieving its central objective: making the sum of all human knowledge available to everyone everywhere. ... " 

Role of Intuition in Analytics: Abductive Reasoning

Intuition, creativity, even directed randomness are parts of analytics.  And thus also part of what we are now calling 'Big Data'.   Now how we do implement the use of intuition?  By setting up easily used sand boxes that allow us to test alternative solutions easily.  In the design world this is called 'abductive reasoning'.  It uses simulation methods to perform testing.  Worth examining. On this topic Tom Davenport writes in   The HBR and discusses further.

   " ... Many people have asked me over the years about whether intuition has a role in the analytics and data-driven organization. I have always reassured them that there are plenty of places where intuition is still relevant. For example, a hypothesis is an intuition about what’s going on in the data you have about the world. The difference with analytics, of course, is that you don’t stop with the intuition — you test the hypothesis to learn whether your intuition is correct. ... " 

  Well said.  We have been doing it for years.  Consider also adding a gamifying process to both evaluate the results and varying their application.

Be Careful With People Analytics

HR analytics have been much in the news and in my investigations of late.  Here some cautionary notes.    What parts of HR can be constructed as a science?   It was also our internal experience:   This is still decision support rather than automation.  Still, more data and analytics will help. " ... Like it or not, “people analytics” are here to stay. But that doesn’t mean companies should put all their eggs in one basket and turn hiring and people management over to the algorithms. In fact, while reliance on experience/intuition to hire “the right person” is rife with biases, there’s also danger in over-reliance on HR analytics to find and cultivate the ultimate workforce. ... "  

Radical New Teaching Method?

 Aspects of AI inspired learning theories.  Heavily technology driven.  Now further enabled by MOOC. A kind of self organizing approach that assumes that children will organize to teach themselves using either their peers or the Internet.  I am skeptical that these kinds of methods will work alone.  People still have to be in the loop.  Families and environments must be strongly cooperative.  Home Schooling and Montessori are old and successful models.  See the Kahn Academy.  But different people learn in different ways.   You still have to work with accreditation/measurement of the results.    These approaches have been tested, and should be, but failures are rarely reported, since they are not in the rosy script.

In Wired:    (Read the whole article, a compelling story)

" ... an emerging educational philosophy, one that applies the logic of the digital age to the classroom. That logic is inexorable: Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think. Decentralized systems have proven to be more productive and agile than rigid, top-down ones. Innovation, creativity, and independent thinking are increasingly crucial to the global economy.... " 

" ... In 2009, scientists from the University of Louisville and MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences conducted a study of 48 children between the ages of 3 and 6. The kids were presented with a toy that could squeak, play notes, and reflect images, among other things. For one set of children, a researcher demonstrated a single attribute and then let them play with the toy. Another set of students was given no information about the toy. This group played longer and discovered an average of six attributes of the toy; the group that was told what to do discovered only about four. A similar study at UC Berkeley demonstrated that kids given no instruction were much more likely to come up with novel solutions to a problem. “The science is brand-new, but it’s not as if people didn’t have this intuition before,” says coauthor Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley.  ... "

Decision Support Intuition

In the Decision Support Blog:  A new App that aims to make your intuition better.  Skeptical of that, but the thought to take decision making beyond the rationally conscious is interesting.

   " ... London based development company Spacer Three has launched Intuition Journal, a new iPhone app that cuts through the noise and clutter of information overload and helps users tap into their intuition to make better decisions, overcome confusion and self-doubt, and gain deeper insight into themselves and how to create more meaning and fulfillment in their lives.

Intuition Journal is the first app of its kind to hit the Apple App Store. Although there is no shortage of diary and journal apps, including popular "gratitude journal" apps, Intuition Journal is a completely new concept. Unlike other journal apps, Intuition Journal is not just about documenting a play-by-play of one's life. The app has a specific goal: To help people develop their intuition and apply it to improve the quality of their lives. ... "