Did management fads lose the war?

Why did the once all conquering Israel Defence Force fail in the Second Lebanon War in 2006? This question was addressed in the just released Winograd Commission Report, the English summary which can be found here. The issue was also reflected upon in a 2007 academic paper by Raanan Lipshitz, to be found on Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton's Evidence Based Management website.

The core of the findings of the Winograd Report are:

Seriously deficient decision making at all levels.

Seriously deficient tactical and strategic thinking, planning and preparation.

Indecisiveness once the war started, specifically on whether an air or ground offensive was required.

I quote one sentence from the report:

This outcome (not achieving the war's objectives) was primarily caused by the fact that, from the very beginning, the war has not been conducted on the basis of deep understanding of the theatre of operations, of the IDF's readiness and preparedness, and of basic principles of using military power to achieve a political and diplomatic goal.

These finding are broadly similar to those of Lipshitz I've previously referred to. He specifically indicated that:

Management fads inherited from the US Army, including excessive context inappropriate jargon, led to poor communication and unclear and unmeasurable objectives. As an example, Lipshitz points to the difficulty to determine whether an abstract effect such as "shock and awe", has been achieved.

Extremely limited training of ground forces due to limited budgets.

Excessive reliance of high technology where simpler solutions should have been preferred, i.e the use of smart bombs where area bombing would have been more effective.

Lack of mindful, critical thinking, common sense and an evidence based approach. Instead management fads and business jargon reigned.

There is a lesson in this not only for military organisations, but also for other branches of public service and even business. The lesson is that inappropriately applied management methods and fads can severely damage such organizations, even lose wars.

For armies, Von Clausewitz is to be preferred to Tony Robbins.

Brain profiling - science or pseudoscience?

My son returned from school a while ago with a pamphlet. A speaker at school distributed the pamphlets after a talk on whole brain functioning. The pamphlet suggested that parents have their children's brain profile tested for a small sum of money. What it did not say that it was a classical bait and switch scam. The assessment would lead to a programme to promote whole brain functioning and that was not at all cheap.

A while before that a friend had to undergo a brain profile assessment at work. Being a bit more neuroscientifically astute that the average worker, he questioned the concept, as well as the reliability and validity of the brain profile "test". Hopefully this was not a career limiting move, as his boss seemed set on knowing each employee's brain preferences.

So what is brain profiling and what is its scientific status, if any?

A brain profile assessment is not as one may imagine a neurological or neuropsychological examination of brain function. As envisaged here, it is a questionnaire of thinking and behavioural preferences, putatively representing underlying differences in brain organisation. The questionnaire is sometimes combined with simple tests of motor and sensory dominance (hand, foot, eye, ear).

Brain profiling seemed to originate with Ned Herrmann, a trainer/consultant who developed his four quadrant brain model based the split brain research of Roger Sperry, combined with the triune brain model of Paul McLean. Herrmann developed his Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) to test determine so called brain profiles. The scientific rejection of the simplistic brain model his theory was based on, soon led Herrmann to state that his four quadrant brain model was to seen as a metaphor.

I quote from the extensive critique of learning style research by Coffield et al. (2004, p. 86).

Although Herrmann began with a brain-based theory of hemisphere dominance, he later accepted that this was an oversimplification with inadequate empirical support and recommended (1989, 63) that A, B, C, D quadrant terminology be used instead: ‘The whole-brain model, although originally thought of as a physiological map, is today entirely a metaphor.’

Hat tip to Jon Mueller at PESTS for this link.

Brain profiling instruments mostly seem to be derived from either Herrmann's HBDI or a shorter "test" by Paul Torrance, the "Your Style of Learning and Thinking" (SOLAT). Organisations affiliated to the Herrmann International group use the HBDI, while the Kobus Neethling Group and its affiliates use the Torrance derived instument, as adapted by Neethling.

Herrmann International claim that the HBDI is valid and reliable, but according to Prof. De Amato in the "The Eleventh Mental Measurements Yearbook, 1992", both validity and reliability are questionable. The SOLAT's validity and reliability is even more doubtful. Neethling claims high validity and reliability for his version of the SOLAT.

Claiming validity for either instrument must of necessity bring into question the validity of the "whole brain" concept on which both are based. I've indicated in a previous post that the concept is pseudoscientific nonsense that can best be described as whole-brain half-wittery. Is it sensible to even consider the validity of a psychometric test if the concept it purportedly measures is nonsense?

Even though Herrmann suggested moved away from the brain profiling idea, current Herrmann affiliated organisations, as well as Neethling affiliates, continue using brain based terminology extensively. The fact that it's meant as a metaphor, is normally only mentioned in passing and is probably missed by most of their clients. The fact that both organisations use the whole brain concept so extensively in all their programmes and do so very literally, brings about the question whether the metaphor idea has not merely become a fallback position for when they'e challenged by neuroscientifically astute clients?

My conclusion? Brain profiles are pseudoscientific in nature. The only way these instruments can get scientific respectability, would be to totally drop the pretense that they are in any form, metaphorically or otherwise, brain profiles. They are measures of thinking preferences, nothing more.

Caught between ENRON and ESCOM

What is the difference between South Africa and the Titanic? ...

The Titanic's lights were on when it sank.

I'm sure similar jokes were making the rounds during the California electricity crisis when ENRON was manipulating their power supplies in 2000 and 2001. ENRON also features indirectly in South Africa's power problem.

The current electricity crisis in South Africa is the result of mainly two issues. The first was a decision by government not to build new power stations, as it wished to privatise power generation. Issues such as the ENRON debacle caused it to reconsider. Too little was done too late and we were irrevocably headed for disaster.

That was ENRON. The other issue was and is ESCOM's poor maintenance of its infrastructure. ESCOM, like so many state and parastatal organisations in South Africa, failed to understand that maintenance, though not a glamorous activity, needed to be done and needed competent engineers and technicians to manage and do it. Now that at last they're realising it, there is a problem.

There are not enough engineers and technicians to meet the need. Beeld newspaper today reported that ESCOM, has a shortage of hundreds of engineers and projects a shortage of thousands of technicians over the next five years. The 2010 Soccer World Cup, of course, falls right in the period of five years.

ESCOM is now considering re-employing engineers and technicians previously retrenched and forced to retire due to affirmative action. Will it work? Knowledge and skills that are not used, decay over time. Will they be up to the task? Will the current incumbents of positions previously occupied by the returning engineers, accept their guidance?

Many South Africans could see this situation coming and warned government and ESCOM long ago. It is only natural that they would now bask in that exquisitely destructive emotion, schadenfreude.

Astrologists never saw it coming!

From the Astrological Magazine website:

We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the publication of The Astrological Magazine will cease with the December 2007 issue.

I thought initially that this was probably an urban legend, just too good to be true! I checked, however, and it seems genuine.

Hat tip to John Johnson at PESTS (Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically) listserve for this.

The Edge's 2008 question

Each year The Edge asks a number of prominent scientists and other thinkers an open ended question. Their answers always make for interesting reading. Previous years' questions included:

2007 - What are you optimistic about?
2006 - What is your dangerous idea?
2005 - What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?

The Edge's question for 2008 is especially thought provoking and the answers will provide you with many hours of bedtime reading:

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.

WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?

This blurb from Tim O'Reilly from O'Reilly's Radar sums it up well: "A remarkable feast of the intellect... an amazing group of reflections on science, culture, and the evolution of ideas. Reading the Edge question is like being invited to dinner with some of the most interesting people on the planet."

The names of the respondents to The Edge's question reads like a Who's Who of science and include Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Howard Gardner, Daniel Kahneman, David Meyers, John Allen Paulos, Stephen Pinker and more than a hundred others.

Scanning through the responses, I picked up a number of common themes. The limitations of an overly reductionistic approach to science and the necessity to consider complexity was one. I must admit that I am myself still more comfortable within a reductionistic scientific model. I have fairly recently been introduced to the concepts of complexity, complex adaptive systems and emergence by Dave Snowden at Cognitive Edge and Sonja Blignaut at Narrativelab.

Another theme was the dangers of bias and even of manipulation in the reporting of scientific experimentation. Many of the responses also touched upon the escalating conflict between science and religion. I am sure there are many other themes that can be identified, but in the absence of a comprehensive analysis, these depend on the confirmation bias of the reader.

Other blogs that have picked up on The Edge's question are Evidence Soup and Mind Hacks.

Von Manstein's officer types

Field Marshall Erich von Manstein allegedly categorised military officers into four types (I have been unable to find an original reference and I have seen the same categorisation ascribed to Von Clausewitz). These types are:

The brilliant and energetic man makes the best staff officer. He handles routine work with accuracy and completeness.

The brilliant and lazy man makes the best commanding officer. He tends to see the big picture accurately and avoids preoccupation with detail work which might distract him.

The stupid and lazy man makes the best subordinate. He will do what he is told properly, no more no less.

The stupid and energetic man, however, is to be avoided at all costs. He is quite capable of ruining the best laid plans.

These descriptions are from Colonel Jeff Cooper.

In wartime such a categorisation may be a useful quick and dirty heuristic. One would wonder to what extent it was actually consistently acted upon and whether Nazi party membership did not feature strongly in such decisions. Von Manstein himself was one of the best of the German generals and was eventually fired by Hitler when he opposed his irrational military decisions.

This military rule of thumb is, however, also sometimes proposed as a corporate management tool, classifying people in boxes, as seen below in this figure from Slow Leaderhip.




Now, I believe one should be very careful about such categorisations and I doubt that this matrix is quite what Von Manstein had in mind. People's actions are often context specific, something categorisation does not allow for. The application of a rule of thumb from a military context in a corporate context is also questionable.

I am concerned that such classifications may become self-fulfilling prophesies. Writing about it as I am here, one's staff or customers may wonder in which part of the matrix you have placed them. Even worse, where will they categorise you!?

Having said that, I doubt that Von Manstein's classification is any worse than pseudoscientific classification systems such as brain profiling or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. At least Von Manstein's does not claim to be scientific and does not have a whole mythology built around it. Staff is not subjected to being tested with pseudopsychometric tests of doubtful reliability and validity. They are not subjected to workshops to manipulate their classification, or to show them to get along with others with different different brain or personality profiles. Best of all, Van Manstein's officer typology is free and no consultants are needed to interpret it or follow it up!

It is finally, however, a use now and pay later system. Eventually you'll pay the price for categorising people and losing sight of their individuality in the process.

"The Secret" is all about g

The secret to "The Secret" is that there is no secret to "The Secret".

It's all about g and no g. It's about - (g)reed, (g)ullibility and a general lack of (g)eneral intelligence. But most of all, it is about gullibility.



Cartoon from Philosophy and Reasoning Network.

Polygraphs and eyewitness testimony - bad ideas?

Jeffry Ricker on the PESTS (Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically) listserve alerted us to a post on polygraphing by Dan Greenberg on the Chronical Review. Greenberg points out that voluntarily undergoing a polygraph test (lie detector) is a bad idea due to a lack of scientific evidence for the reliability of such tests. He claims that "...it’s a voodoo device that can stain the innocent and exonerate the guilty."

Greenberg demonstrates how the device survived concerns about its scientific merits with an interesting quote from Richard Nixon: “I don’t know anything about polygraphs, and I don’t know how accurate they are, but I know they’ll scare hell out of people.”

One of the commenters on Greenberg's post points out that while screening polygraph tests may be suspect, directed issue tests are more accurate than eyewitness testimony. Which brings about the question, how accurate is eyewitness testimony? A Google search on eyewitness testimony brought me to an interesting example of memory misattribution.

An Australian eyewitness memory expert, Dr. Donald Thomson, was arrested for rape after he was identified by a rape victim as the rapist. At the time of the rape he was appearing on a live TV discussion about the unreliability of eyewitness memory. The raped woman had confused his face seen on TV with that of the rapist. The Australian police refused to accept his alibi, even though it was backed up by an assistant police commissioner who also appeared on the show, not to mention the studio audience and viewers! Which does not say much for the intelligence of the policemen involved (unless it was possible for Thomson to be in two places at once due to some weird quantum effect)! This incident from a book by Alan Baddeley, although I think it may have been mentioned before that by Daniel Schachter, both of them prominent memory experts.

Moral of the story? You agree to a screening polygraph test at your own peril. Consider perceptual distortions and unreliable memory when judging or challenging eyewitness testimony.

Oprah, the president maker?

What an incongruous sight, Oprah Winfrey in Obama's corner, Chuck Norris in Huckaby's, or was it McCaine's? The ultimate agony aunt and her millions of avid faced "Oh my God" supporters versus the ultimate kick-ass guy with his probably fewer macho men supporters. Now if someone could just teach Chuck Norris how to properly hold a pistol so at least it seems as if he could hit the target, maybe then he would have a chance against Oprah!

Don't get me wrong, Obama (or Huckaby) may well be the best next president of the USA. My problem is the influence of celebrities. Will Oprah's supporters think their choice through critically, or will they follow blindly where she leads? George Soros referred somewhere to America as a feel-good society who elects feel-good presidents who are unable (or unwilling) to do what needs to be done. Will Oprah and her feel good supporters elect the ultimate feel good president?

What right, you may ask, does a South African have to express his views on the American presidential race? Well, just as Kennedy once said "Ich bin ein Berliner", many of us have to say "I'm an American", whether we like it or not. The USA seems to be a waning empire, but it still influences our lives like no other country can. Our lives are almost as interlinked with the fortunes of America as that of most Americans.

Well then, as an American by proxy, I hope that America gets the president it needs, rather that the one its celebrities want (or the one it deserves?). But are we there yet?

Nonsense congregates

In checking information for an upcoming post on this blog, I was once again struck by the way nonsense attracts nonsense.

Some trainers and consultants seem to be naturally drawn to pseudoscience bullshit. In fact, it seems that you can with a fair amount of certainty judge a specific approach (teaching, therapeutic, management) by the company it keeps. Some years ago I was requested to address an academic meeting at the Technicon Witwatersrand (now part of the University of Johannesburg) on scientific perspectives on cerebral hemispheric asymmetry and my views on the left brain right brain issue.

After my presentation I was confronted quite aggressively by some of the participants - they were worried that I had compromised their credibility in the technicon. They were attached to a recently established unit for professional development at the technicon. The approaches they pushed included a Pandora's box of nonsense, including Brain Gym, Neurolinguistic Programming, brain profiling and Suggestopedia. I debunked all of these on neuroscientific grounds and lack of evidence, but was hammered with quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, with subtle energies and mystical interpretations of the Hawthorne and placebo effects, with the Mozart effect and heaven knows what else. Eventually we agreed to disagree, we were clearly not of the same universe, let alone the same planet.

The unit was apparently disbanded not long after our meeting. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, so I can't be held responsible!

Since then I was involved in numerous similar discussions and I have found that where people were involved in one form of nonsense, you could quite accurately predict what else they would be involved in. Nonsense congregates.

A new motivation theory?

The South African cricket team, ranked second in the world, just lost the first cricket test against the West Indies, ranked seventh. In the aftermath of the shock defeat, coach Micky Arthur "punished" the South African team by forcing them to remain in their dressing room to listen to the West Indies' victory celebrations next door (Beeld newspaper, 31 December 2007).

While keeping in mind that newspaper reporters sometimes misquote people or get the context wrong, the idea of "punishing" an international sporting team in such a childish and demeaning fashion, seems questionable to say the least. I can't imagine even a primary school cricket coach "punishing" his team like this for losing.

Or is it perhaps part of a new management fad, motivation by shaming?

Sports coaches seem enthusiastic users of quackish and even crazy management fads - consider Kamp Staaldraad and genetic brain profiling in South African rugby. I have it from Dave Snowden that the former British rugby coach, Clive Woodward was also into management fads. The Welsh centre, Gavin Henson, found himself in the rugby wilderness after resisting some of Woodward's management methods. Is Mickey Arthur following the same path?

An the other hand, maybe I'm guilty of committing a kind of strawman fallacy here, with the pressure coaches are under these days, Mickey Arthur may just have lost it!

Whole-brain Half-wittedness

The left-brain/right-brain myth just won't go away. The psychologist, Laurence Miller, coined the phrase "whole-brain half-wittedness" and it's a good description. I, and many others, have been debunking the myth in education, business and other domains for many years. We have not had much success. Where did the myth originate and why is it so difficult to bust?

The idea that (Western) education neglected half the brain (usually the right hemisphere) and that the whole brain needed to be activated, did not find its origin in Nobelist Roger Sperry's 1950/60's split brain research, as is commonly believed. In 1985, psychologist Lauren Julius Harris wrote in a book chapter entitled "Teaching the right brain: Historical perspective on a contemporary educational fad.", that these ideas found their origin in Victorian times. Prejudice agains left-handedness (sinistrality) led to the educational ideal of ambidexterity in order to promote two-brainedness. Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement, was one of the supporters of the ambidexterity movement - in order to get more effective soldiers.

Why, if these ideas are so old and so thoroughly debunked (see for instance this chapter from The Throwing Madonna), do they just keep on going? There are of many reasons of course. The idea of a dual brain with a division of function along the lines of popular dichotomies (i.e. rational vs. intuitive, male vs. female, sequential vs. simultaneous) seems elegant and appealing - a scientific solution worthy of Occam's Razor. It is so intuitively plausible and on the face of it, based on science, that quacks find it easy to market any product based on it.

Another reason may lie in the nature of the training or therapy franchises that promote whole -brain half-wittery. They are often what I would like to call inbred granfalloons. A granfalloon is a group of people, often hierarchically organised, that associate around a meaningless, fabricated premise. The granfalloon would be established by the leader (or guru) and members would be limited to approved training and literature. The guru may be well aware that his or her product is nonsense, but the faithful followers or practitioners are kept in the dark. The quaint American expression "mushroomed - kept in the dark and fed manure", seems appropriate.

Occam's Donkey???

Why Occam's Donkey? Well, it's my combination of Occam's Razor and a composite of a number of different donkeys in philosophy, literature and film - Shrek's Donkey, Buridan's ass and Benjamin from George Orwell's novel Animal Farm.

Occam's Razor is the well known scientific rule of thumb that holds that "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." There is of course much more to it than that and the Wikipedia link above is a good place to start (it is instructive in Wikipedia to also look at the discussion pages). William of Occam (or Ockham) was the 14th-century English Franciscan friar and philosopher upon whose views the razor was based.

My composite donkey will ask sceptical questions (Benjamin), including "... are we there yet?" (Shrek's Donkey), but hopefully not irrationally "die" of hunger, caught between two haystacks (Buridan's ass).

Occam's Donkey will mainly be about three ideas - critical thinking, evidence supported practice and busting bullshit. These ideas will be explored within widely different domains, including education, medicine and associated fields, business, sport and the military.

The South African paediatrician and poet, C. Louis Leipoldt, at that time the editor of the South African Medical Journal, wrote in July of 1927:

"Nowhere perhaps is the public so ill educated concerning quackery as in South Africa. Our chief cities are honeycombed with faddists, sects and denominations, and the countryside still welters in original ignorance, superimposed on a stratum of bigotry and prejudice.”

He also decried the “... gross stupidity of legislators who are fit representatives of a public that delights in quackery.”

In South Africa, and it seems the same in the rest of the world, little has changed in the 80 years since these words were written by Leipoldt. In fact, I believe that the situation is often worse now than then.

I know that Occam's Donkey will be one of hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs that propose critical thinking, good science and rational discource as solutions to Leipoldt's problem. The rhetorical question will often arise, however: "Are we there yet?"