Measurement, Metrics and iteration

Hello Dashboard.

It is Saturday morning, and my first Rant for the year. I choose MEASUREMENT, METRICS and ITERATION because it kept popping up pretty much every where. These past few days I researched these tags on the internet, talked to folks face to face, via email and IM to generate fodder. My hope is for this RANT to provides some ACTIONABLE direction where ever you might be. Where ever I might be.

We are all in the INFORMATION AVAILABLITY business without calling it that, intuitively we tend to Measure, Analyze and Correct our course as we head down this chosen path. Most of it has to do with our very sustenance and quite often it is isolated from other folks sustenance, we tend to be selfish, because the very essence of sustaining ourselves puts us ahead of everyone else. Through time we developed dashboards to alert us and keep us on track.

What does your dashboard look like? Is it designed to provide your measure of AVAILABILITY?


Are you available? Is something stopping you from being available? will you be available down the stretch?. Is there enough information that you can mine to develop an actionable correction to being available? Is your availablity trivial? We need a dashboard to help us measure, analyze and iterate our NON-TRIVIAL AVAILABILITY perhaps.

If you have the right information at the right time, the quality of your action will improve your availability of the non-trivial kind, it has to. Can a dashboard help with achieving the right information at the right time?. To arrive at the right DASHBOARD, requires us to use the "Sum of human conciousness" not just the "Individual human conciousness". My research on the web, the one on one interviews, the email and IM chatter to build the fodder for this Rant proves that point. I could not have done it alone. So it is all about non-Trivial information availability of the collective kind.

Finally it all boils down to TRANSPARENCY. A trasparent DASHBOARD, one that is shared globally?. The more we share, the more eyes there are to help us iterate. The more we iterate, our actionable reponses get better results.

There is a tremendous amount of CONDITIONING that will work against the urge to build your transparent, globally shared DASHBORD of non-Trivial information availability. As you start building that dashboard make sure to leave your confirmational BIAS as the door.

And make it a point to Share something will ya!! Share something to the point that your information is no longer what separates you from the rest. Break down those BRANDS people!!

Non Trivial availaibilty lessons for today's Thought Leaders.

Suppose I were a leader with a whole slew of followers. What does my day look like?. For some it looks like this: (confession: took the following 4 bullets from Chris Brogan's note this morning)

1. Reading what friends write.
   
2. Reading about the “new marketing” industry and the tech industry (fishbowl).
   
3. Reading what people recommend.
   
4. Reading off the wall stuff that inspires new thoughts (outside the bowl).
   

The purpose behind these 4 bullets, of course is to "make things" that the followers find useful. But what of availability?

There are two kinds: Trivial and non Trivial. For most thought leaders today, availability does not even enter into the picture. Why? because with Availability there is a sense of immediacy. And the plain and simple truth is most so called thought leaders cant be bothered by that. Remember the God Father? He presided over these sessions where his followers would come to him and he would grant them his wishes. Great availability story there. We all knew exactly where we stood and he was always available to this followers.

Okay I am going somewhere with this and it mostly has to do with Non-Trivial availability. Some time ago, I had a boss who was always available when challenges were Trivial, but the minute it got any where near non-Trivial, the man was no where to be found. He must have thought that if he stays away I will always find a way. So why come in between a good thing.

You see I work in IT operations and Availability is a huge yardstick for us. So this generated a lot of discussion with SELF!!. It made me want to be available for the guys even more. Every time there was a situation, the picture of this boss who was never available when needed most came to mind and I would over compensate. To the point where I had enough material to write a dissertation on the subject.

It all started not too long ago. I was in a Data Mining class, Professor Mobashar (one of the best in my opinon) dropped this idea in passing about mining for availability and why it is important to categorize it into two buckets. Of course that was in the context of machine availability at that time, but boy did it get me thinking. What a concept.

So circling back to our Thought Leaders and what availability means to them. What is YOUR availability to your followers?. What percentage is Trivial availability?. Are you in the availability business at all?