Recently in BC, we have a had a child die in the care of the state. This does happen from time to time, and when it does a process is triggered whereby the Representative for Children and Youth lanuches an investigation and makes recommendations which usually result in more rules and procedures to govern the child welfare system with the express purpose of never having it happen again. I work closely with child protection social workers in BC and there is not a single one I know of whose heart does not break when something like this happens. Everyone wears the …
From time to time, I’ve made notes about my working set up, noticing that things change a lot over the years. Inspired by my friend Peter Rukavina, but with substantially less detail, here is my current set up. Infrastructure My office is located in a dormer on the upper floor which faces south and is surrounded on three sides by windows. to the west I can see the Queen Charlotte Channel, the waterway that separates Bowen Island from West Vancouver. To the west is the forested slopes of Mount Collins, and in front below me are my neighbours in the …
A couple of good blog posts in my feed this morning that provoked some thinking. These quotes reminded me how much evaluation and planning is directed towards goals, targets and patterns that cause us to look for data that supports what we want to see rather than learning what the data is telling us about what’s really going on. These helped me to reflect on a conversation I had with a client yesterday, where we designed a process for dealing with this.
From a piece of unsolicited email I got this morning comes an absolutely exquisite piece of writing. I’m sure this makes sense in some contexts, but it is reason number one why you should not have your all star business analyst write marketing copy:
Do you know the story of the Taoist farmer and his son? There once was a Taoist farmer. One day the Taoist farmer’s only horse broke out of the corral and ran away. The farmer’s neighbors, all hearing of the horse running away, came to the Taoist farmer’s house to view the corral. As they stood there, the neighbors all said, “Oh what bad luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.” About a week later, the horse returned, bringing with it a whole herd of wild horses, which the Taoist farmer and his son quickly corralled. The neighbors, hearing of the …
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