Post Mortems

Here are some quotes that have appeared in the news media which may be familiar:

“Clearly, there should have been a red flag ...”

"This should never have happened."

"MI5 let terrorists slip through the net."

"There was a failure to connect the dots."

I've been thinking a lot about this as it is very much a feature of our times. It seems to be something most people accept is of limited use or even a waste of time, but which is somehow required until we come up with something better.
I am talking about the process that occurs after a disaster or near-disaster whereby a lot of criticism and analysis goes on, some blame is apportioned and lessons are supposedly learned for the future.
I am not talking about systemic problems where blame is warranted, such as cases of beaurocratic malaise, bad leadership, corporate wrong-doing or horrible incompetence.  I am talking about those disasters or events which everyone secretly suspects could not have been prevented but which in hindsight look like they could have been, and therefore everyone agrees to agree that they SHOULD have been prevented - ergo, the fact that they weren't means someone must be to blame.

We can all think of examples -
- the US media and politicians (especially the senate) castigating the CIA and FBI after any attempted terrorist attack, as if it should be possible to thwart every single one;
- some of the post-GFC analysis castigating the behaviour of investors or investment banks believing house prices/stock prices "would keep rising forever" (which by the way, no one believed. Everyone knew the reckoning was coming. But no one knew quite when...);
- to some extent, the analysis following the Victorian bushfires of Black Saturday, February 2009. A horrific event, and yes, there do appear to have been some leadership and process problems, but perhaps also a once-in-30-years full-scale disaster which no one could have managed effectively.

On a smaller scale, this happens in the corporate world too, driven I think by the growth of this process in the media. It's made everyone terrified of not being "proactive" or of being "complacent".
At my workplace after every loss or "near loss" (being the ones we quantify as such), we are required to produce a "post-mortem", a process about which I am ambivalent. I don't completely oppose them but think most of them are misguided, don't give any real benefit and give a false sense of security that we are bolstering ourselves against future errors. This is because, where day to day control management is very strong and effective (as ours is), the events that cause grief tend to be "out of the box" zingers or once-in-a-year process failures. You can't really "learn from" them, because (a) they are one-off events which could not be foreseen and won't likely recur, or (b) humans tend to act erratically under stress and while it's always possible to improve process and management style, you can't prevent mistakes.

However, it's hard to argue the "anti" case without sounding like a slacker or a whinger.  This is because there are always one or two points that come out of the post-mortem that seem reasonable and where it feels like a general lesson can be applied, even if you don't accept that the error could have been prevented.
The problem is, there is no possible way to actually prevent the kind of errors that occur. They are not systemic failures but moments where individuals or teams have "failed" to act a certain way in a time of extreme pressure or stress or where information was flying from ten different directions.
Sure it's always possible to point to a behavioural or procedural improvement - such as, "when something new is happening and the stakes are high, we should pull back for ten minutes and round-table with other teams to ensure everyone is operating under the right assumption/same strategy/etc". No one can disagree with that. Also no one can argue that we actually did this or that it would have been wrong to do it - so it seems like this is a lesson we should learn from and accept the validity of the post-mortem exercise.
But the difficulties in applying this in future to prevent any similar problems lie in (1) recognising the event in the moment it's happening [as next time won't look like this time] and (2) knowing when action now or pulling back is the more appropriate [as the answer won't be known until we get it wrong].

In the absence of systemic problems, there are three general problems with the "post mortem":

1 - No matter how tight a ship you run or how good your operations and controls, at some point someone will stuff up. Anlaysing who and how afterwards does not guarantee anything in future, because next time it will be something and someone else. "The human element" in other words; there will always be an element of error

2 - Hindsight is 20-20. Something happens. Something else happens. A lot of other things are happening at the same time around these two things. The two things are related - one leads to the other. Some of the other things appear to be related that are not, or create more noise at the time. Afterwards it may appear the development was "obvious", that there were "red flags" and a "failure to connect the dots" - but however obvious it looks afterwards, there are some events that just do not stand out at the time. Even the participants can forget this afterwards.

3 - Unexpected things can happen which were not possible to predict or guard against, such as an out-of-the-box system bug. As these events are "one-offs", the lessons you learn from them are not applicable to future events - other than as a general lesson to beware of one-off events. (And this is always in mind during a project anyway).

Some good comments on this same theme can be found by:

• Shakar Vedantam commenting on "intellectual dishonesty" in a comment called False Positives vs False Negatives in his blog "The Hidden Brain" 
• Malcolm Gladwell in the chapter "Connecting The Dots" in his book What The Dog Saw

Work-Life Balance and Plasma TVs

Article in The Age online yesterday:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/life-balance-still-not-working-20100731-110pg.html

My reaction reading this article, as to most others on this theme, was "yeah that's me". Paradoxically when reading these articles (which I devour, though they offer no solutions!) is at once deflation that the "no work-life balance" lifestyle is still the norm, and comfort that I'm not the only one.  It can be hard at times to remember that you're not the only woman out there working full-time while every other mother is at home or working part-time.

(Yes, it's a "first-world problem", and not the worst thing in the first world by a long shot. But please a little slack - this is the blogosphere after all).

But what dismayed me when reading this article was all the comments afterwards. Like all comments after an opinion piece they were forthright, accusatory, bitter and rude. As always, the participants end up slanging off each other. As always, after a while someone comes in conciliatory or attempting a compromise which unleashes defensive replies or a new round of slanging off... So far so usual.  (Really you should just read the opinion pieces and not all the comments afterwards!) But what was dispiriting was the number of people who commented basically that people who work are greedy and selfish and want wealth at the expense of nurturing their families.
Are we really still in that place?
Still??

Okay - so in the extremely unlikely event that any of those people will read this comment, I will explain how this thing works, with working and childcare and cash.

Some people have to work because of circumstance, even if they have small children.
These people love and cherish their children and want the best for them.
Their children are as happy and as well-adjusted as other children.
Not everyone who is working and paying off a mortgage has bought a mini-mansion.
Not everyone who is working is high-flying their way through a top-tier career.
The people in top-tier careers are working those jobs because they are the jobs they know and are good at - just as we all do the best job we can get for the hours we need to work.
There is not a simple equation of giving up paid work meaning giving up luxuries or giving up a glamorous career. The couple who sacrifice one person's work, or someone's career, to provide a stay-at-home parent are very strapped for cash; they see the working parents going out for coffee or buying something expensive and they think "Well if they just gave up that, they wouldn't have to work."
It's not like that.
In the situation they are witnessing, the dynamic is actually this:
Both parents need to work to pay the mortgage and bills. Neither parent is earning enough to cover these expenses singly. But with the combined salary, after expenses and daycare there is a little discretionary cash available. This is one of the advantages of the arrangement - as every arrangement has its advantages and disadvantages.

Believe me, before returning to work after 8 months' maternity leave, I sat with notepads and calculators and spreadsheets and did every sum you can think of, taking into account bills if at home, bills if out of the house working, benefits, tax incentives, salary, daily expenses while working vs daily expenses while home, part-time work, full-time work, etc.
If I could have stayed at home longer, I would have.

There were also things I was not willing to sacrifice - not because I am selfish but because I trust the cost-benefit analysis in my head. We were not about to sell our house and rent, or try to live with one car. I know people do this, but it would not have been right for us; the stress or added logistical difficulties would not have outweighed the benefit (for us). Every family sacrifices some things and draws the line at those they don't believe are of benefit - every family.

Until recently I used to say "and we don't own a plasma TV thank you very much!" - but I can no longer say that, exactly (it's LCD not plasma). But give me a break, we go digital next year, and prices have dropped.

So please - everyone - a little understanding and respect for our fellow parents. Whether working full-time, part-time, or not at all, the good parents and good-enough parents are all the same: making choices, sacrificing some things and enjoying others, doing the best they can with the cards they've been dealt, for the benefit of the children they love.
And don't most of us do a pretty good job?

Flu Vaccine update

There is "good" news on the issue of the safety of the seasonal flu vaccine for children under five - looks like it was a bad batch after all, and not a problem with flu vaccines overall.
This reported by The Age newspaper today -
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/ban-on-flu-vaccine-for-young-kids-lifted-20100730-10zcw.html

The Perils of Management

Some lessons learned from recent events:

General Stanley McChrystal - no matter how good you are and how lauded you are, don't forget you are not the boss!

Kevin Rudd  - what works at the beginning doesn't work forever. Don't get so caught up in your own momentum you don't notice things changing around you.
Also, stay friendly with your colleagues.

Malcolm Turnbull  - Doesn't matter how successful you are at everything else you've done, you can't beat politicians at the politics. It's nothing to do with being smart or right.

Melbourne Storm  -  There are good reasons for all those annoying rules. Always do the right thing, even if you're swimming in a culture that doesn't. Eventually, it will - and then things will not be pretty.

Goldman Sachs / Lehman Brothers  - See above.

Previous Greek governments  - Don't ignore that too-hard basket. See above.

BP  - thanks for pointing out the truth about business continuity plans!
But seriously, when copy-pasting BCP templates from region to region, remember to delete the walruses.

Christine Nixon  - Tough luck. During normal business you're a star if you delegate and have a strong team underneath you. But when a crisis hits, you're expected to don the hard hat and direct detailed operations down the mineshaft. Never mind the two modes of working are not compatible within the one person. A factory foreman can't run a multinational and a CEO can't run the factory floor - but the CEO is expected to be able to do both.

Hence the real reason for the astronomical CEO salaries these days. Yes they are entirely out of proportion with what the individual is worth or brings to the company. But they are a direct result of the expectations people have of company leaders these days. No one can meet these forever - getting blamed and getting fired has become a certainty in business and in politics. The more senior you are the more you need that paypacket, because it is basically an insurance policy against the inevitable.

So many paths to ruin, but not many templates for success!

Ambition or Pride or whatever else gets in the way

I don't think of myself as ambitious. I've never wanted to be the CEO, or even a very senior manager. But whatever job I'm doing, I always want to do well. More than well. I want to be impressive and have others look to me with awe and respect and gratitude for the wonderful work that I do. I want to be sought out for opinions and correct process, esteemed for my knowlege and liked and respected for my ability with staff and customers and projects and getting things done. I can't help it. I can't switch it off. And I don't know whether it's pride or ambition or work eithic or just plain fear and insecurity (hello again you two...).

I hate the thought that someone at work might be less than pleased with the way I have handled something; get anxious when I feel things turning out less than ideally through a combination of rush, resourcing shortcuts, systemic complexity, corporate bureaucratic madness or some other not-my-fault insanity. It's important to me to do a job well and to be seen to do a job well.

So lucky me - I don't have enough of whatever-this-is to propel me into senior jobs with more money - just enough to keep me anxious and competitive and hamstring my efforts to scale back and achieve some modicum of "work life balance".

Exhibit A. Since I started at my company, my workload has been insane. Since making "Vice President" (whoo-hoo) my workload has been insane AND bonus! carries ten times the responsibility and visibility along with it (and thank you GFC, no real increase in salary). So recently this all came to a head with my boss and I having something of a showdown which was not only cathartic but beneficial - because in the following days, she re-arranged workloads, scaled back demands and created a restructure to balance the work more fairly across the management team. All this is good right? And it's what I wanted and needed. AND YET! As she's talking through all this and going out of her way to involve me and ensure I'm OK with it, some words start coming out of my mouth. I'm concerned what this means for my position, my staff numbers are smaller than the other managers, am I still responsible for the same areas, blah blah blah blah what?! Even as I'm talking, I am listening to myself and thinking, What are you doing?! shut up you idiot!

Is this normal or stupid or both?!

Consolations of Working in the City

Walking in from Richmond Station on a cold winter morning.

The approach to Batman avenue over William Barak Bridge.

Simultaneously listening to the World Cup result over my radio headphones and the operatic music drifting up from the speakers over Flinders Street Station below (to ward off violence!)

Unfortunately while lugging my backpack full of work shoes, work clothes, work makeup and water bottle, I pulled a muscle in my neck and have been popping pain killers all week since. Other than that, it was a nice way to start the week.

The Sticker Experiment: Success is Claimed

Today marks a turning point in our family life. For the first - and I mean FIRST - time in oh, three and a half years, our twin girls stayed in their beds and obeyed my command to go to sleep. ON THEIR OWN. WITHOUT ME LYING ON THE FLOOR OR IN ONE OF THEIR BEDS. And...here's the piece de resistance: by 8.30 pm!  O frabjous day! O night of wonders whose time I never thought would come!!

Now I don't want to give the - completely false - impression, that we have never been able to manage our children's sleep routine. Oh contraire! There was definitely an eight-month period there, between about 9 months and one-and-a-half, where we happily trotted our two babies off to their cots each night at 7.30 and they fell asleep and stayed there until breakfast time.  But before that... and after that... it's been tricky to put it mildly.

I imagine we are similar to many "working families" (our government's current favourite phrase. still trying to work out what it means. think they are trying to round up everyone in that): in general, our biggest issues are TIME and SLEEP. Both have been the consistent running thread in our lives since the kids were born, always to some degree colouring everything else.

From the very earliest days, our babies were night-owls, and they have always gone to bed just that little bit (or sometimes lots) later than whatever time all other children in the country seem to be going to bed. (We never did manage the fabled "7 o'clock").  I have to say that, after those initial fairly hideous 10 weeks, they did tend to be pretty good overnight, generally only waking once and easily settled after the night feed.

But the bad time has always been the evening. When they were babies it would start around 5pm and continue until 9 or 10 at night. Nothing seemed to work initially. Eventually we found our saviours, of sorts: sleep school (thank you, thank you, thank you, kind nurses of South Eastern Private Hospital!), reflux diagnosis (thank you again, sleep school nurses - diagnosis made first night of sleep school after I had asked our GP, pediatrician and health nurse about my baby seeming to be in discomfort and told by all it was nothing) and a battery-operated swing.  That swing was a lifesaver. Though I know it wasn't the case every night, all my memories of those times are that I was alone in the evenings (husband working) and with the swing was finally able to settle two babies simultaneously. We used that swing until M was 6 months old and it was creaking and barely moving under her weight. Wonderful thing it was.

We did do controlled crying at different stages, but could not always manage it because A would get hysterically upset and vomit everywhere within a couple of minutes. That kid could go from zero to nutcase in less time than you would think it was possible! No, it wasn't just us - I had others witness this!

All this leads into one of my "favourite" motifs: that of the firm and loving parent applying sensible routines, controlled crying and mental discipline and producing a beautifully sleeping baby.  I know that has happened. I have friends and family who have achieved it. But here is the thing - they haven't ALL achieved it with ALL of their children, ALL the time.

I used to hate hearing this from people who would be talking admiringly about a mother they knew who was calm and firm and had a well-trained baby: "Calm mother equals calm baby".  Grrrrr. How about this for the real truth: "Calm baby equals calm mother"!
I think I did everything right, I really do. And I know this much about the sleep and stress battle that we had with our babies: they started it!!

It was my mother who offered the wisest words: "Lots of things work, but nothing works all the time."
So true. You can't program babies - they're not machines. Things work - but not forever either.


We have tried our best to apply consistent routines. But there is no doubt, it is very hard when both parents work full-time.  There is not much out there about managing this stuff when everyone's working. The cultural ideal, and most of the literature (pop culture, books, articles, advice, etc) is of the mum who stays home for the first one or two years, and then works part-time (three days at most) and is home with the kids by late afternoon. (Of course we know why this is: all the full-time-workers are too busy to write any articles!)
 
I can tell you from experience, having worked part-time and full-time over the years, that there is a HUGE difference between getting home at 4.30 and getting home at 6.30, and between working 3 days and working 5. Not that part-timers don't have it tough - they definitely do. So does everyone. But I have always blamed the fact I work full-time and that 3 or 4 days of the week the girls are at daycare until 6pm, for our sleep issues.
I completely understand why women who are able to, even with tremendous personal and financial sacrifice, give up work while their kids are little. It is just so hard!

Anyway, back to the present. A and M are now four and a half. For a week now they have been going to bed at 8pm every night. And tonight, for the first time, I said good-night and left the room and they stayed there and fell asleep.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????!!!!!!!!

How did we do it?
The obvious way I suppose - that modern classic, the sticker reward chart.
I would never have thought this would be so effective so quickly - chiefly because I have been in the habit of giving my kids whole sheets of stickers for fun and diversion from an early age (devaluing the currency, a wise father told me once). But lo - set up a reward chart, explain how it works, and dole out one sticker of choice every morning following a successful 8pm bedtime, and it has worked a treat.
Two little sets of shining eyes are firmly on the prize: a new DVD of choice for each of them after sticking to this for 8 days.
(Alvin and the Chipmunks and one of the [eugh!] Barbie movies, at this stage).

But as always with kids, there is no such thing as a controlled experiment. A possible contributing factor to today's success: two 3-km walks today with their dad to drop off and pick up the car for urgent repairs at the garage.

Nah, it's gotta be the reward chart.... And my calm, kind but firm manner of course.

Happiness and Disappointment

Some quick thoughts on a topic that I have been ruminating on for a long time.

We are animals. Life is a struggle. We are not "meant" to be happy. We are meant to BE. That's it. If we are happy, that's a bonus. Happiness, actually, is wonderful and stands out because it is fleeting, rare or in the past. You have moments in time where you know you feel happy; you have times in your life where you are aware things are pretty good and you are on the whole happy; or you look back on times past and realise (or believe) you were happy.

Someone I know once said "If you look back in your life at the times you were happy, it's usually when you were busy." I think this is true.

I also think our minds exist to get us through the day and pass on our genes, and just cause us wonder and grief and anguish as a neat little side-trick.

I've posted a link below to an article I absolutely love, by someone who said all this much better than me. Catherine Deveny, in her former column in The Age newspaper published on 16 Feb 2010, took my breath away with this article. It's one of the best things I have ever read and I thank my sister who passed it on to me.

Favourite quote: "Life's not fair, but it is great. You don't get what you deserve, you get what you get."
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/nobodys-perfect-thankfully-20100216-o91v.html

I am really not a member of the Flat Earth Society

Don't you hate feeling like a flat-earther? You know that uncomfortable feeling that you may be out of step with intelligent and rational society, when you're not wholly on-side with prevailing beliefs. (Hello, global warming...I do believe - sort of - with some aspects - but the stridency of the movement and the labelling of any dissent as from "climate change deniers" does not sit well with me). Anyway, this is about vaccines.
Now, I am pro-vaccines. No question. I get impatient with people who forget about the horrible sicknesses children used to get and the numbers that died from these diseases in the past, in an age (fairly recent!) when the spectre of losing a child from illness was very real. It is wonderful that we live in an age where our worrying minds can relax about child mortality and can use those worry-neurons for fretting about social, educational and parenting issues instead. Once upon a time these aspects were neglected because people's focus was more solidly on keeping their children alive. So yes, there IS such a thing as progress. (I loved my Popper philosophy at uni, and it is useful not to be blinded by an overly-credible belief in forward progress at all times....but still).

Anyway, about the flu vaccine. I am not going to talk much about swine flu, because despite reading a lot about it and giving it some thought, I just am not sure. Who knows?? (Answer: no one, until some more time passes).

Something happened in Australia in recent months which is very worrying. A number of little children who had had the seasonal flu vaccine got bad fevers and convulsions, and a two-year-old died. This was a shock. I have to admit without giving it any thought I had believed the seasonal flu vaccine to be completely safe and proven so over many years. Though I haven't done it, I would not have been too worried getting my kids vaccinated against seasonal flu.
Following more adverse reactions in multiple states, it has now been recommended the seasonal flu vaccine not be given to children younger than 5, until the cause of the problem can be proven and the vaccine changed if warranted.

So that was one thing. Another worrying thing happened a couple of weeks ago. I heard a medical expert on a radio news program talking about this, and he said that when they looked more closely at the data of the children with adverse reactions, they found that these reactions were in fact not unusual. The problem it seems, is with the tracking of results after clinical vaccination trials. Here is something I didn't know: in a vaccine trial, the participants are not tracked for adverse reactions. Instead, adverse reactions are measured from statistics as people present at hospitals. This was news to me and I was shocked!
Then I did some more reading. The reason is due to the sample size of the test population. As adverse reactions are very rare, there are never enough people participating in a trial to properly measure adverse reactions, or to seperate problems from things due to other causes from those due to the vaccine. So they also cannot categorise all the adverse reactions and their probability. These things are only truly known once the vaccine is rolled out to millions of people.
This is explained on the website of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention which you can read here:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Vaccine_Monitoring/Index.html

It also explains something else I could not understand.
Even after all these horrifying reactions among children to the "normal", "safe" seasonal flu vaccine, governments and doctors insisted the new swine flu vaccine was safe for children under 5.
How could this be? The cause of the problems with the seasonal flu vaccine is still not known. The seasonal flu vaccine has been used for years; the swine flu vaccine is about a year old and still not widely taken up. Didn't make sense.

Here are the elements of the answer as far as I can make out:
- the swine flu vaccine is known to be safe for children under 5, because there were extensive trials done testing dosages on children under 5 (I remember when this was going on - I was interested that people participated in these trials. I love and believe in science but unless there were rabid pigs breaking down my door and the people being quarantined with swine flu had symptoms worse than the sniffles they seemed to have, don't think I would enter my kids in tests for a new vaccine against a new disease. On the other hand I knew this was probably ignorant).

- something else I didn't know. The seasonal flu vaccine is not exactly a vaccine that has been in use for years because every year it is different! because flu strains differ every year. Didn't quite know this I don't think!

- however, the seasonal flu vaccine "base" is well tested and known to be safe (though all vaccines will have small numbers of people react adversely).

So you put all that together and conclude that most probably the swine flu vaccine is perfectly safe (for most) and the seasonal flu vaccine usually is too but possibly not ever safe for children under 5, OR there may be something more likely to cause adverse reactions in little kids in this year's batch.

Another point in passing -
I had wondered before how it could be possible that a vaccine was developed for swine flu so quickly and still be safe - but I have read something that explained that; to simplify it lots, basically they have had a lot of practice developing vaccines over the years and these days can roll out new ones very quickly as they just have to add the new ingredient to the base recipe.

I still have a slight question though, if adverse reactions are not individually tracked during trials, and if this batch of seasonal flu vaccine caught everyone by surprise with the child reactions but later data analysis has found the pattern "not unusual", then how can they be REALLY sure the swine flu vaccine is safe for little kids? Were the trials done differently?

Some quick comments lest anyone actually read this and think any of it irresponsible. First, I do NOT believe there is any kind of conspiracy by government and Big Pharma to roll out unsafe vaccines. I do not think there is a conspiracy by the Australian government to offload its swine flu vaccine stockpiles to get their money back or save face over the criticism it was over the top with its swine flu pandemic response plan. (No wait - actually I do kind of believe this one! Simple economics mean it must at least be a TINY bit of a factor... ;-) ! )
I believe the swine flu vaccine is (most probably) safe. I definitely believe in vaccinations for children, and I don't believe that vaccines cause autism.

But I do think - to my shock and disappointment - there have probably always been risks for children under 5 from the flu vaccine, which we have not been educated enough about. It's heartbreaking, the trust that all the parents had, who routinely vaccinated their kids with the flu shot this year. And it's a real shame, if this spurs on more parents to decide not to vaccinate their kids against the other stuff.

March of the dinosaurs

As George Bush apparently said once, "They misunderestimated me."

Never under-estimate your kids. Something I do all the time. I don't seem to learn!

These pictures are actually very old - something I've been meaning to post for some time, and time, time, time, time, TIME is the leading theme always. It just gets away.

Anyway, this was a few months ago, when the girls had just turned 4.

Now I love my kids and they amaze me every day (blah blah blah), but I know I don't have an Aelita Andree on my hands! (or maybe I do - there I go with the underestimating again). So at this stage, around 3 and a half, they were drawing occasional recognisable shapes but nothing regular. A spider here, a ladder there, some crazy squiggles most of the time.

Then on this day out of the blue M came up with this - first picture above right.

What...?!! NO hint that this was coming, you understand. Just a few wobbly flowers (still her favourite motif 4 months later), and no actual other lizardy-dinosaur pictures before or since. Where did this come from?!

Wide-eyed with awe, voice full of admiration, A cried "Mummy! Look what M did - a dinosaur!"

Then, her competitive button pushed, A promptly produced her own - the second picture above right.

Same story - nothing similar before or since.

Weird! Great but weird!

Lucky I took these shots too because by the end of the day they had both cut up their pictures and they now exist only as paper fossils somewhere in the recycling system.