Tell him about the twinkie

February 6, 2015

There’s always room on a Friday for Ghostbusters quotes. Am I right?

Never mind. Don’t answer that.

For those of you that remember, ‘the twinkie’ referred to above, was  being used to describe the magnitude of the paranormal problem the  Ghostbusters were about to find themselves in. It was a sugary prop for a  discussion about measurement.

Which is exactly this week’s topic.

As you, my frequent reader knows, we’re all about curating conditions  to enrich for the the likelihood of serendipitous outcomes. That’s  really what Lunch Roulette-like services are all about.

While fingers-crossed and hoping is a good start, we should strive for measurement in this which, as I’ve previously mentioned, is hard.

Earlier this week I revisited this topic and began to noodle the  following. I’m offering this more of a hypothesis at the moment, but I  think we’re onto something.

What if emergent organizational properties (e.g. culture, innovation,  engagement) require a method of measurement that is as emergent as the  property that is being measured? For some recent thoughts on emergence,  have a look at this post.

What might this mean? Well, for one, it would provide a rationale  behind why we don’t currently do it. It might be as expensive (both from  a time and resource perspective) as setting and preserving the  conditions to  enable the emergence in the first place.

What might such an emergent measurement scheme look like? I’d  imagine, some sort of oral history and evaluation. As my friend (Alexa  Beavers) has suggested, something like the Most Significant Change  might be appropriate. This methodology is used within the social sector  to measure impact - itself a higher order/emergent property of an  intervention.

Gosh, we’ve come quite a long way from that twinkie, eh?

Thanks for listening,

DT