Human brain researchers have determined that the more that is on one’s mind, then the more likely one will make an emotional decision rather than a rational one. Could this provide an explanation why so many decisions by managers and employees continue to seem irrational? As background, the brain researchers conducted an experiment asking people to memorize a series of numbers in sequence ranging from two to seven numbers. After given their numbers all the individuals had to do was walk down the hall to a room and write the numbers down. But there was a catch. As the subjects walked down the hall another researcher interrupted them and offered a gift for participating of either a piece of chocolate cake or an attractive bowl of fruit. The results were surprising (and very statistically significant). Those with the least numbers to memorize chose the fruit whereas those with more numbers chose the cake. Why is this? The brain researchers have observed that the human brain has two parts: a rational deliberate section and an emotional one. The competition between the two is fierce. When the mind load is light ... read more >>
|
Is the call-center rep getting surly? Kevin Johnson at New Credit Rules has a tip: Inform the person you're recording the call. Fine, I thought as I read his post. But does he really expect us to record these calls? (Recording on the sly is illegal in some jurisdictions.) Turns out that for Johnson, taping is just part of a vigorous data strategy. His idea, as he writes in an older post, is to amass data on the companies that are busy studying his. "To a large extent," he writes, "this industry is built on asymmetrical information; the companies having more or better information than you do. As a customer, you must empower yourself and know what is going on at all times and hold companies accountable." His strategy is exhaustive: I document every encounter I have with a customer service representative or a company, as if I am a spy.... In the same way a customer service representative may ask me to verify my mother's birthday, I ask the representative to give me his or her name, employee identification number, and location. (It's important to do this before things could get heated. Representatives tend to withhold information during a confrontation.); I have a ... read more >>
|
In my Getting to Know You post, the category for next blog topic receiving the second highest vote total was “IT Project Failure.” Ask and ye shall receive. I have been giving quite a bit of thought lately to the topic of enterprise risk management. In large part, this stems from the fact that I recently completed a project in which my client’s risk tolerance was off the charts. I mean crazy. In this post, I discuss three types of organizations... read more >>
|
Watching the news grabs and reading about the Haiti disaster highlights to me the vast, tragic human cost of such disasters and leaves me asking the question what could have been done better? The importance of preparing, planning and acting to minimise the human cost of such events is important, however it does cost resources. In a country like Haiti... read more >>
|
When Wayne Eckerson foresees a trend, it’s news even if others might have already foreseen it. He’s the director of TDWI Research and one of the industry’s most thoughtful observers, and one of the most deliberate. In this morning’s blog post, he suggests improving BI by enlisting those who study how people make decisions. To take BI to the next level, we need better insights into human behavior and perception. In other words, it’s time to recruit psychologists onto our BI teams. He gave an example of one place that could have benefited from visits to the shrink’s couch. A recent article in the Boston Globe called “Think Different, CIA” provides some instructive lessons for companies using BI tools to make decisions. The article describes a phenomenon that psychologists call “premature cognitive closure” to explain how humans in general, and intelligence analysts in particular, can get trapped by false assumptions, which can lead to massive intelligence failures. It turns out that humans over the course of eons have become great at filtering lots of data quickly to make sense of a situation. Unfortunately, those filters often blind us to additional ... read more >>
|
I almost didn’t see a need to write this post. Most CTOvision.com readers, I believe, are technically savvy folks who are already avid readers of security and technology news. But you are also a very busy bunch and some of you might not have gotten the word yet. And I thought some of you might... ... read more >>
|
Copyright © 2010 http://jtonedm.com James TaylorI recently met the folks at Dulles Research, a scientific computing outfit focused on analytic solutions for enterprise software. The folks who founded Dulles had previously worked at Marketswitch (focused on large scale optimization and sold to Experian in 2004) and have a long history of working with companies who... read more >>
|
Google did something brave today. Something I never thought they would do. They stood up to communist china. And they did what they did with a speed and certainty that should make us all proud. In a blog post on their official site, Google discloses what they know of several attempted penetrations of their Gmail system. They also indicate that there have been unauthorized accesses to user accounts, probably by theft of user passwords. In a blog post titled " A new approach to China," Google's chief legal officer David Drummond laid out more information that clearly points to China and their government as the party benefiting from these attacks. Part of that information is the targets of the attacks: Chinese human rights activists. They also discovered that accounts totally unrelated to these attacks have also been compromised, indicating that "we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or ... read more >>
|
Teradata Universe will be held in Sydney on Monday March 22, 2010 (Pre-conference Workshop) and Tuesday March 23, 2010 (Teradata Universe Sydney) and in Melbourne on Thursday March 25, 2010.
Senior Executives from global Teradata Customers Bank of America, DHL, eBay, JD Williams to name a few will present best practice case studies on the Advantage of Analytics, Unlocking ERP, Multiple Platforms, Information Consolidation, Value Management, Governance and Innovation.
These high level business focus presentations... read more >>
|
Copyright © 2009 http://jtonedm.com James Taylor In Risk Is Not a Quarterly Exercise; It Should Be a Way of Life Norman Marks asks an interesting and pertinent question: Is your risk management program a quarterly exercise or a way of life in the business?
One of the most uses of analytics is in risk assessment – predicting fraud or credit risk for instance – but this only works when risk management is embedded into your day to day operations. After all, risk is acquired one transaction at a time. In Norman’s example, one journey at a time, but for many companies one customer, one deal, one loan at a time. Unless you have a way not only to assess that risk, but to do it for that transaction at the moment you are considering it, you will not be able to make a decision that is appropriate to the level of risk involved. If all you can do is consider the risks you have acquired in the last day or last week or last quarter then it will be much too late. Assess risk in the transaction, at the moment, by applying analytics to the operational decisions embedded in that transaction.  Link to original post ... read more >>
|