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| David Cuykendall Click for Index Page |
CIRs help confirm the vision of the operations space, assess desired effects, and determine how decisions are achieved to accomplish a mission or to identify significant deviations from that vision.
The number of CIRs must be limited to only those that support critical decisions. Significant notification events and priority intelligence requirements are requirement for more information or the need to provide information of a strategic nature.
The operational and functional information system (OFIS) represents the total volume of information emitted and circulated in an enterprise:
- OFIS components are like sensors which convert selected activities and elements of the task environment of the enterprise into signals that can be read by human observers or by instruments.
- Reporting modalities and formats are like transducers, devices that convert a signal to another form in the same way a flat screen monitor converts electronic signals into a visual display.
- The humanly integrated and stimulating operational and functional information system (HIS) functions similarly to actuators, converting signals into meaningful human actions that drive performance.
- OFIS - The operational and functional information system (i.e. OFIS represents the total volume of information emitted and circulated in an enterprise).
- HIOFIS - The humanly integrated operational and functional information system (i.e., HIOFIS is the subset of OFIS that is humanly integrated).
- HIS - The humanly integrated and stimulating operational and functional information system (i.e., HIS is the subset of HIOFIS that stimulates human action, a source of performance).
Information is defined as data collected from the environment and processed into usable form, into a context that can be understood. Judgment then takes this knowledge and applies it to a a thought process to provide understanding of the hidden dynamics of a situation.
The problem is not so much as providing information in real time but of getting real information in time. Information is perishable. Old information loses its relevance. The enterprise then misses the most vital input it needs — assessment of business and operational units' capabilities.
The goal of CIRs highlight the difference between knowledge and understanding: namely, that we may know what is going on and understand why.
Intents of CIRs
- Measurement of performance.
- Measurement of effectiveness (i.e., the criteria of system behavior, cohesion, capability, creation of an effect, attainment of objectives and end states).
- Planning future activities.
- Situational understanding (i.e., the product of applying analysis and synthesis to relevant information to facilitate decision making).
- Situational awareness (i.e., an informational perspective and skill that fosters an ability to determine quickly the context and relevance of events that are unfolding).
Assessment is a qualitative event
It is difficult to quantify mental and moral forces. However, any assessment process that neglects these factors ignores the greater part — the human element. Operations do not subscribe to the additive properties of math. Any assessment related reports that reflect a numerical sum or average of discrete values is fundamentally flawed.
If reports represent better or worse, less or more, or other analogical indicators, then they may have merit with respect to the determination of progress or the lack thereof and the reasons why.
The most insightful assessment reporting lies in the narrative. Comments should reflect the "why" behind the information in the reports. In that way they are more likely to reflect knowledge or understanding, which is a requirement for relevant change and actions.
In the end, assessment is a qualitative event, requiring those responsible the financial performance of enterprise assets to balance quantitative information with the art of intuition and judgment to arrive at an understanding of the situation that fosters timely and relevant decisions.
The role of cognitive ergonomics
Cognitive ergonomics is concerned with mental workload, decision-making, skilled performance, human reliability, as these may relate to human-system design. The aim of cognitive ergonomics is to minimize the primary task demand connected to operational monitoring and controlling, and overall entrepreneurial governance.
This is called the primary load or task load; the less the mental load the better the performance outcome. Cognitive ergonomics studies cognition to: (1) optimize social performance by minimizing distractions; (2) optimize productivity and economic performance by maximizing relevant information exchange, knowledge creation, and acquisition.
Its tenets are based upon awareness that attention is a single undifferentiated but limited resource; therefore, it focuses on attentional capacity and demands, and the shaping of the task environment. It recognizes that any available system that processes information in its environment to act upon it is a cognitive system that performs cognitive work; therefore, it focuses on the allocation of functions between humans and artifacts (i.e., plant, equipment, and software) and recognizes that adaptive function allocation means functions can be reallocated through iterative processes.
It is concerned with error management (i.e., the limiting of errors and creating more error-tolerance to carry out activities with low incident rates); therefore, it makes distinctions between active errors (e.g., the pilot crashed the plane) and latent errors (e.g., a previously undiscovered design malfunction caused the plane to roll unexpectedly in a way the pilot could not control), and errors based on skills versus errors based on rules; accordingly, it models the time it takes people to perform tasks and the kinds of errors they make.
Cognitive ergonomics construes financial reporting in three dimensions: (1) the usefulness and usability of reports (i.e., extent that the information contained in reports can be used by specified users to achieve specific goals with effectiveness, accuracy and completeness); (2) the efficiency with which reports are produced (i.e., minimization of resources expended in relation to the accuracy and completeness of reports); and (3) the satisfaction and acceptance of the users of reports (i.e., their freedom from discomfort and their positive attitude toward the information supplied in the reports).
Cognitive ergonomics seeks to increase the conciseness and relevance of financial reports by emphasizing their signal salience (i.e., the relevance of content) and stimulus salience (i.e., the ability of the content to stimulate appropriate action) while shortening the time to accomplish tasks, reduce the number of mistakes, and increase the accuracy of users understanding and assessments.
Therefore, cognitive ergonomics is concerned with the trustworthiness of alarms and the proper construction of the conveyance of the sense of urgency of situations, the detection of latent conditions and the workability of procedures, and the maximization of users' situational awareness (i.e., their perception of the elements of the environment, their understanding the current situation, and the accuracy of their predictions of the situation's future development).
Pull reporting (usually composed of routine periodic checkpoint and highlight reporting) monitors and controls business as usual, defined as the way the enterprise normally achieves its objectives. Pull reporting comprises the a priori, formalized "seeing eye “of the enterprise. It is based upon the propositional knowledge underlying the intent, content, and format of routine reports.
Push reporting is non-routine reporting. It relies on the principle that making sense of perceived events often occurs retrospectively. Push reporting is often more accurate that pull reporting because it is more akin to the scientific method; hypotheses are tested, observation is used, and progress results.
For example, reporting the lessons of hands-on experience is extremely valuable; literally so, as it can be used to make money. Nobody can deny the intrinsic and real value of experience. One of its defining characteristics is that it can be claimed as property in a court of law. In other words, companies that develop their own procedures or methods can protect them as intellectual property. They can then, of course, be sold, protected, leased, etc.
Push reporting often involves soft value analysis (i.e., analysis that seeks to maximize the value of intangible outputs). This is the non-routine reporting that focuses primarily on monitoring and controlling the enterprise's portfolio of non-routine work, the hallmarks of which are high task variety and complex, difficult conversion processes.
Push reporting is part of an evaluative process that organizes ill-organized cues captured from the environment, as well as within the enterprise, translating these cues into sensible and salient information that can be understood and integrated within the enterprise's existing cognitive, knowledge, and identity structures.
Its core activity is the interpretation of ambiguity.
Examples of pull information requirements
- Internal activity (e.g., volume of activity in a given day, week, month, or year; examples: number of products, deliveries, repairs, amount of waste, and delays).
- The immediate results (e.g., quantitative indicators like cost breakdowns by operational cost objective).
- Costs of operational sustainment (e.g., costs of enterprise logistics, costs of activities sustaining financial throughput).
- Dysfunction analysis (e.g., study of weak points, hidden cost assessment, descriptive study of dysfunctions and dysfunctional regulations, analysis of dysfunction causes in terms of structure and behavior).
- Dysfunction costs (e.g., absenteeism, occupational injuries/diseases, staff turnover, non-quality and productivity gaps).
- Downward spirals (e.g., function slippage, excess wages, overtime, overconsumption, overspecialization, nonproduction, non-creation of potential, creation of risks).
- Screens (e.g., one-off initiatives to observe, identify, and report specific types of information; examples: scanning your business ecology, new technologies, supplier environment, competitor vigilance).
