No sooner had a couple of ships left the harbour here at Shore than a couple more have hoved into view to replace them. A busy summer and autumn await. Thanks to all who responded to last week’s message of availability. In no particular order, I’m going to be getting more acquainted with garden equipment,Continue reading “The ship is loaded, now a voyage into the future of qual”
Category Archives: Shore
Organising chaos: what co-creation workshops can do
I came across this today and thought I’d share it, though I wasn’t involved in this work myself. It’s a workshop done by the Bristol-based Pervasive Media Studio, a co-creation “ideas lab” on the Internet of Things. Worth a watch, for a few reasons: it’s a great example of how bringing together talented people fromContinue reading “Organising chaos: what co-creation workshops can do”
Empathy, Outrospection (and Qual): an RSA Animate
Here’s an RSA Animate talk (see http://www.theRSA.org for more) from last year on the importance of empathy. As Krznaric sees it, more widespread practice at empathy – particularly cognitive empathy, where you fully step into another person’s shoes and see things as they see them – could revolutionise how we think about our lives andContinue reading “Empathy, Outrospection (and Qual): an RSA Animate”
Scrimping on incentives and other false economies
Reading Michael Sandel‘s What Money Can’t Buy – subtitled The Moral Limits of Markets – has made me reflect on researchers‘ attitudes to the ‘incentives‘, as we call them in the UK, that we pay to research participants. At the risk of now being bombarded by offers of participation in my projects from the entireContinue reading “Scrimping on incentives and other false economies”
A Reading List For The Man Who Has Everything But Has A Grating Feeling He Doesn’t
So, at the risk of being embarrassing by trumpeting it myself, it’s my birthday today. No, thank you, really, the pleasure is all mine, you shouldn’t have, etc etc. I’m 43, a father of two school-age kids and run my own business, but my Mum seems to think I’m still 10: she sent me aContinue reading “A Reading List For The Man Who Has Everything But Has A Grating Feeling He Doesn’t”
Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan
Kahneman discusses Thinking Fast And Slow at LSE with Evan Davies and Paul Dolan For those interested in psychology and behavioural economics, here is a quick link via Prof Paul Dolan’s site to an hour’s discussion between Evan Davies, Dolan and Kahneman about Thinking Fast and Slow, which took place a while back when theContinue reading “Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan”
A Dragon In A Pigeonhole: Gender and Stereotyping At Work
Hilary Devey’s Women at the Top
Despite not being a huge fan of this Dragon’s Den business celeb, I was quite gripped by her documentary about inequality in employment between the genders. There was nothing very new in it, but it was great to see a “queen bee” (as a powerful leading woman in a male-dominated business gets called these days) being jolted out of her previous simplistic take on gender in the workplace – basically the “I managed it, why can’t they?” approach. Interesting in particular to hear the success of changing gender awareness and gender balance within the ranks at P&G.
There are some areas that will always be male dominated, one suspects – but some are just that way because no one has bothered challenging received wisdom. More than a decade ago I carried out some qual work on a gender issue in the British Army and interviewed soldiers right across the ranks. I can’t share the detailed insights on here, fascinating though they were. But it is a matter of public record that there are women who can pass the physical tests for entry into the infantry – there are some superb and very tough female athletes in the Army. The barriers to the Army accepting women into the teeth arms of the British military are not physical but to do with group dynamics, culture and psychology – no less real for that, but not what you might have expected coming at the issue afresh.
The infantry is perhaps exceptional because its personnel decisions have life and death consequences, but Hilary Devey’s warehouse was all male also for no good physical reason, just a cultural one. Women have not been encouraged to think they could train as forklift truck drivers and so there are few out there. But there’s no obvious reason other than the work culture to exclude women from training up for that kind of job. And warehouses don’t have the life and death excuse. But cultural stereotypes are powerful.
I also wasn’t surprised to see in the team exercise experiment, the mixed gender team out-performing the single gender teams. That’s been my experience of workplace teams too and I’m a big believer in not just mixed gender in teams but mixed personality type and mixed as much as possible. It’s that coming together of different perspectives that is so effective, especially in my line of work, qualitative research.
I’ll watch the rest of the series with interest.
Young Guns Go For It
Here’s the video for the AQR’s Young Guns pilot evening, which Lesley Thompson and myself moderated. This was a fascinating evening spent talking to a group of young researchers from some of the leading research agencies about what life is like for people early in their qual research careers now. Some fascinatingly different perspectives, forContinue reading “Young Guns Go For It”
Longitudinal Qual: Triangulating With A Spiral Staircase
An excellent briefing yesterday on a new study I’m excited to be involved in. Massive team of us involved, but the interesting thing is the project is a proper piece of longitudinal qual. And it’s inspired me to mix geometrical metaphors like William McGonagall sharing a third bottle of Talisker with Kevin McCloud on theContinue reading “Longitudinal Qual: Triangulating With A Spiral Staircase”
The Glorious Land: TomTom Club On Tour
So, I’ve negotiated the straits between Scylla and Charybdis and my sat nav is raring to go. On the off-chance a random client strays by mistake onto my onanistic blog, this is a public service announcement (without guitars). I’ve been on a break for the last few weeks, yesterday was my first proper day backContinue reading “The Glorious Land: TomTom Club On Tour”
Strangers on the Shore 