Categorie: Essay

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Lessons from Archery

What can a governor learn from an archer?

Jack Kruf | April 2009

What can the world of public governance learn from archery? Archery is a mature sport that has developed dramatically since its inception. Because of this, the sport itself has undergone many changes and improvements.

Flag of Lieksa, Finland. Design by designed by Olof Eriksson (source: Wikipedia)

In governance and public administration, we may learn from the archery world to select and curate the basic skills perceived as essential by professional archers. After all, governance is a form of archery, metaphorically spoken.

There are parallels:  a good governor has the skills of a good archer in effectively reaching the target. After all, both professions are about precision. Here, we focus on the archer. I collected some skills from the archery world. I leave it to the reader to find similarities with the governance world.

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‘Het budget is voldoende om te leveren’

Jack Kruf | April 2024

Stichting Civitas Naturalis heeft in 2022/2023 in Nederland een kwantitatief en kwalitatief onderzoek (n=424) uitgevoerd onder gemeentelijke senior-medewerkers (op het gebied van compliance, control, governance, beleid, projectmanagement en strategie). 

 

Het doel van de studie is om beter te begrijpen wat er gebeurt op lokaal niveau met betrekking tot het besturen van en het navigeren met betrekking tot de samenleving, dit vanuit het perspectief van de praktijk. Per onderwerp worden de resultaten in de eerste helft van 2024 gepresenteerd.

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Sources of Power

How People Make Decisions

Gary Klein | 1999, MIT Press

Anyone who watches the television news has seen images of firefighters rescuing people from burning buildings and paramedics treating bombing victims. How do these individuals make the split-second decisions that save lives? Most studies of decision-making based on artificial tasks assigned in laboratory settings view people as biased and unskilled.

Gary Klein is one of the developers of the naturalistic decision-making approach, which views people as inherently skilled and experienced. It documents human strengths and capabilities that have been downplayed or ignored so far.

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Duidelijk

Tom-Jan Meeus | Maart 2024, Uitgeverij Pluim

Vanaf de eeuwwisseling veranderen politici onder invloed van Pim Fortuyn hun taal. Geen mistige formuleringen meer, geen jargon: duidelijkheid. Geert Wilders blinkt erin uit. 

De gevolgen voor de democratie zijn groot. Het bestel vereist matiging terwijl duidelijkheid juist radicalisering stimuleert.

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PreMortem

Method of Risk Assessment

Jack Kruf | December 2007

According to Klein (2007), “Projects fail at a spectacular rate. One reason is that too many people are reluctant to speak up about their reservations during the all-important planning phase. By making it safe for dissenters who are knowledgeable about the undertaking and worried about its weaknesses to speak up, you can improve a project’s chances of success.”

The Harvard Business Review article: “In a premortem, team members assume that the project they are planning has just failed—as so many do—and then generate plausible reasons for its demise. Those with reservations may speak freely at the outset, so that the project can be improved rather than autopsied.” Lees verder “PreMortem”

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Back to the Future

Temporal perspective in the explanation of events

Deborah J. Mitchell, J. Edward Russo, Nancy Pennington | March 1989

Prospective hindsight involves generating an explanation for a future event as if it had already happened; i.e., one goes forward in time, and then looks back. This research found that “imagining that an event has already occurred, increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%”  (Klein, 2007)

In order to examine how shifts in perspective might influence people’s perceptions of events, we investigated two possible factors: temporal perspective (whether an event is set in the future or past) and uncertainty (whether the event’s occurrence is certain or uncertain).

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Risk and Reason

Safety, Law, and the Environment

Cas R. Sunstein | April 2002, Cambridge University Press

Risk and Reason presents a sensible system for reducing risks to save lives and money. What should be done about aeroplane safety and terrorism, global warming, polluted water, nuclear power, and genetically engineered food? Risks to safety, health, and the environment are a subject of intense interest worldwide. Too often, we fear the wrong things.

Sometimes we make the situation even worse. Rather than investigating the facts, we respond to temporary fears. The result is a situation of hysteria and neglect – and unnecessary illness and death. Lees verder “Risk and Reason”