Inquiry and Reporting

Reporting is essential for the organization to manage itself, and it depends for validity on proper INQUIRY-RL2/PH2.

The process of inquiry in all four target areas has little in common with conventional scientific investigation. Nevertheless, many of the underlying issues are the same. For example:

● How can certainty of conclusions be guaranteed?
● Is the method of inquiry suitable to its target and context?
● Are there systematic or idiosyncratic biases at play?

● Too data driven
● Too bureaucratic
● Set up or skewed to produce a pre-determined outcome
● Used inappropriately to draw unwarranted conclusions
● Disconnected from the main line-management spine

Your effectiveness in achieving your management objectives is a function of

● your grasp of reality, &
● your motivational energy

Scientists strive to know independently of action, so they can restrict themselves to empirical reality and ignore social forces and motivational factors.

Managers only want to know in order to do and they must feel naturally energized and motivated.  Managerial realities to be grasped in organizations include:

■ Empiricist:
Essential facts and figures—objective reality:
which provides conviction-based energy.

■ Imaginist:
Feelings, assumptions, aspirations—inner reality:
which provides will-based energy.

■ Systemicist:
Identities, processes, structures, relationships—social or deep reality:
which provides a flow-based energy.

► Managers must inquire and grasp reality for themselves. Assistants and external consultants may aid this process, but they cannot learn or know for them. Nor can they be energized on their behalf.

► Managers have conflicts of interest in regard to findings, while scientists do not, at least in theory. In practice, scientists areClosed partial to their own theories, so the conflict of interests exists there too. But we try not to talk about it or people might lose faith.

The handling of inquiry for management reports differs in our two perspectives:

► Management is primarily concerned to determine what is the case in detail, what trends require attention, and what further inquiries are needed going forward.

► As an employee, apart from your own specific area of responsibility, you are primarily concerned to know what is occurring broadly within the organization. You only want more details where it might affect your current work &/or your career.

However management consists of the line-managers who are simultaneously self-interested employees. So bias is unavoidable. That is why two mechanisms of assessment are essential.

Originally posted: 20-Oct-2011