Organisational Issues, Darkwave Recreation

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The most important issue in the the past week at work has been has been our internal QA audit ("the good cop" auditor) for our compliance with ISO9001 standards. Many of course still look at the competitive business case for having compliance with such a standard (e.g., we'll be better able to establish contracts with those organisations that requres ISO), or, having achieved certification, want to minimise the quantity of documents that are included in the repository or avoid having non-compliance requests found by their auditor. This is not the right approach. The primary reason for ISO9001 certification is to ensure that an organisation's procedures are documented, controlled, transparent, appropriate, reviewed and improved. Every organisation, whether or not they seek certification, should seek to comply to the standard. Every organisation should seek to include the widest possible range of its documents within quality assurance. Finally, every organisation should actively seek and record non-compliance issues.

Appropriately, when taking the service for Kenneth Davidson's address on the corrupt process involved in PPPs at the Unitarians on Sunday I took the opportunity to refer to Herbert Simon, who unfortunately remains a relatively unknown figure. After the service led the Philosophy Forum discussion on The Philosophy of History: Metanarratives and Hermeneutics. The well-attended Forum seemed to come to the conclusion that; (a) claims of inexorable historical laws are downright dangerous, (b) technical and organisational progress means history is increasingly chaotic, and (c) historical investigation is not unlike criminal investigation.

The week also had several instances of darkwave recreation. The first was playing Other Worlds, which encourages player-created settings. We ended up with a combination of Mad Max meets the Walking Dead in Australia. On Saturday hathhalla and ser_pounce came to visit we took the opportunity to play Arkham Horror, which was as good as I remember it. It was delightful appropriate playing this in the library of a former asylum on a grey day. Afterwards has dinner with Anthony L. at the Dainty Sichuan. Absolutely great for chilli fiends. Sunday played another session of Dark Heresy. Finally, and most importantly, was seeing The Sisters of Mercy on Thursday night at The Corner. Said venue is, of course, terrible and the mixing was up to its very ordinary standard. About forty minutes in there was a dramatic improvement in the sound quality, making the evening much more enjoyable. Reviews for all four items of recreation planned in the coming week.

Comments

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"Proofs are for mathematicians and philosophers."

Well, the philosopher will say that mathematical proof is but one kind. Empirical evidence is another.

Instead, I have a theory, based on observing QA and other control fetishes from the POV of a worker actually creating goods and services - that the people doing the work are the best suited to organise it, because the devil's in the details.

QA applies as much for worker-owned organisations as it does for private capital.

QA the FHI = a cost hurdle to earning the passkey to play with the big boys.

No. As mentioned, organisations should engage in QA even if they are not seeking ISO certification, for the aforementioned reasons.

Now, I am aware that completing complex cooperative tasks requires logistics, strategy, research, foresight and so on,

Good. That's what I was referring to.

Similarly, claims that management enables workers to do their work seem at odds with real world experience of workers doing their work despite the interference of management.

You are confusing the person (managers) with the activity (management), of which I will readily admit there is a very poor correlation in capitalist firms.

In any case, by "death to the key performance indicators" (or ergometrics, as they liked to call it in the Victorian era)

No. KPIs are not at all related to ergometrics. The former are stated objectives which tie to the mission of the organisation, i.e., the reason that it exists. The latter is efficiency of the work conducted, i.e., time and motion studies, which can quite easily be completely contrary to the organisation's mission.

So we end up with some version of the fabled Pentagon simulation of the Vietnam War that informed the generals that they'd already won years before.

Actually, the Pentagon gave very accurate information to the politicians about the Vietnam War (c.f., The Pentagon Papers). It was the politicians that lied to the public about the potential for victory.