I have decided that this incredible software and the infrastructure it runs on has great value to me, and that I should try to help pay for it. I mean it let's people from all over the world read my posts and your excellent comments. (definitely worth supporting) So this weekend I am going to study up on how to use Adsense, and hopefully turn it on.
At my current hit rate, it may generate $5/mth for me and $10/mth for Google... But I guess some contribution is better than none. I only ask that you are patient as I go through another blog learning curve. And send me feedback if it creates any access problems for you.
Now for today's lesson: Below is a very simple decision matrix that I used to score my options. This is a very simple and useful tool that you can use when you are facing a decision with multiple options and criteria. It is especially useful when 2 or more people are involved, because it forces you to document the options, criteria, weighting and scores. These require some very collaborative and sometimes tense discussions as people work toward a common model.
This may sound very painful to some folks... However, it is critical to get a team to a common view if you truly want to attain a consensus driven decision that will hold over time. My wife and I actually used this when we were trying to decide if we should move to a new school district or not. She of course thought I was being far too analytical at first, but it took a lot of emotion out of the discussion and helped us make the right decision that has held for 6+ years.
Finally, if you have worked with AdSense and learned lessons the hard way. Please drop me a note or leave a comment so that I can learn from your experience instead of blunting my nose on the same walls. Thanks as always !!!!
11 comments:
While I consider myself somewhat analytical, I haven't used, or even seen, a decision matrix before. I have learned that emotions play a big role in decision making, even for those who don't realize or acknowledge it. The book How We Decide is an interesting read. For a shorter desription of some of the research, try one of these articles:
Emotion rules the brain's decisions ( USA today)
Reason and Emotion (Psychology Today)
From Nokomis...
While I consider myself somewhat analytical, I haven't used, or even seen, a decision matrix before. I have learned that emotions play a big role in decision making, even for those who don't realize or acknowledge it.
The book How We Decide is an interesting read. For a shorter desription of some of the research, try one of these articles:
Emotion rules the brain's decisions ( USA today)
Reason and Emotion (Psychology Today)
Now this is one of my favorite topics.. (ie self awareness) Why do we do what we do? Why do we believe what we believe? How do we decide? Do we even understand what is going on inside us, or do we just react?
Understanding the amygdala and lymbic system is a good starting point. Here is an pretty good and simple explanation.
Steamboat Local Lizard Brain
It looks like it relates well to the links you posted. The most interesting thing about the Lymbic system is that it can be incredibly good or bad for us. It just depends on how our little lizard was conditioned.
This is because the signal gets to the amygdala slightly before it gets to the frontal lobe. Therefore if you have an incredible passion towards the input coming in, the lizard brain starts winding your body and brain up before you are even consciously aware of the stimulus.
You smell a certain perfume... Now do you have positive or negative memories tied to it? If negative, you begin to feel angry... If positive, you may begin to feel happy... With absolutely NO rational reason.. Pretty frustrating if your female boss starts wearing a perfume that you relate to that terrible ex-girlfriend
Some other good books:
Blink wiki
Predictably Irrational
Though I do agree that emotions are important in making personal decisions, my experience is that people usually need help in communicating what they "KNOW" to others in a manner that the team can understand and respect. Otherwise everyone "KNOWS" the right answer... And they are all different... It does make my job interesting.
That's where tools like these come in handy:
Six Sigma Tools
By the way, I have a strange title at work... I am called a Six Sigma Black Belt. My Father just calls me an internal consultant or "hired gun"...
I am a firm believer in matrix decision-making for anything more complex than "yes/no." It's been a while since I used one like your example, though. For economic decisions, like buying a new car or appliance, I use a comparative cost matrix, where I assign a "value to me" to each feature of the various options, and what I end up with is a net value. One result might be that NONE of the options has a value greater than cost, so you don't buy it! Also, included in the "value to me" can be one or more subjective or emotional factors just as easily. If the "peace of mind" or "chick magnet factor" of a new car can be cast into a monetary value, there's no reason not to include it.
The other kind of matrix I find useful is the "forced choice matrix." This is useful when you must pick, say, 6 things from a list of 20. You mark the first 6 as "selected" and then ask if #7 is better than one of the first 6. If so, it goes into the "selected" column and drop one of the first 6. Repeat until you have considered every one of the list.
J. Ewing
After a mention of six sigma at the end of my How We Decide book I checked out the link and found it looks quite complicated. It did make wonder if it has any applicability to school settings and made me think of the Blueberry Story. In general I am skeptical of the current push for many business oriented educational reforms.
Couldn't access it, could you copy and paste it here? Thanks
By it... I mean the whole story. It just says I don't have rights to that diary.
As for the 6 Sigma tools, they are only as complex as you make them. I made the Decision Matrix simple to help people understand this. Give this or Brainstorming a few tries and you will find it is pretty straight forward.
The trick is truly knowing the goal of the exercise. Can you envision what success looks like? If you can, then determining how to get there gets much easier.
oops. I still skim through dkos to see what is going on in the left wing echo chamber and I use a tool there to do my hyperlinks as I haven't memorized that little bit of code.
Here's the the blueberry story
The way you describe six sigma it probably does have usefulness in schools. I just believe not everything of value in education is easily measured and controlled.
Great link !!! Though I think I have a few readers that may have a hard time swallowing it... Let's see if they comment.
You're right. I'm not buying it. Children are not blueberries. If one comes in that is a bit small, or tart, we give it more attention and maybe add a bit more sugar. We don't just say that, sorry, we're dumping this blueberry in the trash. Oh, we could, I suppose, "send it back" but the grower doesn't want that blueberry back, he will sell it to somebody who will actually make something of it.
I'll say it again. So long as we allow educators to blame parents for the failure of educators to educate, we're never going to see an improvement. And so long as educators continue to fail but require attendance, parents have no incentive to change THEIR expectations or behaviors, either. Public education ought to be trying to produce the best "product" they can, knowing that they have a wide variety of "raw material," not simply making excuses for their utter amd uncaring incompetence.
J. Ewing
Children are not blueberries. The public schools, nor anybody else, has the right to simply "send them back" but neither do we have the right to simply toss them in the trash, which is what this public school mentality seems to insist upon. What you do with blueberries that are a little bit less sweet than what you would like is add a little sugar. The small ones you use for smoothies or somesuch. It is up to YOU (Mr. Educator, in case you've lost the allegory) to do your best with every blueberry you get.
In plainspeak, so long as we allow the public schools to blame the parents for their own failure to educate, they will never step up and do their jobs. And because of that, parents fall into despair and don't do any better, either. That's why successful inner city schools succeed, I believe, because the positive attitude of the school rubs off on the parents and kids, and everybody starts looking for success instead of just assuming this kid is a "reject."
J. Ewing
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