Behavioral Reports

There is no denying it, we live in a world that loves numbers. Everything is driven by numbers of some kind, and even our personal experiences are translated into some form of metrics through social media. And this means that in order to get the numbers, there has to be "proof" provided that work was done - even if it is just a stream of inane selfies.

As I mentioned in my recent proof of work article, for those of us who are knowledge workers, our work itself is no longer producing outputs that are tangible, with a lot of "hidden" tasks being required before there is a visible output. As a result, we end up having to do a lot of work about work, essentially reporting on the work we have done to provide transparency and evidence that the work is actually being done. Often, this reporting is more of a "just in case" content, that no one really checks often, unless there is a clear problem that arises. It is covering bases.

Pretty much everyone hates doing work about work, so that someone may or may not look at it in the future, and there may or may not be sense for it at all. For those who produce different kinds of content, this is something that the AI systems are going to be used for, where a query on "what has Taraz created" will be run through an organization showing timelines and volumes, giving lots of numbers on my productivity, even if it doesn't indicate the impact made within the organization itself.

As is oft mentioned, a lot of people want to work in a meritocracy, where the people who have the most merit are the ones rewarded. However, this also means that evaluation metrics and KPIs will have to be developed to indicate what indicates merit, and who deserves the support. This opens up a lot of ambiguity and room for opinions and prejudice, whether on the tasks involved, or the people involved. And this is why so many rely on the numbers, even if the numbers don't tell the whole story.

However, at a more practical every day kind of level that is devoid of AI, essentially what companies should be looking to streamline is their manual reporting requirements that are work about work tasks. Instead, they should be looking to develop working processes where quality performance of work creates the proof the work was done.

For instance, I work with Sales people who speak directly to prospects, which means they do discovery calls with them. This is typical behavior, but the quality of the discovery call matters, with quality coming down to how well the account executive is able to tailor the conversation to engage the prospect, ask the right questions to understand needs, and draw out the relevant information to to qualify, disqualify, and create next steps. In order to do this well, information needs to be sourced, consolidated and translated prior to the direct discovery taking place, and that creates content. If this content is part of the internal sales processes, it is proof of work.

But it doesn't mean change in behavior.

Ultimately, business practices have to be designed to "improve behavior" in targeted areas to increase efficiency. Efficiency in prospecting comes through conversion rates of discussions into real opportunities, and ultimately to sales numbers down the track. Well designed process would create a paper trail where it would be possible to not only see what kind of content is required for success, it also needs to look at whether the information is applied, and how it is applied. Recordings for "quality assurance" are part of these mechanisms, and now with generative-AI that can dissect, evaluate and provide a summary of impact of the calls, it can all be automated. While people might not want an AI to sell to them, AIs will increasingly be part of the process.

You wanted merit?

It opens up an interesting conversation, doesn't it? People want to live in a world where those with merit get rewarded, but also don't want to be evaluated on whether they have merit, out of fear they might not be that valuable after all. AIs however will be calibrated to check in on them to see if what they are creating and doing, is aligned with the processes of the business and meet expectations. For instance, I was reading that a bank in the US recently fired people who were "working from home" for using the likes of mouse jigglers so that their computers wouldn't go to sleep, and they wouldn't look idle.

But I am more productive at home!

Numbers can lie.

But we still love them, don't we? When we are doing well, we want the numbers that indicate our success, we want to prove our worth, but when the numbers are bad, do we want the reasons if the reasons are the way we behave? For me, yes, as I think that my goal is to improve my behaviors, to be the best I can be, and sometimes numbers can help provide that, like the people who have smart watches that count steps, tend to step more than those who don't. But, we also have to recognize that if those numbers aren't aligned to the behaviors that we want to see, they will influence in the wrong direction, and there are a lot of misaligned KPIs in this world.

Have the hearts on Instagram led to healthier behaviors of users?

No, but these metrics have been used to lead to greater incomes for platforms, which is the goal of the platform. Numbers these days aren't used for improvement of individuals or communities, they are just there for driving profits, and as a result, the more people hit the numbers, the more they will ultimately suffer. We do their work for them.

Gotta give the corporations merit.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]