Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, Vol. I , 125 (1992)

Editorial

Physician, heal thyself!

I am often and justly accused of preaching. Well, I suppose that it is my background in the evangelical dogma of Bayesian statistics. But whatever the reason, the mess I face this week-end has arisen because of a conspicuous failure to practise what I preach. Over the last six months I have failed to define for myself clear objectives against which I can evaluate those dreadful things called opportunities, assign priorities and allocate resources, particularly in respect of my own time. The result is, of course, that I have taken on too many tasks, worked too many hours of each week, achieved much less than I hoped, let several friends down (I hope they are still friends!) and generally wrecked havoc all around. To be fair, I am not alone in this. It’s a failing endemic in British Higher Education at the moment as we face up to a multitude of changes, thrown at us by a Government struggling to turn an economy round.

But, as a decision analyst, should I not have taken a leaf out of Ralph Keeney’s latest book* and focused on objectives, both personal and those of my University, before myopically accepting opportunities as they arose. I had all the conceptual and software tools that I might have needed to evaluate possible activities and plan workloads, but I did not use them.

Am I alone in this? I hope that I am, but I suspect not. And if as a profession we do not use our own methods daily, how can we recommend them to others? Till now my excuse has been that my day to day problems are not big enough to warrant such efforts. The current consequences give the lie to that argument!

The interesting thing is the one time in the last few months that I did map out some objectives and plan against them, things worked out well. In teaching a new course, I wrote clear course objectives and used them to choose material for inclusion, appropriate methods of teaching and assessment, allocation of lecturing/class time, etc. It was the best course that I have taught in years. That’s not just my evaluation: the students evaluated the course well both against my and their own objectives. (Of course, this is not just an application of sound decision theoretic principles. Good educational practice suggests that I should do the same.)

So, as soon as I print this editorial from the wordprocessor, I am going to try to sort out my life using some clear decision analytic thinking. At least, I will not be hypocritical in promoting the method in future . . . unless, of course, it does not work!

I hope and trust that your lives in 1993 are enjoyable and successful, but do not need quite so much sorting out as mine.

SIMON FRENCH

*R. L. Keeney (1992) Value Focused Thinking. Harvard University Press

0 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.