Newsletter, November 2007 |
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Contents this month
Collation is more than a spectator sport
In The Economist, many years ago, someone commented that child-rearing is like cricket: very boring if you don't understand what you are seeing. I now find this comment comes to mind every time I watch any sort of sport, perhaps because as someone who lacks any sporting talent whatsoever I am never quite sure what I should be looking at.
Some sports are, however, less of a mystery than others. In the Rugby World Cup, for example, you can see the flow of play even if you are not sure what they are all trying to do. Ballet with grunting. Formula 1 was a closed book until recently, when suddenly the combination of an enthusiastic son and the amazing Lewis Hamilton has lifted the veil. Having someone explain the tactics and the engineering and which tyres have which capabilities suddenly turns people driving into people playing chess while driving.
I am about, as you will have guessed, to make an analogy. Dialogue by Design is currently collating the results of several public consultations, one of them among the largest we have ever done.
When you first open up the database and see the countless submissions to be read, puzzled over, discussed with colleagues and tentatively categorised, the task seems incredibly daunting. Then gradually the flow of ideas and opinions begins to take shape in your mind. You begin to see themes and patterns emerging, then sub-themes and nuances, and you begin to get a sense of the individual personalities and their interests and particular concerns. You create new headings and categories to ensure as many as possible of the individual points a person makes do not get lost.
The next stage, when you are satisfied with the hundreds and thousands of collating decisions you have made, is to write a summary that balances the need to capture the general thrust of what people are saying with the need to provide the colour and texture that make people want to read it. Sometimes it means selecting quotations so that some of participants have a voice in your summary - and of course the quotations you choose must reflect the balance of opinion received.
The analogy lies in the difference between knowing about something as a detached observer, and seeing beneath the skin through the eyes of people who really care about it. Just as watching a child is more interesting if you happen to be the parent, so collating thousands of submissions to a consultation is more fun than just reading about the same subject.
Andrew Acland
