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All of Vicky Clayton's Comments + Replies

Refining improving institutional decision-making as a cause area: results from a scoping survey
Vicky Clayton3y1
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Thanks EdoArad - hopefully I've answered your point when replying to Jonas below but let me know if not :)

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EdoArad
3y
Yea, mostly 😊 There might be a problem on the other direction, where people who took the survey had in mind "which topics are high priority" and that may have caused either early elimination of potentially relevant topics or, more likely I think, a scope-creep where somewhat related topics which seem important might find their way in.
Refining improving institutional decision-making as a cause area: results from a scoping survey
Vicky Clayton3y2
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Thanks Jonas. We / I are also really interested in activities that people find promising within this area! The idea with the survey was partly to connect IIDM to categories which exist in other professional communities and academic literatures to help us understand what are considered promising approaches in those fields and allow us to build on existing knowledge.

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Refining improving institutional decision-making as a cause area: results from a scoping survey
Vicky Clayton3y2
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Thanks EdoAarad! Yes, I think there are definitely parallels. I was a bit personally disappointed not to see meta-science considered more within the scope of IIDM as it's something I'm very interested in too. And glad you like the name! :)

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Refining improving institutional decision-making as a cause area: results from a scoping survey
Vicky Clayton3y2
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Thanks Vhanon.  We did have some open text boxes so that we could pick up a bit more of the reasons why people gave the answers that they did. We've scattered those throughout the post so it's maybe  a bit less obvious where we've included that information. I don't have answers to the questions you're posing (e.g. what would make respondents change their mind?) but some extra snippets which I thought were interesting but didn't make it into the final cut were about considering the decisions of non-human agents and also where to place interventions to shift people's values towards long-termism. The comments on activities tended to be around encouraging us to prioritise based on the skillset of the team.

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Improving Institutional Decision-Making: a new working group
Vicky Clayton3y2
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Thanks for your comment, Ryan, and apologies for only spotting it just now. I agree there's lots of efficiency gains to be made on big projects! I wonder whether it's difficult to gain evidence on "what works" to improve them because there are so few and there's lots of different complexities (vs small projects - we have a lot more to observe and there's fewer dimensions).

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ryan_b
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It definitely is, mostly because there are so few successful projects to point to. Most of the work has been identifying what failed projects have in common, and then there are a few shining counterexamples against which they can test. It currently looks like the core insight is that planning needs to shift from controlling things to accounting for things you cannot control: lots of stakeholders (because many are attracted due to the sheer size of the project); black swans (in multi-year construction there is likely to be a bad storm but no telling when); the economy; etc.
Improving Institutional Decision-Making: a new working group
Vicky Clayton3y2
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Thanks for the comment, and apologies that I've just seen it now. Similarly to Ian (see the comment above) I was originally drawn to the area because of the focus on decision-making but have since updated that improving institutions is also about the broader landscape of the design of institutions and how they interact with each other. As you mention, they are currently pretty different (at least academic) fields. I can imagine that there would be some crossover where identifying problems within the existing systems at a lower down level help identify what... (read more)

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AMA: Ian David Moss, strategy consultant to foundations and other institutions
Vicky Clayton3y8
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What are the frameworks you find most helpful in your work supporting clients with their decision-making?

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IanDavidMoss
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Besides theory of change, which tessa mentioned,  I've found myself increasingly focusing on the "front end" of decision-making rather than very detailed tools to choose from among defined alternatives, because in my experience  leaders and teams generally need help putting more structure around their decision-making process before they can engage productively with such methods. One innovation I've been working on is a tool called the decision inventory, which is a way for clients to get a sense of the landscape of decisions facing them and prioritize among those decisions. It's a much more intuitive exercise and can be done much more quickly than a formal decision analysis or cost-benefit model, so it lends itself well to introducing the concepts and building buy-in among a team to do this kind of work. It can be especially helpful for teams because different team members have a different view of the decision landscape, and will have different ideas about what decisions are important for which reasons, so activating that collective intelligence can be educational for leaders.
Are we actually improving decision-making?
Vicky Clayton3y3
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Thanks for writing this up as a post Remmelt - great to have these kind of thoughts written up! I agree that type 2 efforts can i) help us improve the quality of our work through exposing blindspots, and ii) access expertise quickly in response to changing situations (the example you give of working with anthropologists specialising in the funeral rites during Ebola). I also think it could improve the reputation of the EA community through i) above and the act of engaging with others.  Also hopefully we can have a positive impact on the groups we inte... (read more)

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Remmelt
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Thank you too for the input, Vicky. This gives me a more grounded sense of what EA initiators with  experience in policy are up to  and thinking. Previously, I corresponded with volunteers of Dutch EA policy initiatives as well as staff from various established EA orgs that coordinate and build up particular professional  fields. Your comment and the post by your working group  made me feel less pessimistic about a lack of open consultation and consensus-building in IIDM initiatives . I like your framing of a two-way learning process. I think it's useful to let go of one's own  theory of impact sometimes in conversations, and ask about why they're doing what they do and find relevant. I had missed your excellent write-up so just read through it!  It seems carefully written, makes nuanced distinctions, and considers complexity in the many implicit interactions involved. I found it useful. 
Improving Institutional Decision-Making: a new working group
Vicky Clayton3y2
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Yes, thank you! Do you know of any institutions which are currently using QV/QF? Thanks

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capybaralet
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IIRC Etherium foundation is using QF somehow. But it's probably best just to get in touch with someone who knows more of what's going on at RXC. Not sure who that would be OTTMH, unfortunately.  
Improving Institutional Decision-Making: a new working group
Vicky Clayton3y3
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Thanks Tony.Sena for the comment and the great questions. It's really good to challenge premises, particularly at the beginning! I guess focusing on institutions is on the premise that good decision-making within institutions involves more than each individual within that institution making good decisions separately - there's coordination, aligning goals etc to think about - and also on the premise that we think most resources / norms are controlled by institutions rather than individuals (even authoritarian leaders operate within a greater decision making... (read more)

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Improving Institutional Decision-Making: a new working group
Vicky Clayton3y3
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Thanks for the comment rorty! It's a really good question. I think the simple answer is that we don't know at this stage. I don't think it has to be the dichotomy you suggest though. A process could help individuals within a group align better and figure out what compromises they are happy to make. The question of whether we try to change people's goals I think depends on how tractable it is and we also recognise that there is already considerable efforts in EA movement building which may better cover trying to change people's goals. Thanks again.

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