A Mason's Work

[00:00] At a systemic level, the secretary function is effectively recording honest data over time.
[00:08] And for a lot of us that are in the data sciences kind of space, the quality of the data you collect, the quality of the records that you have really indicates effectively how much you can optimize and improve an environment.
[00:22] Without being able to rely on consistent systemic data that is accurate to the situation that you're trying to measure, without that information, trying to do any meaningful diagnostics and troubleshooting is much, much, much harder.
[00:44] So from a systemic level, you can start to look at the secretary function in that data keeping capacity as someone who really can be the architect of behavior change.
[00:59] And you'll hear this in, you know, I guess Peter Drucker said, what gets measured gets managed.
[01:04] This is a similar thing.
[01:07] By collecting the right kind of data in the right way, you effectively gain enough insights to meaningfully move the conversation forward.
[01:15] Now, this doesn't always mean that it's going to be easy to make those changes.
[01:20] And the secretary, by all means, from a functional perspective, isn't the person who should make those changes.
[01:26] The secretary should be given, here's the kind of data we need to collect as a function and provide some level of the analysis of that data, but not own the fix.
[01:41] And so be mindful when you are in a leadership function or when you're out working in your organization, not to look at the secretary when the data doesn't prove the thing you're trying to change or create.
[01:54] This is a very common occurrence in corporations is to blame the person who brought the data to the table and not the sort of root cause or the underlying cause of that data.
[02:08] When the secretary is being honest and truthful and collecting that information, it's really important to check your own emotional content when the time comes, when that data comes in to remove the kind of emotional and potentially cognitive sting of data that doesn't conform to your expectations.
[02:28] This is a lot of the way of the way of the way of the way.
[02:33] This systemic understanding of how data and memories are kept informs a lot of the way the world works.
[02:41] And so if you look around, one of the things you'll see is that, for example, it is very common for people to rewrite history.
[02:49] It's easy to think, hey, history happened.
[02:53] These things occurred.
[02:55] Why are we ever going to rewrite them?
[02:58] But we're perpetually shifting the context of the events of things that occurred in the past and creating a new narrative to support the changing and migrating context.
[03:08] At a systemic level, if you don't have these anchors, you really never get to any sort of solid, meaningful ground.
[03:17] This is why things like logbooks and diary entries and journal entries are admitted in a court of law because they are kept in the moment of the event.
[03:34] They are kept in a sequence.
[03:36] They are recorded at the time of.
[03:38] And so you want to be mindful of when and how you're recording because the mind that is analyzing data and trying to record it, but it happened six months ago, you lose the ability to get that sort of factual integrity.
[03:53] So at this, again, the systemic level, being able to look across the way you and your organization and your whatever groups you're in, keep that sort of systemic memory.
[04:06] There's a lot more going on there than the sort of secretary function lets on.
[04:14] It looks like somebody's just collecting minutes.
[04:17] But in fact, it is how the history of an organization and how the future of an organization are both plotted, tracked, and kept.
[04:27] So be mindful of this in understanding when you put that apron on to do this sort of systemic level analysis that those things you're choosing to collect are essentially what future versions of yourself are going to have to focus on.
[04:46] If you're collecting the wrong data or data that's not appropriate, but that's all the future versions of you have to work on or work with, you are not enabling your future.
[04:57] So adding on to the secretary function, what information might presently be missing that we could start to look for and collect to enable future versions of ourselves to do better work is a systemic understanding of the way the secretary fits into the entire apparatus.
[05:16] of change.