Saturday was an unusual day, instead of the usual taxi service for the kids and a trip to Loftus Road to see QPR play Middlesbrough, I found myself presenting to the Board of Governors at a leading London College, discussing the accuracy of axiological science as a tool of measurement when I should have been discussing our forwards lack of accuracy in front of goal.


Anyway, you’re probably asking yourself what I was doing there and why, so I will tell you. Nigel Griffiths, my Partner at AxiaMetrics picked up through the I.O.D. LinkedIn Group, a request from a member of the Board of Governors at Westminster Kingsway College (who also happens to have a highly influential day job) for help with a specific problem. He was looking for a tool that would enable him to assess the Board’s collective attitude to risk. Although inundated with offers of help from experts wanting to run a multitude of subjective testing and analysis (the “tell me what you think your would do in this situation, and I’ll use blind corroboration to analyse your risk profile”, brigade), the Board member concerned picked up on Nigel’s offer as we knew we had the perfect output to measure this and discussions began.


Over the next few days, 20 members of the Board of Governors took the Axia Profile online (quick, easy and only 15 minutes to do) and we generated our Risk Tolerance Assessment report which measures your internal influences in 10 key areas of risk based decision making. By doing this, we were able to pinpoint where the Board stood collectively in their approach to risk as well as providing each member with their own individual report. Running through this with them on Saturday gave me an insight into the really valuable work which they do for the College and their commitment and sense of responsibility was frankly, inspiring.


This does not mean to say that it was all plain sailing though, it is a big ask for a group to understand in one hit why Axiology enables us to identify our internal valuing system which influences our perceptions, decisions and actions – basically “why” we do what we do. I have to say however, that as a group they were both open minded and genuinely interested in Robert Hartman’s pioneering work and the fact that we were able to define where they were in terms of attitude to risk so accurately. Individual members have already been in contact with me since and I am meeting with them in the days and weeks ahead to discuss how they can use some of the 50 outputs from the Axia Profile in their places of work.


Post Script


Anyone who knows the score from the QPR V Boro game on Saturday will know that I used my time wisely by not being at Loftus Road. Is it really too much to ask for 2 good results in one day? If ever a team needed the insight of axiology…hey, there’s an idea, I must refer them to Nigel’s blog on Football vs Business.

Tags: AxiaMetrics, axiology, DISC, linkedin, Martin Gilsenan, Meyers-Briggs, Profiling, Risk Analysis