Decision Lab - Spotting Signals and Patterns

The infamous scandal posed by the Horizon One Post Office illustrates what happens when high-impact decision-makers ignore the signals and cues and the negative ripple effect.

Using this example, in this video, I lay out what happened as a result of one out of several decision-makers involved, then look at reasons why it happened and how you can avoid being caught in a similar trap.

Of course, it is easy to see the obvious benefits using hindsight. The focus is not on judging people retroactively or retrospectively, but on seeing what can be learned about reading system-level sourced issues.

The book I mentioned in this episode is How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from puddles to the Sea by Tristan Gooley Links to research behind this episode:

https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Post-Office-Horizon-scandal-explained-everything-you-need-to-know

https://www.iod.com/app/uploads/2024/10/IoD-The-Post-Office-Scandal-%E2%80%93-A-Failure-of-Governance-3a831350ff1204afaabb59adb973590e.pdf

This is the research Perplexity.ai pulled up for this episode:

“Paula Vennells served as the CEO of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019 and played a significant role in the Post Office Horizon scandal2. Her decisions and actions had a detrimental impact on subpostmasters, who were essentially distributed staff managing local post office branches.

During Vennells' tenure, the Post Office:

1. Blamed subpostmasters for financial discrepancies caused by the faulty Horizon IT system2.

2. Prosecuted many subpostmasters for financial crimes they did not commit2.

3. Used legal action and deep pockets to defend itself against accusations, silencing subpostmasters who raised concerns2.

4. Lied to journalists, politicians, and others who questioned the Horizon system's robustness2.

The fallout from Vennells' decisions was severe:

1. Hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongly convicted of financial crimes2.

2. Many subpostmasters faced bankruptcy, imprisonment, and devastating personal consequences2.

3. The scandal has been described as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history2.”