Chris Conway
Chief Architect, Quantiv
Exam season reminded me that maths and physics are often seen as essential for a career in IT or in science and engineering. But, in an earlier blog, I talked about how other, less-obvious subjects might be just as important. For instance, natural language grammar is useful as part of IT analysis.
And I was reminded recently there’s another, again unexpected, language link: that age-old question of whether the actor or the role is more important.
When the line between actor and character blurs
Sometimes the actor can take centre stage, literally and metaphorically. Indeed, it can often seem the actor and the role are inextricably linked. Humphrey Bogart is Philip Marlowe, Vivien Leigh is Scarlett O’Hara, Sigourney Weaver is Ellen Ripley, and who could imagine anyone else but Sylvester Stallone playing Rocky.
This effect can even survive a change of actor. James Bond was obviously Sean Connery, until Roger Moore brought his own style to the part. And then later, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig each made the role their own.
But over time, a character – and the plays, films, books and other works in which it appears – can take over from the actors. Shakespeare’s plays are perhaps the ultimate examples as countless people have taken on such iconic parts as Lady Macbeth and Hamlet over the centuries.
‘Fleshing out’ a role
To continue the example, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, and not forgetting David Niven, have all added their marks to 007. But they were perhaps benefiting from the earlier familiarity of the character (and, in their defence, they didn’t have many opportunities to make it their own).
Whichever is the case, with each appearance of the role, the character becomes more rounded, or ‘fleshed out’. That pattern doesn’t just apply to the page, screen or auditorium; the same is true in your day-to-day life, perhaps more so.
As more of a story unfolds, more acts are performed, and so you discover more characteristics and, indeed, more roles. And as you find more roles, more attributes associated with both the roles and their acts emerge.
Eventually, some of those attributes become ways for you to distinguish between the good and the bad characters. And, ultimately, you can determine whether the outcome is likely to be a triumph or tragedy – or even comedy! But while a good actor can bring new characteristics to a role, especially initially, not all an actor’s characteristics will be needed for every role. In terms of the overall production, it’s the role rather than the actor that’s most important.
Finding patterns in your organisation’s processes
Again, perhaps as expected, those patterns appear in the way your organisation runs. So, people operate in roles within processes to achieve the organisation’s objectives. And that’s not so very different from actors following a script.
This too shouldn’t really be a surprise. What are descriptions of organisational operation if not stories of how your organisation and its people have ‘acted’ in their roles, i.e. the activities they’ve performed? And if that’s the case, why wouldn’t dramatic devices be good equivalents for operational descriptions?
How NumberWorks and NumberCloud can support your organisation
Quantiv’s NumberWorks method uses just such an approach in its modelling of operational processes. It concentrates on the roles involved in your organisational activities and the events that result from those activities. So, while actors can help establish the characteristics of the roles, it’s the roles that control how the activities are performed.
And we’ve designed our NumberCloud service specifically to allow your data to be captured in exactly this way. So, rather than needing all attributes of each data record to be defined in advance, it allows the outcomes related to each activity and the roles involved to emerge over time. This happens within a structure that allows your significant information associated with each stage to be captured so a consistent story can be told – both for your organisation and its actors.
So, while a good actor can bring a role to life, it’s the role – and the production crew – that bring life to the actor. And the same is true of operational systems.
Organise and manage your operational information, with ease
Chat to our team on 0161 927 4000 or email: info@quantiv.com to find out how our services could benefit you.
