More inbasket

About a month ago, I started measuring access to this blog and also joined the Amazon Associates program. Whilst the number of people reading this blog is hardly astronomical, there are more hits than I had expected (and unfortunately, a certain percentage of those belong to me).

Surprisingly, the most popular page on this blog is the original post about the Inbasket exam. I imagine that most of the people reading the page wanted to know how to pass the exam successfully and presumably hoped to find some hints. If that is the case, then I'm sure that they were disappointed. There isn't really any way to learn how to pass such exams; the key is to practice on existing exams and to have a great deal of common sense. The exam is testing one's ability to deal with happening events in a reasonable order, and that's not something which can be easily taught.

This reminds me of an issue in the MBA organisational behaviour course, when the subject was leadership; the lecturer said that the Americans believe that everything can be taught, whereas the British tend to believe that leadership is a part of one's personality and is composed of several smaller components. The inbasket exam is similar to a leadership exam; either one has it or one doesn't.

Anyway ... this being the most popular post, it only goes to reason that I have actually earned a few cents by someone clicking on the book reference given on that page, and even apparently buying the book.

In the mean time, the Occupational Psychologist has developed a new exam, this time for the manager of a non-residential old age activity centre. I asked her how she managed to develop the exam so quickly and she said that it was a combination of interviewing people who work in such a centre along with adapting existing material. A few people took this new exam, which revealed yet again a few more bugs. The DLL plugin approach to the exam proved itself in quickly allowing us to implement a new exam.

I often read blogs about entrepreneurial enterprises; this blog  is very lucid on the subject:

"To summarize: Anything that can be copied will be copied, including features, marketing copy, and pricing. Anything you read on popular blogs is also read by everyone else. You don't have an 'edge' just because you're passionate, hard-working, or 'lean'. The only real competitive advantage is that which cannot be copied and cannot be bought. Like what?"

The psychological testing clinic (I have to find a better name in English) is not the only one of its kind in Israel, but we are definitely in a niche market. The competitive advantage that we have is the in-house development of the computerised exams. For example, we are considering the use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI); this is a standard psychological exam, although intended for more pathological use than we generally need. One can read about the exam on the Internet and even buy books which give the questions (I don't know whether one needs to be a licensed psychologist in order to do, but I imagine not). Our advantage is that we can quickly take the Hebrew version of this exam and computerise it; our even bigger advantage is that we can then generate both standardised and customised reports from the standard data.

But our biggest advantage is that the OP is interested in expanding both the range of our services and their quality (ie new reports, etc). Whilst my contribution is not trivial, I am only shaping/sculpting information which is given to me; the jewels - the psychological knowledge - come from the OP.

Again, the inbasket exam framework is a huge advantage which enables us to move into unexploited territory with little difficulty.