No more Naughty and Nice List ...

Father Christmas gets a Data Strategy “What would you like this year, ‘Father’ Christmas?” 

“Hmm … I’ve been too busy to think about it.” ‘Father’ Christmas looked up. Eyes up and left, reflecting. In that moment of reflection there must have been a blur of images, memories, feelings and what-ifs. After a second, she said “Well, one thing I do want, is for you to look at our ‘list’. Then, tell me why it takes so many elves so much time to keep it up to date.”

“List?”

“You know the ‘Naughty and Nice’ list. Except these days we call it the ‘Behavioural Compliance Index’. To be clear,” she continued, “It shouldn’t need to be checked twice! ”

“Ah.”

Change isn’t easy. I could imagine the board meeting, the disbelief, the barely-disguised head shakes and the tut-tutting that must have followed the suggestion of renaming the list. Change isn’t easy. I imagined the new CEO ending the discussion with determined assurance: “Look we are changing the name for our internal purpose, the marketing guys can still use Naughty and Nice … where appropriate.” I imagined the relief in the room.  No one then giving it a second thought – not even wondering why they had got so heated in the first place. The change had happened, that was the end of the official Naughty and Nice List.

Change is coming. Walking along the red-walled corridor that wound away in front of me, I went over my 15 minutes with the boss. The strains of jingling bells and children’s voices were interrupted by intermittent drilling and cursing ahead. Up a rickety ladder, supported by a bored-looking Elf in a boiler suit, was the source of the din. It was an older Elf struggling to take down one of the framed pictures that lined the corridor. Pictures of famous reindeer and elves of the past, going back a considerable time. Clearly, the head office was getting a makeover, along with everything else around here. The pictures were going into the new museum, in the planned visitor centre.

Digital Transformation at the North Pole. I like meetings like that with Claudia Santos, the new boss, the new ‘Father’ Christmas at Christmas Inc. I came away scratching my head wondering how we’d deliver what had been asked. A new challenge is always stimulating, it galvanises the belief that there is always room for improvement. The new boss had inherited a comprehensive digital transformation programme. This included a brand-new system for toy production, linked to a substantially upgraded logistics system. It was expensive; it was still being implemented and it was late.

AI Horrors. I heard that testing the AI system, developed for determining AGA (Appropriate Gift Allocation), had delivered some high-profile howlers. For example, it had delivered 300 pairs of ‘Dr. Who’ themed woolly socks to 8yr old Vitima in Malawi. These were returned as she didn’t like the colour. Positively, though, she has since become a fan of the show.

It also delivered the last remaining Tracy Island (Toy-of-the-Year 1993) from a dusty shelf at back of the furthest warehouse to the steps of 10, Downing Street in London. It was spotted, briefly visible over a news reporter’s camel-coated shoulder during a late-night report. It was also seen being sniffed at by Larry (the cat) as he waited to be admitted. It was soon removed and it was never officially acknowledged by the Prime Ministers’ Office.

The most bizarre story, however, was the prediction of the surprise ‘Toy-of-the-Year’ for 2020. In anticipation of demand, the system had commissioned a new English language dictionary, extraordinarily containing only one word,  ‘whelmed’. The word and its definition repeated on every line of every page, 172,000 times per volume. Luckily, the hard back print run had been stopped, soon after the first consignment had been delivered.  

The AI consultants had left for another project. The system continued to malfunction. Someone somewhere had mentioned that perhaps some of the data being used wasn’t the best version. So that was my job, finding out about the state of Christmas’s data and coming up with some ideas and possible solutions.  

Close out meeting. Six weeks later I was sitting in the same office, it had been transformed. A glass topped desk replaced mahogany, the open fire had been replaced by a screen showing flames, dancing and crackling. Claudia hadn’t needed to open our report. It was on her desk next to an open book of swatches in various shades of green. “You know why we had red as our corporate colour, right? Well, we are going out on our own for the colour. Green is more traditional and supports our decarbonisation goals.”

A Data Strategy and Action Plan. She knew what had been written up in the report as she had been involved all along. We had started a clean-up of the list, names and locations, using the GIS system as a master data store. The list would be validated on yearly visits, along with updated consent. We had agreed formats and data structures with the suppliers, so that we could update our catalogues in real-time. The suppliers thought it would be easier for them too. A senior Elf was put in charge of each of the main data stores so that the data was quality checked and therefore more dependable, like the quality of toy production that they understood so well. The Board would think about a policy change to include pets - starting with cats (strongly supported by Dancer, board member representing the Reindeer). Since the list was now in good shape, it was felt the service could be expanded. However, they had said a definite ‘no’ to using a state-of-the-art formula for predicting demand, the xP or Expected Presents, an algorithm modified from a different sphere. I think we will revisit that next year.

A Christmas Gift. Father Christmas smiled and shook my hand. “Well, we have our data plan. We know that we have to keep working it. What was your saying: ‘the data mountain has no top’? We have appointed our first Elf Chief Data Officer who is putting the data team together. We only have to check our naught…,”she corrected herself, “Behavioural Compliance Index once. You should drop by again next year and see our progress. Thank you” she said, “Merry Christmas.”

As I stood up to leave, she handed me a small parcel. Gift wrapped in plain green paper with a slender gold ribbon, criss-crossed and bowed. It felt suspiciously like a hard-backed dictionary. You can guess how I felt about that!