Paul Taylor

Latest Writing

  • The Abilene Paradox And The Dangers of Assuming People Agree With You

    The Abilene Paradox And The Dangers of Assuming People Agree With You

    The Abilene Paradox is a situation in which a group makes a decision that is contrary to the desires of the group’s members, because each member assumes the others approve of it. It’s titled after an example used by Jerry B. Harvey to illustrate the concept. In his article, Harvey tells the story of a… Read more

  • Autonomy Only Happens By Design

    Autonomy Only Happens By Design

    Most of us accept that bureaucracy squashes initiative, risk-taking, and creativity, but it doesn’t just stop there. Read more

  • Agile Isn’t Everything and Everything Isn’t Agile

    Agile Isn’t Everything and Everything Isn’t Agile

    A friend of mine was recently invited on a two-day training course to teach/indoctrinate them in the ways of agile. It was accompanied by a 500-slide PowerPoint, no doubt explaining terms like ‘scrum of scrums’, ‘time boxing’, ‘epics’, ‘niko niko planning’ and the other 101 flavours of corporate bullshit that are contained in the agile… Read more

  • Disruption-Proof: How Entire Sectors Avoid Transformation

    Disruption-Proof: How Entire Sectors Avoid Transformation

    There used to be a question posed when Amazon first began eating into entire sectors – such as cloud computing, groceries, streaming video, and healthcare. Where won’t Amazon go? Is any sector Amazon-proof? Today’s question is where won’t disruption go? Is any sector disruption-proof? Certainly, some sectors seem less exposed to disruption than others. In… Read more

  • Community Is The Only Unit of Sustainable Change

    Community Is The Only Unit of Sustainable Change

    The basic unit of sustained innovation is not a creative individual, nor even a team, but a creative community with a cause.  Charles Leadbetter I’m just off the back of a first round of workshops, or rather conversations, about the importance of place with residents. I say conversations because we simply don’t talk enough about… Read more

  • How Do You Change A System That Doesn’t Want To Change?

    How Do You Change A System That Doesn’t Want To Change?

    There were two recurring P words throughout the New Local ‘Stronger Things’ event in London’s Guildhall. Permission: give it. Power: share it. The Guildhall was built in the 15th century to demonstrate the continuing power of the merchants of the City of London who regulated trade, and to ensure they preserved that same power. A… Read more