Latest Posts
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The Myth of Centralisation
The enemy of innovation is the management desire to centralise everything. Centralisation is often touted as being more efficient but it’s nothing of the sort. In truth it is a simply a corporate power grab, an attempt to control, to… Continue reading
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Community Memory Outlasts Organisational Memory
Corporate amnesia or ‘institutional forgetting’ is a phenomenon where organisations lose valuable knowledge, experience, and insights over time. This can be a gradual process or a sudden occurrence, and it can have significant negative impacts on an organisations performance, decision-making, and… Continue reading
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Avoiding Innovation Pantomime: Capability vs. Capacity
We all like a bit of theatre, but unless you focus on your strategy, and turn those ideas into actions that change colleagues and customers lives, you risk something worse. The endless idea challenges that go nowhere, the hackathons, the… Continue reading
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Our Productivity Problem Is Linked To Meaningless Measurement
“What gets measured gets managed—even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so” There is an opportunity cost to measurement. It can set a very odd behaviour… Continue reading
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Reciprocity , The Social Contract, and Talking About Tomorrow Today
Reciprocity is a fundamental social principle where people feel obliged to repay actions in kind. If someone does something for you, you feel a sense of obligation to do something for them in return. In a world sometimes reduced to… Continue reading
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Do We Need A Department of Effectiveness?
As things get really tight, it will feel like the safe thing to do is stick with what you know. Double down on the same processes, hire the same people and hope technology will save us. The problem of course… Continue reading
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The Anatomy of a Bad Idea
Bad ideas can share several features: They take a complex problem and apply a one-shot solution: the silver bullet that ignores the root cause. They are easy to understand, and don’t require you to know much about the subject. They… Continue reading
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The Batcave of Innovation: Disruptive Thinking in Healthcare
“The biggest users of pagers are drug dealers, Hezbollah and the NHS” Why has Alder Hey Children’s Hospital innovated in ways the NHS cannot? It’s all about First Principles.. Continue reading
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What Gets Measured Gets Gamed
Campbell’s Law builds on earlier ideas, notably Goodhart’s Law, which states: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Campbell extended this concept to social indicators, emphasising the systemic distortions that can arise when metrics… Continue reading
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The Desperate Need To Reorganise Our Resources
Brooks’ Law is a principle in software development that states: “Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.” It was coined by Fred Brooks in his 1975 book “The Mythical Man-Month” As more people join, the number of communication… Continue reading
Paul Taylor 