Paul Taylor
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Organisational Antibodies Reject Place-Based and Decentralised Approaches
Placed based work will actually serve people’s needs more completely and more cheaply. The consciousness of place is not hierarchical or expert. It relies on the intrinsic value of each member of the place. Any flattening is frightening to the… Continue reading
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Why Decentralised Place-Based Approaches Can Fail
Genuine place based decentralised approaches are not merely structural changes; they are assaults on the fundamental logic of the traditional organisation which is designed to minimise variance and maximise control. Continue reading
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Why Don’t We Enable More Heretical Thinking At Work?
In today’s corporate environment, the instinct of the system is to demand order, predictability, and consensus. Yet, the reality facing us is that nearly half of CEOs don’t think their organisations will survive 10 years unless they radically change path.… Continue reading
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Concentrate on relationships and metrics will improve. Concentrate on metrics and relationships will fail.
Why do so many managers and leaders expect an almost instant improvement in satisfaction results after any change is made? We often fail to recognise that whilst organisational memory is short, community has a long memory Regaining trust often needs… Continue reading
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Complaints Rise Because Our Organisations Are Designed To Generate Complaints
The purpose of a system is what it does Continue reading
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The Collaboration Paradox: Why We Say We Love It, But Our Systems Fight It
If you are struggling to make collaboration work, the problem might not be your people; it might be your structure and system. Continue reading
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Are Small Companies Really Better At Innovation?
Large organisations kill innovation not by size, but by inertia. To avoid this, we must embrace organisational ambidexterity—balancing core efficiency (exploitation) with radical flexibility (exploration). That’s why I believe our model of place based working – the blueprint of which… Continue reading
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Why We Must Pivot to Community Enabling
How do you build resilience into systems? “We need to be system shapers and system stewards – seeking ways to create the system we want, not be passive victims of it” The pivot we need to make is from viewing… Continue reading
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How Can We Create Systems Where Knowledge Becomes Contagious?
Despite unprecedented access to data and technology the number one self stated problem in organisations is always and only ever one thing: communication. The system we need to rebuild must be founded on principles of collective intelligence and self organisation.… Continue reading
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Have we lost our ability to do big, ambitious things as communities?
The system has constrained the ability for local innovation by drawing resources , power and control to the centre. If you’re part of publicly focused services you are part of that same system Continue reading
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Our Obsession With League Tables, And The Performance Paradox
This is our classic paradox: the metrics and targets that are intended to drive improvement can create a powerful set of incentives that actually work against the very innovation and risk-taking we need to strive for. Continue reading
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How To (Re)Build An Innovation Lab
Bromford Lab is dead. But what comes next? And how can we build upon the lessons we learned? Continue reading
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Digital Transformation and Our Failure To Learn From Past Mistakes
The cyclical nature of public sector failure is a testament not to a lack of intelligence or goodwill, but to a deeply ingrained resistance to genuine learning. It’s a system designed for stability, not innovation. The very structures that make… Continue reading
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The Way Out of The ‘Performance Myth’
The Performance Myth reduces individuals to commodities or “performers,” whose value is contingent on meeting predefined metrics. This leads to a workplace culture where employees are constantly evaluated not for their creativity, integrity, or contributions to collective well-being, but for… Continue reading
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The Problem with a Narrow Focus on Efficiency
Being efficient is not half as effective as conventional management would like to think. Continue reading
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Sectors Reimagined as Products, and the Move to Agile Place
What if agile places could save the public sector? What if we stopped thinking of individual sectors and started thinking about of them as ‘products’ that require interoperability? An ‘agile place’ view demands a radical shift. It pushes us to… Continue reading
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Transforming Public Services with Agile Principles
Applied outside of tech agile can usher in a fundamental shift from rigid, top-down planning to a dynamic, iterative, and, crucially, person-focused approach. Think about our place-based working experiments. What we understood, fundamentally, is that the answers to local problems… Continue reading
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The Missing Ingredient For Community-Led Innovation Is Permission
The bigger the unit the more pessimistic we get about it. When faced with vast issues like global warming or national debt, we feel a deep lack of control and efficacy. Conversely, smaller units of change, like a local community,… Continue reading
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Can Institutions Decline Like Civilisations?
Many of our institutions are in decline. The average lifespan of a civilisation is 336 years, Big companies used to have a lifespan of 61 years, now it’s down to 18. If all civiisations fall. then surely so must all… Continue reading
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What I Got Wrong About Innovation and Design
A hospital stay during COVID-19 revealed a surprising truth to me: bureaucracy’s thaw unleashed frontline innovation. As staff bypassed rigid rules, care improved, highlighting the power of bottom-up change. This experience challenges traditional innovation models, advocating for organisational redesign and… Continue reading
Paul Taylor 