System Design
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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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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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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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Moving from ‘Decided Upon’ to ‘Decided With’
I’ve recently finished Dan Davies’ book The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions. In it, he describes how systems have evolved to create “accountability sinks”: situations in which a human system delegates decision-making to a rule book rather… Continue reading
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Combatting The Cobra Effect With Bottom-Up Planning
The Cobra Effect refers to a situation where an attempted solution to a problem actually makes the problem worse, as a result of unintended consequences. The term comes from a story during the British colonial rule of India. Concerned about… Continue reading
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The Growing Bureaucratisation Of Life
Many organisations , without realising it , act as inhibitors of creativity. Rules and protocols are put in place – often for very good reasons – that preserve the status quo. Over time, organisations develop a set of social norms – ‘the way we… Continue reading
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Fix The System Problem, Not The People Problem
The phrase ‘shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic’ is believed to have been first used in 1969. It featured in a Time Magazine article that quoted a priest decrying petty internal changes at a time when the Catholic church should… Continue reading
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Designing For Connection Rather Than Transaction
Health is not made in health systems, it’s made in homes, in communities, in workplaces. So unless we can build horizontal bonds between communities and the kind of expertise and resource in health systems, we can’t really make change. Hilary… Continue reading
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We Should All Delete More Work
At my organisation, during a cyber incident which meant no access to any computer system for several weeks, some teams reported becoming more effective not less. Many other people noticed this at the beginning of the 2020 lockdowns. Deprived of… Continue reading
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Efficiency Isn’t Always Effective
Being efficient is not half as effective as conventional management would like to think. Working across health, the criminal justice system, mental health, housing, social care, or education requires us to take a whole person view of someone. It requires… Continue reading
Paul Taylor 