Multidisciplinary exploration of the art and the science of health. Don't engineer the problems … nurture the complexity!
Oliver Wendell Holmes (OWH) was a Supreme Court Justice who once said something so profound, that few people at the time, including himself, really understood the depth of the sentiment. There are a few slightly different versions, quoted in various places, but I think this one best captures the sentiment. He also said a few... Continue Reading →
Right! Normal service is resumed as I charge out of my curmudgeonly corner wielding my philosophical axe. What's for the chop this time: all the soft-arsed fluffy misappropriation of that bloody word Compassion. It's all over the place, used as the apologists suffix of choice tagged onto 'organisational compassion' or 'ecological compassion'. It's used as... Continue Reading →
Believe it or not I've halved the size of this blog already - the third installment of The Story is the Measure. I've suggested that this is true for any complex systems, particularly those involving people, so I first told a Story about people and then explained what happens when organisations try to Measure stuff.... Continue Reading →
I’m part way through explaining why, in complex systems, the story is the measure. I first told a story to set the concept into context and introduced a metaphor to stimulate some thinking about what could be learned from it. The Heisenberg Hug was my metaphor for the reality of measurement in most organisations. No... Continue Reading →
Still in reflective mood, a pattern seems to be emerging within my writing therapy. You'll have to take my word for it, as I've only shared a very small proportion of my recent ramblings. I typically employ a free writing technique to stimulate the prescience necessary to rant meaningfully about something crap - like the... Continue Reading →
I've posted and tweeted this stuff before in little fragments, so please excuse a touch of deja vu. This is the first time that all this blather has ended up in the same place, at the same time. For my Healthcare interpretation of the Organisational Goldilocks Zone phenomena, I've got to go back a fair... Continue Reading →
I'm in a reflective mood. It's all part of my therapy, to help reaffirm to myself that I still have a worthwhile contribution to make in the world. I've written a few factual accounts of what got me here, but they are not for posting, just yet. What I am posting is a couple of... Continue Reading →
I love this cartoon! It so clearly articulates what I consider to be one of the most virulent barriers to transforming organisations. This disease seems to have taken hold in many industries, but disconcertingly over the years, I've spotted some of the symptoms glistening across the sweaty brow of Healthcare. Having invented the concept of... Continue Reading →
For many years the advocated strategy for improvement across Healthcare has been based on tools created in the early part of the twentieth century. Originally aimed at reducing defects in manufacturing, these tools typically advocate the use of simplistic recipes like Plan Do Study Act, dressed up in various acronyms. I'm not against acronyms and... Continue Reading →
For more years than I care to mention, I've been embroiled in a long term programme of work exploring flows in healthcare. In simple terms, how the work and the patients move around the system. For the past two years it's gone onto the back burner. Actually the instruction from the then Leadershipper was to... Continue Reading →
