It’s Down By There… I had two experiences of Customer Services this week. One was a terrible grind, the other left me feeling joyful. The terrible grind is what you might expect when trying to cancel a conscription* with a massive global company. You don’t actually get to speak to anyone human. It’s just a […]
Ordinary Clay, Not Gold and Silver #Cynefin21
Clai cyffredin nid aur ac arian. Being ordinary doesn’t feel like much of a goal does it. It’s certainly not aspirational in the sense of the ‘happy clappy’ vision statements you see in lots of corporate documents. But ordinary and mundane are essential. This is the stuff of everyday life, the fabric of society, the […]
Going Blind on a Spacewalk. Can Simulation Training Help?
Imagine you’ve made it to the International Space Station (ISS), left the ship on your spacewalk, then you go blind. What do you do? This is a guest post from my friend Sam Williams (@SamW112358 on Twitter). It’s Sam’s first post and is a prelude to him launching his own blog. Hopefully you enjoy it, […]
Is anyone deploying ‘Innovation and Learning’ people alongside COVID-19 Response Teams?
This is a genuine question. I only ask because there’s something from Dave Snowden rattling around my head that seems particularly relevant at the moment. “In a crisis, you should always deploy an innovation team alongside the business recovery teams…to capture the novel practice” The point of this statement (for me) is that during a […]
COVID-19. Will Lady Macbeth style Hand-Washing at Sports Stadiums become the long term ‘norm’?
Now wash your hands, please. Forming an orderly queue at the rugby/football stadium toilets to wash your hands has become quite a thing. Well, according to Twitter, where it’s being mentioned a fair bit at the moment. From a personal viewpoint I’ve attended rugby based ‘mass gatherings’ at stadiums for many years, and I can […]
Trojan Mice in 900 Seconds
Be careful what you wish for… After blathering on about Trojan Mice for ages people have actually paid attention. Thank you Paul Taylor for the mentions in this post ‘The Complex Problem with Big Change Programmes’ and ‘People Aren’t Sick of Change, They are Sick of Change Programmes’. There’s an important point in Paul’s posts. […]
Campbell’s Law and why Outcome Measurement is a Dead Cobra.
Target setting and ‘outcome measurement’ are part of a vast industry of checking and ‘holding to account’ but basically it doesn’t work, and probably causes more problems than if you didn’t bother in the first place. That’s a bit controversial…, particularly if you are in the game of; measurement, checking and ‘holding to account’. Let […]
Project Learning Reviews are like a Cheese Fondue…
…basically you throw everything into a pot and mix it all together into a smooth consistency. Then you stick a piece of bread on a fork, pop it into the mixture, and see what comes out. That’s your project learning, driven by a thinking process called retrospective coherence. The Origins of Fondue and Project Reviews. […]
IMAGINE – everyone working towards a common aim, the benefit of Future Generations. #ChurchillFellowship Post12
This is a post for anyone interested in how; people, the place where they live, what happens there, private enterprise, public services and government, all co-exist in a way that is focussed on making sure future generations have something left for them to continue in that place. So, I’d like you to take a deep […]
Ikastola. Do Cooperative Schools Create a Cooperative Society? #ChurchillFellowship Post 7.
I should more beware of seeking simple answers to complex problems. One of my KLOE’s (Key Lines of Enquiry – yes, I confess to an audit background) on my trip to the Basque Country was to get a sense of: ‘how you develop a society where there is a widespread understanding of cooperatives, and the […]
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