Good practice case studies are like Hollywood movie trailers…… they only show you the best bits of what happened (with some exceptions). Sorry if that’s upset anyone, I am trying to be helpful. There is a great deal that can be learnt from the things that ‘didn’t quite go to plan’ (failure in many cases). […]
Checklists don’t work* (*sometimes, particularly if you get implementation wrong)
This isn’t an anti-checklists post. It’s an illustration of why picking up an example of good practice in one location, and dropping down in another doesn’t always work. No matter how brilliantly conceived, beautifully constructed or obviously ‘good’ the original good practice might be. So, next time a politician or clever speaker at a conference […]
Homologation, Rule Changes and Forcing Innovation
What is Homologation? A quick multiple choice test; The process for making fruit smoothies, The measurement of tree trunks at a saw-mill, or Approval being granted by an official body. Congratulations if you chose Number 3. Homologation is indeed the process of an official body (Government, Court of Law, Academic Body, Professional Institution, Industry Body etc) […]
10 of My Development Needs and Cardiff NHS Hackday
I was going to call this post “Don’t worry about the slashed training budget…. Send your people to NHS Hackdays and get them trained for free…”. However that gives the wrong message and would send some Organisational Development Professionals into a bit of a ‘tail spin’. The idea doesn’t quite fit with conventional thinking. The […]
Corporate Reporting – What can we learn from Fast Food Vendors?
“A picture is worth a thousand words…, “ an idea that is universally recognised, frequently used in business, but not often seen where it might have most impact – Senior Executive/Board meetings. Descriptive text still dominates most senior level reports, often using ‘corpspeak’; a peculiar form of jargon developed by people like *The Head of […]
The Listening Service. Busting Jargon, Including People and Improving the Tweets
The Party Blower An effective Jargon Buster As used by Barod CIC I go to lots of conferences and seminars. The result of this, (apart from the addiction to buffet food) is that I now speak a different language – ‘Jargy Jargy’ or Jargon, “the specialist language for a specific activity or group of people” (I’ve […]
“Poor Historian”? How the Geriatrics Profanisaurus exposes the dark side of Jargon.
What do you get when you combine; Geriatric Medicine, Profanity and a Thesaurus? Obviously, it’s the bleedin excellent ‘Geriatrics Profanisaurus’, written by Professor David Oliver on the British Geriatrics Society blog. Well worth reading (including the comments). David is also a Visiting Fellow at the Kings Fund and has written some impressive material for them […]
Visual Management. Theory, Case Studies and the Reality of Sustaining Improvement
Maintaing progress and sustaining improvement (continuous or otherwise) can be difficult. Here’s a tale of how the reality dawned upon me while I was sitting in a hospital bed (a few years ago). A while back I was involved in training about continuous improvement methods. One of the main methods we looked at was visual management. […]
Changing Faces, Changing Audit, and what really motivates people.
In 160 posts over almost three years of blogging I’ve never explicitly mentioned where I work or what I do. It is partly deliberate. Saying you work for an audit organisation prompts interesting reactions. I was recently introduced at a conference using the 19th Century Sir Charles Lyell quote: “An auditor is a man who watches the […]
Hackdays. The antidote to a clogged up system?
You must have heard the quotes that get rattled out in public services to encourage different ways of thinking? Often misquoted, they get attributed to to Albert Einstein (to add some credibility) and are generally along the lines of: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them” “Insanity: doing […]
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