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- So long, and thanks for all the fish
- How soon is now?
- The Kung Fu Panda principle.
- 3 reasons why I hate pretty graphs
- How to make the world seem REEAAALLLY BOORRRIIIING
- The 2,500 year old lesson everybody ignores cos it’s too hard
- I am a police officer.
- When is a team meeting NOT a team meeting?
- Folk management
- Double Trouble
- Toads
- WANTED: systemsy stuff to cheer me up
- The secret management model that must not be named
- Why WIFFY’s are bad and to be squashed at birth
- First they came for the desks, and nobody said NUFFINK
- Vanity of vanities, all is vanity OR Why webstats don’t exist
- One more time… Why values are a pile of cobbler’s
- How i learned to skip with Toyota
- The man who mistook his wife for an actual change in performance
- There are only 6 graphs you’ll ever see on a performance report and they’re all rubbish. Here they are.
- If it’s too complicated to understand it’s probably total nonsense
- Can you count up to 8?
- I am totally positive
- I am totally negative
- Thor describes my purpose
- I openly mock Myers Briggs, but an INTP would do
- The Law Of The Instrument
- Reality has a liberal bias
- Why killing Sweat Angels is the most valuable work I do all day
- Cloud cuckoo-land
- Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is a pony
- One weird trick to design your organisation, in one easy step! (Management consultants will HATE you!)
- The Varieties of Human Work
- There really is only one test!
- The Curious Case Of The Chart That Didn’t Bark In The Night
- Looking good, Billy Ray!
- Computers are weird
- We’re number 2! We’re number 2! Yay us! Now who’s US exactly?
- I am an average employee
- How to be hopelessly untrendy
- Why you SHOULDN’T try to improve performance measures!
- The sun is in Uranus
- Lean, ISO and 6 Sigma all walk into a bar. Hilarity ensues.
- Three Reasons Why National Customer Service Week Is Rubbish! Again!
- What’s the purpose of a-SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!
- How to have an organisational detox!
- Your job is not what you think it is
- This mug cost £224,000,000
- Wanted: idle, indifferent and irresponsible staff for absurd work.
- You are no Daniel Kahneman, sir, and I would have you unhand me before I call the gendarmie
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Category Archives: systemz comix
How to spoil someone for work (for ever more)
There were 7 reasons why you shouldn’t touch systems thinking, and here’s an 8th… 8: You might get a sniff of systemsy heaven, but then end up working in command and control hell. Systems thinking makes no promises about being … Continue reading
Posted in systems thinking, systemz comix, targets
Tagged call centre, sales, systems thinking, Vanguard method
7 Comments
Write your own blog post!
Posted in systems thinking, systemz comix, vanguard method
Tagged curiosity, systems thinking, Vanguard method
7 Comments
The Chris Pratt dance-off against Organisational Transformation programmes everywhere!
*****The gifs take a while to load, they’re not just photos but actually move. Worth the wait. **** Possibly the funkiest take down of Organisational Transformation programmes you’ll see this week…. Like all good systems thinkers everywhere Chris Pratt, or … Continue reading
I’m not touching that, it’ll do me back in!
This settee is crucial to this post , so take a good look at it. Harder. Go on, put your nose right up to it. This nasty looking thing used to be in my living room, there’s paint on it … Continue reading
Merry Triangle! Again
Remember when I used to hate triangles? Still do. So here’s my most hate filled post about them from 2 years ago, to advertise ThinkPurpose’s Christmas break. Ho ho ho, etc
Posted in command and control, systems thinking, systemz comix
Tagged systemz comix, triangle
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How to run a call centre
The following story was provided by a fellow onion working somewhere in the world. I’ve changed the details to provide anonymity. …there was a company that wanted to find out how to sell more to its customers. It bought a voice recognition … Continue reading
Posted in RuinedByBestEfforts, systemz comix, targets, tools
Tagged Call centres, IT, systems thinking, targets
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Curry by default
Yes, you heard, don’t act shocked.
Mordecai and Rigby clear up a few common misconceptions
Performance Management doesn’t manage performance. Distance from the work doesn’t provide senior leaders with a strategic view. Distance provides distance. Signing off reports does not ensure quality. It ensures they are slightly worse. Not doing the right thing because “we’ve … Continue reading
Do you like my piece of paper?
“Say what you see” is the latest tagline of this blog. What I see every day is people creating pieces of paper to take into a room for people to look at and decide if they like that piece of … Continue reading
How do you make it hard to find a job?
It is hard enough to find a job if you need one, but if you don’t work, the system that is supposed to support you find a job certainly doesn’t work too. It is broken at the most crucial part … Continue reading
Posted in clarity of purpose, public sector, purpose, systems thinking, systemz comix
Tagged job interviews, purpose
7 Comments
How do YOU waste time at work?
1: Performance manage at the strategic level What is said: “We performance manage at a higher level, conversations happen between senior leaders where we challenge delivery of outcomes, and identify where performance is slipping” What actually happens: Managers gossip about … Continue reading
What happens when targets die?
Tell someone that targets don’t work, and it’s like telling them someone had just died. In a way it has, a small bit of their mind has ceased to be, the bit that made sense of work and how it … Continue reading
Posted in command and control, learning, systems thinking, systemz comix, targets
9 Comments
The strategic deployment of ignorance
True story!
Posted in command and control, knowledge, leadership, plans, strategic, systemz comix
Tagged gemba, systems thinking
1 Comment
The Living Dead
The key sentence is the very first one, “Unless in a job they feel genuinely passionate about“. That first sentence sets the scene, this is how humans behave in that scene. Create a different scene, where people CAN feel passionate, … Continue reading
Posted in command and control, psychology, systems thinking, systemz comix
Tagged living dead
3 Comments
3 ways you are fooled by randomness
Posted in data, statistics, systems thinking, systemz comix, very short posts
Tagged nassim taleb
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Here’s one I didn’t prepare earlier.
[EDIT] Big screens only for this one it appears, sadly the image doesn’t display properly on my iPhone screen so may not on yours either. [EDIT EDIT] Exciting news! If you’re looking at this on an iPhone or other inferior … Continue reading
Posted in change, experiment, learning, public sector, systems thinking, systemz comix
Tagged change
2 Comments
Why the world isn’t a triangle (and what happens when we act like it is)
I started talking about systems thinking at work, and elicited interest. This is of course good, but I was asked to write something up on different management models. So I decided to do a cartoon instead. This is it, attached. … Continue reading
How would you like to die?
Quietly in a bed? Or with a pitchfork through your head? Data shows that there may not be much difference in the pain and anguish in either of these situations. The first of these infographics below is about the probable details of your … Continue reading
Posted in communication, information, statistics, systemz comix
Tagged death, Zombie Deming
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3 mindblowing assumptions of performance staff
I work right at the empty heart of command and control in corporate performance monitoring. Here you will find the usual nonsense about targets and benchmarking and that, but there’s also some others weirder assumptions, ones that people don’t usually … Continue reading
Posted in all wrong, command and control, psychology, public sector, systemz comix
Tagged local authority
2 Comments
brandalism
As a local government bureaucrat, I obviously do not condone vandalism in any form. But as Banksy points out, there are many types of vandalism, not all done with a spray-can.
A dangerous revolutionary who must be stopped!
Purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with Command and Control. People will … Continue reading
We build ships
Posted in clarity of purpose, communication, purpose, systemz comix
Tagged Antoine de Saint-Exupery, mission statement
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Happy Halloween
Celebrate this Halloween the systems thinking way! Put this up in your office to warn your managers that they’d best wise up or face the consequences. Please note: ThinkPurpose does not accept any responsibility. In general, like. But also for any … Continue reading
Posted in deming, systemz comix, Uncategorized
Tagged Very short posts, Zombie Deming
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Zombie Deming teaches about learning
There’s a difference between learning and knowledge. Somewhere on the internet, there are the silly words, “Knowledge is the banquet spread out on the table. Learning is how much of the banquet you partake of.” As if it’s about stuffing … Continue reading
Zombie Deming advises on the role of leaders
Q: What’s the art of management? A: Delegation! Wrong. It is the job of leaders to act on the system. What it isn’t is delegating. And yet, that’s what they say is “the art of management“. Bollocks is it. But … Continue reading
Posted in command and control, leadership, systems thinking, systemz comix
Tagged Zombie Deming
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Zombie Deming advises on the use of targets
Targets! Robust! Stretch! Aspirational! Bollocks. When the Audit Commission was around targets were everywhere. Partly due to the existence of a national framework of indicators that Local Authorities and lots of other public sector bodies had to report against. With … Continue reading
Zombie Deming eats his own arse in frustration at it all
Oh dear. With Zombie Deming on the hunt “sharing good practice” is as dangerous to the integrity of your skull as rubbing raw liver on your head and sticking it in a lions cage. Can we guess the thinking behind … Continue reading
Posted in deming, inspection, systems thinking, systemz comix, Uncategorized
Tagged benchmarking, Zombie Deming
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Zombie Deming takes issue with a poster
Oh dear! Somebody should have warned him! So, what would cause a perfectly sane manager to stick “WORK HARDER” posters up and not expect to be lynched? Command and control thinking as at it’s heart control through commands. The purpose … Continue reading
Posted in customer, deming, systemz comix, Uncategorized
Tagged customer, deming, systemz comix
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Merry Triangle
I hate triangles. I’ve had countless implausible ones drawn for me earnestly by people trying to demonstrate some linkage or another between things. I am sorely tempted next time it happens to ask “Why equilateral? Are you sure it’s not … Continue reading
Posted in all wrong, command and control, plausible but untrue, systemz comix
Tagged Strategic Xmas trees
3 Comments
see-saw
Benchmarking: I know with complete certainty it’s a pile of poo, but I’ve never actually seen any done. I’m not sure it ever actually happens. Does it exist? Is it like coaches of tourists going to Loch Ness to see … Continue reading
Posted in all wrong, command and control, systems thinking, systemz comix, Uncategorized
Tagged benchmarking, systemz comix
4 Comments
