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Here’s What You’ve Missed!
- 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: targets
Reality has a liberal bias
This is a quote from an American comedian, taking the mickey out of imaginary Republicans complaining that reality itself is as biased as the liberal-elite media against Republican beliefs and actions. It is a joke about how people convinced they … Continue reading
Posted in command and control, public sector, statistics, systems thinking, targets
Tagged Chuck Finley, mental models, targets, troubled families
22 Comments
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
The 1 thing nobody has ever said about a scorecard (and the 7 things they often do)
What people often say about scorecards 1. This colour symbol is wrong, shouldn’t it be a green? 2. Why isn’t that an up arrow? 3. There’s a spelling mistake in the comments 4. The formatting is slightly off. Needs more … Continue reading
Posted in all wrong, command and control, measures, purpose, questions, systems thinking, targets, thinking
Tagged performance reports, scorecards, systems thinking
6 Comments
Only bullies, cowards or fools set targets
This is the story of a teacher in a UK school who was set a target of 75% exam pass rate. This summer the pass rate was 65%. If we ignore all the things we know about measures and targets … Continue reading
A manager’s guide to good and bad measures
How can you tell if you’ve been sold a pup? If some performance spod is fobbing you off with nonsense instead of good sound performance information? Just check what’s put in front of you against this 5 point guide to … Continue reading
Posted in measures, systems thinking, targets, vanguard method
Tagged command and control thinking, indicators, measures
6 Comments
Hitler gets the SATS results
See, even Hitler was driven to tears by irrational target based standard setting.
Posted in all wrong, command and control, systems thinking, targets
Tagged Ofsted, SATS, targets
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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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Why targets are good
Targets are good. They work. Comparing this quarters performance with last quarters, is good. It works Benchmarking performance against a group of other organisations, is good. That works too. Calm down! Let’s go back a bit…. Q: What’s the first … Continue reading
Posted in data, systems thinking, targets, thinking, vanguard method
Tagged Data, performance management, performance reports, Vanguard method
2 Comments
12 Years as a slave
This is from the book “12 Years as a slave” by Solomon Northup, describing how cotton picking was managed on the plantation. “An ordinary day’s work is two hundred pounds. A slave who is accustomed to picking, is punished, if … Continue reading
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
Kittens are nice
Here is a kitten in a cup. It is nice. Shall I tell you what isn’t nice though? Using performance indicators to “measure outcomes” in return for money. It is also called payment by results, it is used in a … Continue reading
Posted in command and control, public sector, targets
Tagged kittens are evil, payment by results
3 Comments
4 pie charts you won’t see in a performance report
I do performance reports for a living. Here are the most important 4 pie charts that I will never be able to put into a performance report.
Posted in all wrong, deming, systems thinking, targets
Tagged 95% system 5% individual, pi
23 Comments
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
Olympabollox
BREAKING NEWS! The Olympics has been rocked by a doping scandal! People have been turning themselves into big fat dopes by polluting their minds with toxins in an attempt to try and improve performance! No, not another athlete caught using … Continue reading
Targetitis
You have an invisible illness. It is 2010, you have been sitting in an Accident & Emergency waiting room for 3 hours and 50 minutes waiting to be seen. Of the people before you who has been seen, on average … Continue reading
