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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
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- 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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Tag Archives: command and control thinking
The Kung Fu Panda principle.
Imagine you want to buy a bar of chocolate from a supermarket. You are sitting at home, so you need to get in your car, you need to drive to the supermarket, you need to park the car, you need … Continue reading
How to have an organisational detox!
Ever wanted to empty your mind of organisational bumf? Start again with a fresh clear mind, untainted by this year’s key strategic priority aims? This seasons value statements cluttering your head up too much to think straight? Have an organisational detox! The … Continue reading
How to learn Kung Fu in 1 easy step
Q: How do you learn Kung Fu? A: Attend a 1 hour training session in Kung Fu. Hey presto…. April Fool! That won’t work, if you want to know Kung Fu you’d have to train for years. One hour will do … Continue reading
Posted in command and control, knowledge, learning, systems thinking
Tagged command and control thinking, communication, learning, training
3 Comments
Naughty…but nice
Say the phrase “Command and control management” out loud. Doesn’t sound nice does it? What do you think when you hear it? Things like… Call centre staff told to poo on their own time. Hospital patients dying to meet hospital targets. … Continue reading
What fresh hell is THIS?
No fresh hell sweetie. Just the latest incarnation of a stale and very familiar hell. Do you recognise this… yawning at yet another exactly-the-same organisational transformation? wiping sleep out of your eyes at yet another whizz-bang IT venture that’ll save lots … 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
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
One weird trick to outfox the Henry Ford gambit
I done got a letter from a reader! Here is a dramatic reconstruction…. Remember these two diagrams? THIS one, the usual, the boring old triangle? And then there is this one, the one thats not a triangle, the one that … Continue reading
The loneliest whale in the world.
Meet the loneliest whale in the world. She doesn’t speak the same language as other whales so they can’t hear her. This is the same as systemsy talking. Once your mental model changes from stupid ol’ command and control to … Continue reading
Your cheatsheet for why league tables are total balls
Public Sector bodies waste huge amounts of money on total balls. One of the most futile are the self-created league tables of performance indicators, showing where their organisation is on sorted lists against other similar organisations. Even though the government got rid … Continue reading
Curry by default
Yes, you heard, don’t act shocked.
7 ways to do the Vanguard Method all wrong
Read this first. It was very popular and there’s marbles in it. If you’re too lazy here’s a summary: I went to the executive leadership team, I talked to them about something that started with studying demand and eventually led to huge … Continue reading
The Highlander principle
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will … Continue reading
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
The one thing you never see on an improvement plan
You don’t have a performance management problem. You don’t have a staff engagement problem. You don’t have a data quality problem. You don’t have a budget problem. You don’t have a culture problem. You don’t have a risk management problem. You … Continue reading
Posted in leadership, systems thinking, thinking
Tagged command and control thinking, systems thinking
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Stay safe, stay stupid
THANKS ZOMBIE DEMING! Enough of systems thinking, let’s talk stupid. Stupid is normally easy to spot. It’s walking into doors, slipping over banana skins and the like. But what happens if “stupid” is so normal, that nobody notices it? What … Continue reading
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
9 reasons why command and control organisations despise thinking
“I don’t want that academic or theoretical stuff I want something practical” A huge number of people who work in offices are not paid to dig ditches or split logs, so if they are not paid for their brawn they … Continue reading
6 reasons why I will never be a team player
I am not and will never be a team player, here’s why. Which of these also apply to you? 1: You don’t work on your team Next week I am going to a team building event at work. It has … Continue reading
Saving the world through typing
As you read this lots of keen, dedicated young men and women are improving the world through typing. They think it will. If they didn’t, typing as a job would be silly wouldn’t it? The job of “typist” disappeared along … Continue reading
Posted in plans, systems thinking
Tagged all wrong, command and control thinking, Thinking
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Hitting old women
This photo shows a “careworker” slapping a confused old lady who suffers from Alzheimers. It is from a BBC Panorama documentary about abuse in an old people’s care home called Ash Court. The daughter of this old lady found unexplained … Continue reading
7 steps to Amnesia Inc.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I used to work for Amnesia Incorporated. I can’t remember exactly what business it was in, but no doubt it was dynamic, vital and important as thousands of people … Continue reading
2 minute hate
“I am a born leader. I lead by example, being quick to make decisions. It’s all about solutions, it’s not about problems” This is Jade Nash. You know her, she might sit opposite you. She might be your boss. Heaven … Continue reading
Posted in command and control, leadership, psychology
Tagged all wrong, command and control thinking
3 Comments
Stick around, you might learn something
Look at your desk. Go on. Now look at the photo. Do they look similar? If so, congratulations! You are LEAN! This photo tells the infamous story of how the DWP approached improving its service by putting tape on staff … Continue reading
Posted in command and control
Tagged all wrong, command and control thinking, lean thinking, prince2
2 Comments
A tawdry end
As you are no doubt aware, I had a gas leak. I complained about it, and there was a to-do over whether some boxes were ticked, or whether gas leaked out of a pipe. Both can’t be true, obviously. It … Continue reading
3 faces for Tuesday
These are the 3 faces you can expect to see today if you talk to anyone about S*****s T******g. If so, you might like to consider the helpful suggestions outlined below by the people at systemsthinkingforgirls “Don’t talk about it at all … Continue reading
Bicycle Shaped Object
This is not a bicycle. This is a BSO or “bicycle shaped object”. It looks like a bike, it’s shaped like a bike. But it is not a bike. It is something made to look like a bike, so someone … Continue reading
Five things to feed a hungry filing cabinet
There’s nothing sadder than an empty filing cabinet. Eliminate the hunger of YOUR filing cabinets by feeding them this nutritious diet of paper-based work substitutes. 1: An appraisal form. Typed up. This will lead to a very different approach to managing … Continue reading
How to succeed at work in 5 easy steps!
be visible; emphasize the aspects you’re good at; make those in power feel good about themselves; if you must point out a mistake by someone in power, blame the situation or others; shower those above with flattery. Cost: One soul, … Continue reading
Posted in all wrong, command and control, psychology, very short posts
Tagged command and control thinking
1 Comment
7 reasons you shouldn’t touch systems thinking
It’s not all cream cakes and beer in systems thinking. Here’s seven things you’ll have to put up with if you start getting curious and learning. You’ll still work in command-and-control land. Everything around you won’t have changed but you … Continue reading
I smell something rotten, and it’s not gas
I had a gas leak last night. I live in a house that is about 50 years old, and I was contacted about 18 months ago by our gas infrastructure owner to replace and update my gas meter. After many … Continue reading
Command and control makes me sick
And you. And everyone around you. That’s a SCIENTIFIC FACT.
Let’s re-write Seth!
From the immortal Seth. A whole post of his, I’m not sure if this is breaking the law of the internet, but here it is, re-written as it should be, from a systems thinking perspective. “Command & Control managers work … Continue reading
Posted in leadership, systems thinking
Tagged command and control thinking, sethgodin, systems thinking
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What not to do
First act. Find data to justify yourself. Move onto something else. Repeat. – Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
This is the most dangerous place in your organisation
“a desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world”-John Le Carre Trading opinions is not getting knowledge. No matter how many people nod and agree with you.
Ignore the bull
“Now’s not the time to muck around with this theory, we need facts”
thinkpurpose 