Foul-up factors (FUF’s) are the gremlins that bedevil every complex system. A simple way to explore FUFs is to draw a schematic model of the key business processes. (The principle can be used at every level from organisational and functional to project management or individual service tasks.) In many healthcare organisations, the system has three (more…)
The questionnaire How Effective Are your Team Meetings? provides a useful resource for assessing how effective (or not) your team meetings really are. Score each statement from 5 (this describes our meetings accurately) to 1 (they are not like this at all). The results within a team may show significant differences. Sharing these with the team (more…)
One of the biggest criticisms of agile methodology is that it is very difficult to transfer from a project team environment to teams engaged in “business as usual” (BAU). In the latter, there is no definable end to the process. Instead of experimenting and making continuous improvements, in pursuit of frequently changing priorities, stable team (more…)
An Experiment Register is a document that allows an individual or team to take a planned approach to continuous change. The register consists of the following seven elements: The number of experiments at one time depends on capacity to attend to them. When addressing the same issue or opportunity with different experiments, you may choose (more…)
Innovation Risk Define the problem Why is this an issue? What are the benefits of tackling it? What are the benefits of not tackling it? Who are the stakeholders? How would each stakeholder group define the problem? Why do we need to deal with this now? Define the boundaries Is this part of a larger (more…)
Here are some cases of team situations. The table below illustrates how an outsider might see the teams’ issues from linear, systems or complex, adaptive systems perspectives. The tired team “If I’m honest”, says the team leader Flavian, “I’d say that pretty much the whole team demonstrates the Peter Principle. They have been promoted to (more…)
The principles of retro-engineered learning are simple. The facilitator or team coach helps the old hand explain the history of the team, in terms of its original and evolving purpose, the key decisions and choices that had to be made, and the thinking behind those decisions and choices. And so on until the present day. (more…)
Thinking, Fast and Slow is a book written by Daniel Kahneman which concerns a few major questions: how do we make decisions? And in what ways do we make decisions poorly? The book covers three areas of Daniel Kahneman’s research: cognitive biases, prospect theory, and happiness. Kahneman defines two systems of the mind. System 1: (more…)
Courage is something that everybody wants – an attribute of good character that makes us worthy of respect. From the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz who finds the courage to face the witch, to David battling Goliath, to Star Wars or Harry Potter, we are raised on a diet of heroic and inspirational (more…)
The concept of stretch-exploit-coast (for North Americans, Coast = Freewheel) is a simple but highly effective way of assessing what someone’s current job gives them. When we start a new role, we are usually in high “positive stretch” mode – there is a lot to learn, and we relish the excitement and challenge. (“Negative stretch” (more…)