Tag Archives: flow

Ministry of Silly Systems

Posted on April 10, 2013 by

Recently, I had cause to write to a Government department to ask a question. I knew my query was in good hands as soon as I received an automated reply advising me of their service level agreement for replying to … Continue reading →

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Get Back! Stay Back!

Posted on January 20, 2013 by

This post is little more than the illegitimate mutant offspring of two of my other posts – Great Expectations and Epic Fail. Nevertheless, I find it cathartic to grumble about the systems-orientated screw-ups that continually aggravate me. Today’s musings surround … Continue reading →

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Pull The Other One

Posted on January 13, 2013 by

After a couple of forays into the worlds of wildlife and motorway driving, I return briefly to the subject of food and drink, largely because once you have been afflicted with seeing everyday situations from a systems perspective, the pub … Continue reading →

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Life in the Fast Lane

Posted on December 29, 2012 by

According to St Etienne, life is ‘like a motorway’. I’m not too sure about that, but I do know that a motorway is definitely like a system… (*ignores groans from readership*) During my travels on some of the nation’s motorways … Continue reading →

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Epic Fail

Posted on December 19, 2012 by

Yesterday, I saw this headline in a newspaper: “£136million spent by customers waiting to get through to HM Revenue and Customs”. The article bemoaned the amount of time that HMRC customers were left on hold (if they got through at … Continue reading →

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Great Expectations

Posted on December 7, 2012 by

Recently I had a minor prang in my beloved car. (I won’t go into detail for legal reasons, but I was neither texting, daydreaming about systems, nor changing dodgy 80s CDs in the CD player at the time it happened). … Continue reading →

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Would You Like Sub-Optimization With That?

Posted on October 29, 2012 by

Maybe this is ill-timed, not being long after my ‘weight loss’ blog post, but here’s another story from the land of “Is that large?” In my defence, I was on a long journey and was so hungry when I stopped … Continue reading →

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Please Take A Ticket

Posted on August 16, 2012 by

Far from the frustrated rantings of my last blog post, my latest musings are more about genuine puzzlement over why some managers seem intent on making extremely straightforward processes unnecessarily complicated. I was at the Outpatient’s department of my local hospital today for … Continue reading →

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Water on the Brain

Posted on July 30, 2012 by

Here is a picture of a human brain. In fact it’s mine. I’ve been desperate to find an excuse to put it in a blog post ever since I obtained it and put pretty colours all over it. (Turner prize, … Continue reading →

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Check It Out

Posted on July 22, 2012 by

I never plan to write blog posts – ideas just tend to pop into my head when doing random stuff. Today was one of those days. What follows isn’t particularly exciting, shocking or controversial, and no doubt I will be … Continue reading →

Posted in Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments