Tag Archives: performance

The Performance Swear Box

Posted on May 25, 2013 by

If you’re ever talking about performance and you hear any of these phrases coming out of your mouth… “…compared to this time last year / last month / last week / the average / the target / the other department, team or … Continue reading →

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Ant Death Circle

Posted on May 21, 2013 by

On the train to work this morning, a friend told me about a fascinating phenomenon known as the ’Ant Death Circle’ (also called the ‘Ant Death Spiral’ or ‘Ant Mill’). What happens is that ants sometimes lose the pheromone track laid down for … Continue reading →

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(Not So) Bad Performance Measurement On Tour (#3)

Posted on October 31, 2012 by

‘Data have no meaning apart from their context’. – Donald Wheeler Cast your mind back to Episode One of this series. No beer, no food, no chillies; just trains. The examples provided in that blog post highlighted the dire (but … 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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Bad Performance Measurement on Tour (#2)

Posted on October 20, 2012 by

Just one day after Episode One of this tragedy series, one of my faithful readers told me about a target so ridiculous that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. During a hospital training session, those attending were … Continue reading →

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How To Lose Weight With Systems Thinking

Posted on September 30, 2012 by

One of the key tenets of systems thinking is understanding variation. Deming said: “Life is variation. Variation there will always be, between people, in output, in service, in product”. This applies to weight loss as much as everything else. People … 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 →

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The Perfect Target

Posted on July 5, 2011 by

Okay, so those of you who have read my blogs will be familiar with my views on numerical targets in policing – in short I argue that they should all be abolished, without exception. This is because they generate perverse … Continue reading →

Posted in Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Stay Calm And Don’t Knee-Jerk.

Posted on June 4, 2011 by

At school my least favourite subject was maths. I could never quite understand the point of learning how to calculate the volume of a traffic cone or surface area of a football. Fast forward a few years to my early … Continue reading →

Posted in Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 13 Comments