Simon Guilfoyle
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Recent Posts
- Stick Child’s Greatest Hits
- Where Are The Stick People?
- The Professionals
- Chain Reaction
- Freeze Frame
- Short Circuit
- Maths Class
- Detox
- Comfort Blanket
- The Wrong Conversation
- Avoidable Harm
- A Tale of Two Kings
- Stick Child and The Fraggles
- Top of the Table
- It’s Criminal
- Find The Treasure
- The Real Thing
- Stick Child’s Kitchen Nightmares
- Method in the Madness?
- Leadership is Not Enough
- A Better Way
- Nonsense
- Face the Facts
- Three Different Things
- DO NOT USE!
- Why Binary Comparisons are Really Silly
- Weak Excuses for Using Binary Comparisons
- Get Help Now!
- Incontrovertible Evidence
- The Weather Man
- Stick Child’s Guessing Game
- Straight Lines
- Stick Child Tries to Buy Milk
- Stick Child’s Guide to Systems Thinking
- Stick Child’s School Project
- Stick Child and the Flat Tyre
- Understanding Targets (For the Under 10s)
- Why ‘Year-To-Date’ is Rubbish
- The Tunnel
- The Railway Children
- Angry Driver
- Take The Targets Test!
- How To Win Any Argument
- My Trip to America – A Systems Thinker’s Diary
- Right Measures, Measured Right
- ‘Tis Not The Season…
- Silos
- The People vs The System
- The Six Greatest Myths of All Time
- How To Spoil A Perfectly Good Car
Blog Stats
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Tag Archives: nhs
The Wrong Conversation
Stick Child has been getting increasingly irritated by the slack methods some adults use to present information about really important stuff, such as how long it takes for patients to be seen in Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments. Many a … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged nhs, performance management, police, Stick Child, systems thinking, targets
4 Comments
Avoidable Harm
I recently had a conversation on Twitter about a national campaign called ‘Sign up to Safety’, which aims to reduce avoidable harm in the NHS. Now, avoidable harm is clearly something worth tackling. The sticking point for me was that … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged command and control, management, nhs, performance management, Stick Child, targets
9 Comments
Stick Child’s Guide to Systems Thinking
“What is systems thinking?” This is a question I’ve heard quite a lot recently. So, with the assistance of our little friend Stick Child (yes he’s back by popular demand!) let’s take a look at the subject in very straightforward … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged control charts, management, measures, nhs, police, purpose, Stick Child, systems thinking, targets, variation, waste
3 Comments
Dial ‘F’ For Failure
The NHS recently launched its non-emergency 111 number. Staffed by ‘a team of fully trained advisers’, the scheme’s aim is to quickly and accurately identify the most appropriate medical response to the caller’s needs. What’s important to note is that … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged blame, demand, division of labour, management, nhs, risk aversion, systems thinking, variety
5 Comments
One Thing Leads To Another
Being as I know you love my artwork, I thought I’d treat you to this pictorial representation of a particularly nasty little cycle that is behind a lot of serious organisational failures. Look at the sort of stuff that starts … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged blame, command and control, cover your back, criticism, management, nhs, performance management, short blog post, systems thinking, targets
12 Comments
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
“The system must be held to account!” How often do you hear that in the wake of the latest scandal? Not that often. Usually, it’s “People must be held to account! / Who is responsible? / This must never happen … Continue reading
Pull The Other One
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
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged demand, efficiency gains, flow, nhs, police, pull, purpose, systems, systems thinking, variety
12 Comments
Bad Performance Measurement on Tour (#2)
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
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged deming, nhs, performance, performance management, police, systems, systems thinking, targets, variation
7 Comments
Please Take A Ticket
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
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged flow, nhs, process improvement, queuing, standardization, systems thinking, variety, waste
12 Comments
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