Simon Guilfoyle
Tweets by SimonJGuilfoyle-
Recent Posts
- 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
- What’s Your Poison?
Blog Stats
- 223,408 hits
Tag Archives: waste
Stick Child Tries to Buy Milk
Stick Child is a healthy little chappie and he loves a nice cold drink of milk at break time. (Do they still do those 1/3 pint bottles for 8p, with the really thin straws? Just wondered…) Anyway, Stick Child’s usual … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged flow, process improvement, purpose, Stick Child, systems thinking, variety, waste
3 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
My Trip to America – A Systems Thinker’s Diary
I’ve just got back from America, and because I don’t have the ability to switch off the systems thinking part of my brain, I kept noticing ‘systemsy’ stuff whilst I was there, so I thought I’d share a few observations … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged flow, gaming, lean, management, purpose, systems thinking, variation, waste
2 Comments
Silos
These imposing monolithic structures, silhouetted against the moody twilight sky, are silos. Actual silos. Not theoretical silos in a book about organisational structures or systems design, but vast, towering, dirty, functional, tangible silos, silently displacing thousands upon thousands of cubic metres of … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged division of labour, flow, handovers, management, silos, systems, systems thinking, variety, waste
6 Comments
Ministry of Silly Systems
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
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged demand, flow, purpose, systems thinking, targets, variety, waste
9 Comments
Epic Fail
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
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged assumptions, demand, deming, division of labour, failure demand, flow, management, systems, systems thinking, tax, variation, waste
5 Comments
Great Expectations
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
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged demand, division of labour, flow, handovers, management, process improvement, systems thinking, variety, waste
9 Comments
No Cheese, Please!
Someone recently asked me, “Why don’t you write blog posts about positive things?” I was surprised at first (and probably a bit defensive) as I think my posts are positive – after all, I don’t just go about kidney-punching management … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged decision making, demand, division of labour, management, organisational culture, purpose, systems thinking, teamwork, variation, waste
6 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
Water on the Brain
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
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged automation, demand, flow, front end, systems, systems thinking, variety, waste
2 Comments
InspGuilfoyle 