“We need to move faster!”

December 19, 2024December 20, 2024 giantknave Brain Farts Change, curiosity, Measures, Patrick Hoverstadt, Principles, Purpose, structures, system conditions

I regularly hear these title words around me – or words to that effect – and, depending on my mood, this makes me smile…or groan.

They are the recurring ‘message’ sung out from many senior figures in organisations and then ‘cascaded down’ …and then informally kicked ‘around and around’.

And my main reflection on hearing it?

“As if we don’t want to!!!!”

A little parable springs to mind¹ which I’ll set out as follows: Continue reading →

An obsession with measurement

December 13, 2024August 14, 2025 giantknave Brain Farts Disease, Measurement, Peter Drucker, V.F.Ridgway, W Edwards Deming

I recently wrote a measurement guide and a hugely important (and definitely too short) section within is titled ‘Beware the allure of measurement’.

Unfortunately, our working worlds seem to be obsessed with measurement, to the detriment of getting on with doing obvious things.

So I was very happy to read a LinkedIn post by a chap called Nuno Reis which really ‘laid into’ this measurement point.

Nuno starts by telling us that we’ve been lied to! And not only lied to…but sold the exact opposite of the truth.

Continue reading →

Everyone’s creating Playbooks!

December 11, 2024December 19, 2024 giantknave Brain Farts Dee Hock, John Seddon, Peter Scholtes, Principles, Purpose, Value

I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of people around me talking about ‘playbooks’…and this makes me uncomfortable.

This post is me thinking about why this might be.

What is a playbook?

Looking up the definition (Dictionary.com) we get three uses:

The original use (way back in the Elizabethan 1500s) is “the script of a play, used by the actors as an acting text”.

Then we get the sporting usage (ref. American football from 1940s): “a notebook containing descriptions of all the plays and strategies used by a team, often accompanied by diagrams, issued to players for them to study and memorise…”

And finally, we get the more general sense of it being a stock of usual tactics or methods – to solve a particular problem in a particular way.

What we can see from each of these three uses is the fundamental meaning that it is about something being defined up-front (usually by some director or coach), rote-learned¹ (by the actors or players), and then ‘delivered’ (regurgitated?) on instruction.

I can almost picture the Director on set shouting “aaand…action!!” Continue reading →