Mork and POSIWID

January 24, 2025 giantknave Brain Farts Aliens, Duck Test, Gemba, Mork, Patrick Hoverstadt, POSIWID, Purpose, Stafford Beer, W Edwards Deming

A short ‘Friday post’:

A lot is talked, and written, about ‘Purpose’¹.

If a group of humans decide to organise and spend time and resources to achieve [something], then – if they genuinely want this – they ought to define the ‘what’ and ‘why’ so that the network of actions and interactions have a chance of producing the desired emergent properties. A clear purpose (ref. intent).

“Without an aim, there is no system…the aim must be clear to everyone in the system.” [Deming]

However, just because some powerful stakeholder(s) have set out and communicated a purpose statement, this doesn’t make it so (despite the posters on the wall).

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On ‘engagement’ as a useful relational measure

January 17, 2025February 28, 2025 giantknave Brain Farts Carl Rogers, Engagement, Goodhart's Law, Measurement, Relationships, social groups, Stephen Rollnick, William R. Miller

I recently finalised a ‘measurement of performance’ guide and, within this, I explain various archetypes of services, and the types of measures that best fit each.

I’m particularly interested in relational services – the big hairy ‘social system’ ones that (should) really matter for the most vulnerable and ‘in need of help’ humans.

Most societies have decided to organise (i.e. intervene) because of a desire (or perhaps obligation) to help people. As such, knowing whether that ‘outside help’* is valuable to those in need is rather important…and it really won’t be about ‘how many/how much we did’ of something, or ‘how fast we did it’ (Ref. Our work this Year)

It will be about whether:

it is wanted/ accepted/ engaged with;
it assists, moving a person forward to a better place – as defined by them; and
any progress is sustained and transformative

…noting that achieving and sustaining 1. above is very probably a pre-requisite for any advances in the space of 2. and 3.

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Thoughts on: (True) Case Management vs. Tiered Service Models

January 9, 2025February 19, 2025 giantknave Brain Farts Buurtzorg, Case Management, Experiential Learning, Experiment, Flow Channel, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Pull for Support, Tiered Service Model

I’ve worked with several service organisations that have adopted (what are referred to as) Tiered service models for their service design…and I’ve written about some of the problematic implications.

Some specific recent posts to mention in this regard are:

You might think that I have a problem with the idea of ‘tiered services’…and you’d be right (at least as they are conventionally enacted).

You might then ask “okay, but what instead?”

Good question! This (longer) post is some opening thoughts on that.

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What’s in a word? Triage…

January 6, 2025July 21, 2025 giantknave Brain Farts Prioritisation, service design, Triage

‘Triage’ is a word that I’ve heard used a lot within large human-designed social systems.

But where does this word come from, and is its (newer) ‘service system’ usage reasonable…or does it hide/confuse/obfuscate?

Starting with the dictionary:

“Triage: the process of quickly examining sick or injured people, for example after an accident or a battle, so that those who are in the most serious condition can be treated first.” (Collins Dictionary)

A few things to note:

The 18^th century root of the word is the French ‘trier’, which means to ‘sort/ separate out’¹;
Its original English language usage (some sources note 1918) was with reference to dealing with mass casualties on the battlefield, with the aim of maximising the number of survivors;
It has the same meaning in respect of mass victims of a major disaster (e.g. an earthquake, a major weather event, …);
Whilst a battle and a major disaster are ‘events’, this definition of triage also applies in the ‘day to day’ running of hospital emergency departments.

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