The social technology of (performance) measurement

Posted on 4 June 2011 by Helen Wilding

The other day I was in a relatively informal meeting with 4 others when I found myself in a rant about ‘measuring’ – outcome indicators; performance measures; targets – whatever you want to call them, in essence they are all attempting to describing something in numerical terms.

The trigger for my rant was someone saying the recent corporate line – that we needed to agree on a small number of measures that would be used as Outcome Indicators (means of quantifying the achievement of an outcome) for our ‘priority’ outcomes – in fact we are to agree on precisely 3 measures for each priority outcome.

My rant started with the words “But why” and my argument fell into two broad areas. Continue reading →

The launch

Posted on 1 June 2011 by Helen Wilding

Yesterday I had such fun.

I was invited to be part of the Open University’s Systems Groups launch of the four text books accompanying the Postgraduate Programme in Systems Thinking in Practice. The invitation came about a month ago when Ray Ison contacted me. It seemed like a great excuse to meet everyone so I said ‘yes’. Continue reading →

Prioritisation

Posted on 5 May 2011 by Helen Wilding

This is a bit of a stream of consciousness and partial connections…..

The other week I was in a meeting when someone presented a paper which included, among other things, the thorny issue of how we go about ‘prioritisation’ at a strategic level. For some reason the word niggled me and I had a sharp intake of breadth – the Chair noticed it and invited me to speak. Now I know I could have stayed quiet, but I didn’t… instead I tried to articulate my concern. Continue reading →

Lean and Vanguard

Posted on 3 May 2011 by Helen Wilding

It seems that Lean and Vanguard can evoke extreme reactions from some systems practitioners, whilst others seem much more accepting. So far they are the only things I have come across that seem to create controversy in the systems world.

I have to confess to feeling a little niggled when Lean and/or Vanguard are conflated with systems thinking amongst those who are not ‘in the know’. But, what I have realised is, I don’t really know enough about either of those approaches to use others’ interest in them as a way of helping them enter the ‘real world’ of systems thinking and practice. Continue reading →

Understanding leadership

Posted on 24 April 2011 by Helen Wilding

The other day I was doing a trawl through Springer’s upcoming publication lists – with hindsight I have no idea why I was and what I was hoping I would find, but a really interesting sentence caught my eye. I want to make sure I put that sentence somewhere and do not lose track of it. Continue reading →

Junction

Posted on 24 April 2011 by Helen Wilding

There are times in a journey that it seems appropriate to take stock, look back, look forward and decide where to go next and how. Now is one of those times. I have now finished TU812 so I am leaving behind a learning system that someone else has structured and guided me through. Now, I am on my own. I need to be my own guide for a while. Continue reading →

Talk by Ralph Stacey

Posted on 23 March 2011 by Helen Wilding

hooray – assignment in – now I can start blogging again.

Last week, University of Northumbria had Ralph Stacey up to do a talk. He’s a Professor of Management at University of Hertfordshire. I’d heard of him because of the books he has written about complexity and management.

His latest book is Complexity and Organizational Reality: the need to rethink management after the collapse of investment capitalism (Routledge, 2010). The topic of the talk was very similiar – Uncertainty and the need to rethink management after the collapse of investment capitalism.

So rather than have my scribbled notes hanging around on a bit of paper, I thought I would blog about his talk and my reflections.

Continue reading →

Managing systemic change

Posted on 14 March 2011 by Helen Wilding

Seems weird that since November I have been studying a course with “Managing systemic change” as the module title and I now start questioning whether I know what it is or not? I think in part it is because I am trying to connect up how ‘social learning’ fits into ‘managing systemic change’.

There have been a couple of forum threads on what we understand by managing systemic change but each time I think I grasp it, it goes away again.

Continue reading →

A need for social learning?

Posted on 13 March 2011 by Helen Wilding

The UK government outlined their ambitions relating to the domain of wellbeing and health, in a range of publications including:

Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS (Department of Health, 2010a);
Healthy lives, Healthy people: our strategy for public health in England (Department of Health, 2010b);
A vision for adult social care: capable communities and active citizens (Department of Health, 2010c)

At the time of writing the related Health and Social Care Bill 2010-2011 is currently before parliament.

Stakeholders in the city where I work have responded to these changes as an opportunity for a step-change in the way in which we organise ourselves to work together to improve wellbeing and health and reduce inequalities in health. Senior leaders of the main statutory partner organisations have agreed to what is locally referred to as “a whole system approach” to the implementation of these changes. Continue reading →

Just Practicing

sharing my journey through landscapes of practice

The social technology of (performance) measurement

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The launch

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Prioritisation

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Lean and Vanguard

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Understanding leadership

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Junction

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Talk by Ralph Stacey

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Managing systemic change

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A need for social learning?

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