And who are you?
Does how you respond get conditioned by who asks the question? In what circumstances? In what environment? Do you always answer exactly the same or do you change it? Understanding and forming identity is a
Tag: john atkinson
The ethics of systems leadership
When you consult to a system who is your client? How do you know if you are doing the right thing? What constitutes doing good here and who decides? You cannot please everyone all the
The Queen!
what happens when your organisation is so evidently getting it wrong that people are suffering, that their work is becoming meaningless? What do you do then? Can you continue to ask for this loyalty? Should
Embrace Complexity- Don’t Suppress it
By John Atkinson. If we genuinely believe the world to be a complex place, we need to consciously embrace that complexity, not suppress it. Once we do this, we realise we cannot resolve our activity
Playing with time
From John Atkinson. Cause and effect analysis is quite hard. The connection between our actions and their impact can sometimes be quite obscure. Events will be explained away according to the version of history that
Complexity
Complex problems may not have solutions. You can maybe make them better or worse, but they remain unresolved and stubbornly recalcitrant. So we add another expert solution and before we know it we are entangled
Self Organising
Our identity is inevitably shaped by our history. The changes we have been through to arrive where we are now determine our form in the world. They also determine how we make sense of our
Cheshire Cat Grins
The reason we don’t truly become Change Makers is that we don’t want to. We really want to preserve things as they are, right up until the moment that they inevitably die.
It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it…
How often is it that we design a strategy, or propose a policy, that we know is good, valuable and what our organisation needs? We work hard to persuade others, convince them that this is
Paddling Just Paddling
I am in a bubble where time and the wider world have gone and all that matters is the synthesis of a body, a boat and a paddle. The bubble pops as I touch the
An Organisation is a Living Thing
Since Descartes we have tried to understand the world by dividing it into its constituent parts. By breaking things down into their basic building blocks we have sought to gain a deeper understanding of how
The NHS is alive but rather unwell
The NHS is alive but rather unwell. Much great work is being done and we remain the envy of many. And also we are locked in a cycle of increasing pressure. To keep the NHS