Dear Big Organisation
“The lesson is simple. As soon as you put someone into a category you stop understanding them as a human being. As a result it is harder to give them what they want or need.” Systems thinking for girls challenges the way that big organisations engage with people.
How to be strategic in local government
“Being strategic is not big and clever. If you want to improve the lives of service users just saying things about the arrangement of words on a page isn’t enough.” System thinking for girls rails against “strategic prattle” in local government.
Service users? I couldn’t eat a whole one
The organiser of the Patient Service User Forum licked her lips when she saw me. A Service User! Me. She had captured one, a strange and precious creature for her consultation exercise. What will it say?! Will it kick off? Will it have a hot drink? Or would it prefer something cooler? Will it jump […]
Imagine if we said “why doesn’t HE just leave HER” in cases of domestic violence against women
Why doesn’t he leave? Imagine if instead of saying “why doesn’t she leave him?” we said “why doesn’t he leave her?”. Imagine if we thought that the men who bully, threaten and intimidate women are responsible for their actions and that they should be the ones to leave. Imagine if wondering why she puts up with it, […]
Targets: designed to delay our post and get us drunk?
Organisations write performance plans to meet numerical targets. But you never see performance plans for failure. Why is that? It doesn’t make any sense. If an organisation has plans to succeed 85% of the time, it therefore has aspirations to fail 15% of the time. These plans might not be written down but you can […]
3 reasons why Human by Default is better than Digital by Default
Digital by Default is the name of the Government’s drive to put services online. The Cabinet Office defines Digital by Default as: “digital services that are so straightforward and convenient that all those who can use them will choose to do so whilst those who can’t are not excluded”. I’d like to suggest an alternative […]
Nevermind the £53 p/w. How would IDS cope with the system?
Now that the petition calling for Iain Duncan Smith to prove he can live on £53 a week has been handed in to the Department of Work and Pensions by Change.org, we should start planning his experience of claiming benefits in more detail. Because it’s not just about the amount of money, is it? It’s also the absurd, unfair and unpredictable bureaucracy […]