Paul Taylor
@paulitaylor.bsky.social
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📥 89
📝 216
Systems. Design. Research. Creativity. Innovation Coach at Bromford Flagship
#AVFC
If we look across our public services in the UK, there is evidence that we been catastrophic failures at making knowledge contagious. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
fAN
9 days ago
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Four a Day Picture Diary What are we doing? Where is it happening? Who is involved? Why? Or WTAF? Today. Why did we leave India with a centralised bureaucracy? (alongside railways and milky tea)
open.substack.com/pub/ptaylor/...
#travel
9 days ago
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Our approach isn’t about rigid five-year plans; it's about rapid cycles of observation, conversation, trying things out, and learning. Read more
👉 https://lttr.ai/
AjcgQ
10 days ago
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Pseudo-autonomy: where the vocabulary of self-management is adopted, but the centralised infrastructure of control remains, rendering new ways of working inoperable. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Al
o7L
11 days ago
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When formal hierarchies are flattened to create decentralised teams, the organisational immune system often reconstructs them informally to preserve the status quo. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Al
8QI
12 days ago
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Organisational Antibodies Reject Place-Based and Decentralised Approaches ▸
https://lttr.ai/Al8
QG
13 days ago
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Place-based working at the community level focuses on identifying and amplifying these existing strengths, rather than solely focusing on deficits. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
fAV
17 days ago
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A necessary rule of place-based or decentralised approaches lies in recognising that, left unchecked, the system will seek to overpower any efforts to change or disrupt the natural order. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Al
8QC
18 days ago
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Run an annual “Process Obituary Contest.” Employees submit a dead-weight process and write its mock obituary, detailing its failure and celebrating its demise. Read mor
e 👉 https://lttr.a
i/Alo7A
19 days ago
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Genuine place based and decentralised approaches are not merely structural changes; they are assaults on the fundamental logic of the traditional organisation. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Al
o7J
20 days ago
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Only when we prioritise local influence and enable citizens to be both the problem-definers and the solution-builders will we rediscover the collective momentum that has driven us this far. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
fAZ
21 days ago
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"The success of any community recovery strategy, whether focused on urban regeneration, tackling Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB), or implementing localised service delivery, ultimately rests upon one fragile foundation: trust."
https://lttr.ai/Al29j
24 days ago
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"This is our classic paradox: the metrics and targets that are intended to drive improvement can create a powerful set of incentives that actually work against the very innovation and risk-taking we need to strive for."
https://lttr.ai/AkfAT
25 days ago
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What a day yesterday
#avfc
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25 days ago
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Why Decentralised Place-Based Approaches Can Fail ▸
https://lttr.ai/Alo
7P
28 days ago
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The digital by default model was largely driven by a cost-saving agenda, where the high expense of in-person interactions was the primary justification for pushing services online Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
fAO
29 days ago
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The operational cost of the accountability sink is measured in failure demand. Read more 👉
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nd6
about 1 month ago
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We must make a deliberate choice to institutionalise constructive dissent, recognising it as a form of commitment aimed at organisational learning. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Al
jtA
about 1 month ago
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The barrier to collaboration is inertia, and this inertia requires coordinated, multi-level intervention that targets structural reform, cultural change, and incentive realignment simultaneously. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Al
euS
about 1 month ago
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The deep inertia against collaboration is primarily embedded in the public sector’s legislative, financial, and organisational designs, which inherently reward institutional isolation Read more
👉 https://lttr.ai/
AkSDp
about 1 month ago
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"Symptoms of Decline: Ideas and approvals crawl up and down the hierarchy, and the organisation becomes plagued by endless meetings and committees, often with unclear objectives, breeding a culture where action is secondary to discussion."
https://lttr.ai/AlYBi
about 1 month ago
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The belief that metrics always improve performance is one of the biggest myths of the modern workplace. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
A6S
about 1 month ago
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Are Small Companies Really Better At Innovation? ▸
https://lttr.ai/AkA
6K
about 1 month ago
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The only viable path to genuine public trust is through long-term relational commitment – where we stop treating communities as passive recipients who are there to generate our satisfaction statistics. Read more
👉 https://lttr.ai/
AkwZo
about 1 month ago
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As organisations grow, bureaucracy, approval layers, and hierarchy increase. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Al
Mkt
about 1 month ago
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Heretical thinking,a challenge to organisational sacred cows—those fundamental assumptions, practices, or long-established revenue streams—is suppressed in traditional organisations Read mor
e 👉 https://lttr.a
i/AlBOI
about 1 month ago
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Why Don’t We Enable More Heretical Thinking At Work?
: https://lttr.ai/AlB
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about 1 month ago
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In communities marked by years of under-investment and repeated institutional failure—those often termed ‘left behind places'—trust is not merely low; it has been actively eradicated Read m
ore 👉 https://lttr
.ai/AkwZm
about 1 month ago
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Understanding how long the memory of that failure persists, and how quickly trust can be regained, is critical for those of us seeking to prove their long-term commitment to place based working Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Al
BOM
about 2 months ago
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Giving a mandate for constructive dissent must be moved immediately from a discouraged anomaly to a mainstream strategic imperative. Invite treason against the status quo ▸
https://lttr.ai/AlB
N0
about 2 months ago
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Stripping an innovation of its cultural and behavioural “why” renders the resulting learning useless to a team operating in a different place Read mor
e 👉 https://lttr.a
i/Ajcld
about 2 months ago
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When centralised teams try to force adoption through documentation and process, they must increase control, auditing, and reporting Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Aj
ebS
about 2 months ago
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The pivot we need to make is from viewing the end user as a demanding customer to viewing them as an essential, contributing participant. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
05V
about 2 months ago
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"The centralisation of risk aversion: ️ Modern institutions—banks, local governments, and partners—are heavily incentivised to avoid all possible legal risk, making them extremely hesitant to support non-standard, grassroots proje
cts." https://lttr.ai
/Ajuw5
about 2 months ago
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Concentrate on relationships and metrics will improve. Concentrate on metrics and relationships will fail. ▸
https://lttr.ai/Akw
rK
about 2 months ago
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Coined by John Seddon, failure demand (or avoidable contact) is defined as demand on a service organisation that is caused by the organisation’s failure to do something, or to do something right, for a customer. Read more
👉 https://lttr.ai/
AkeqE
about 2 months ago
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The Schumpeter Mark I model, often associated with small, nimble organisations, describes a creative destruction pattern driven by new market entrants and the resulting high turbulence. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
A6N
about 2 months ago
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The accountability sink functions as the structural generator of failure demand. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
epy
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
Paul Taylor
Research in Practice
about 2 months ago
Really interesting framing by Rachael Wardell
@theadcsltd.bsky.social
around whether we need to build services that last forever, or celebrate the work that we're doing right now. Chimes with this post by
@paulitaylor.bsky.social
on planned obsolescence
paulitaylor.com/2022/01/10/b...
#LeadersF25
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Built Not To Last: Could Planned Obsolescence Be Good For The Social Sector?
Planned obsolescence is the practice of deliberately creating consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete (or out of date) and therefore need to be frequently replaced. If we designed our organisat…
https://paulitaylor.com/2022/01/10/built-not-to-last-could-planned-obsolescence-be-good-for-the-social-sector/
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Innovation Labs often mimicked the appearance and work style of startups, using agile development and design thinking to rapidly prototype and test new ideas. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ai
8tC
about 2 months ago
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Failures in service delivery are often attributed to individual incompetence or malicious intent, but the true culprit is often systemic design failure. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
epr
about 2 months ago
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Innovations spread through direct observation, apprenticeship, and a strong sense of reciprocity and collective action within a defined geographic and social group Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
mGV
about 2 months ago
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If we want to move beyond systemic stagnation and unleash the potential of grassroots ingenuity, we must radically redefine success: it's not just about what scales nationally, but what sustains locally Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Aj
ebQ
about 2 months ago
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Small organisations thrive in the space of exploration, radical innovation and product innovation—introducing disruptive changes to the market. Read more
👉 https://lttr.ai/
AkiOh
about 2 months ago
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The traditional bureaucratic model is designed to manage compliance with separate funding and accountability streams, which directly collides with the fluid network dynamics required for complex collaboration. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ak
SDS
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
Paul Taylor
Dyfrig Williams
2 months ago
"There is a delegating of critical decision-making authority away from humans and into immutable rulebooks, policies, bureaucratic protocols, or automated algorithms"
paulitaylor.com/2025/10/31/c...
< Very good post on failure demand in the public sector from
@paulitaylor.bsky.social
#localgov
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Complaints Rise Because Our Organisations Are Designed To Generate Complaints
The purpose of a system is what it does
https://paulitaylor.com/2025/10/31/complaints-rise-because-our-organisations-are-designed-to-generate-complaints/
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Complaints Rise Because Our Organisations Are Designed To Generate Complaints:
https://lttr.ai/AkfRN
2 months ago
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"Organisations must formally reward and institutionalise the role of a boundary spanner or central connector—individuals specifically empowered to translate differences between agencies, consolidate common ground, and accelerate joint leadership.
" https://lttr.ai/AkS
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2 months ago
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The imperative to demonstrate accountability through simple, public rankings appears to outweigh the empirical evidence of their problematic outcomes. Read more 👉
https://lttr.ai/Ai
8tQ
2 months ago
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The Collaboration Paradox: Why We Say We Love It, But Our Systems Fight It:
https://lttr.ai/AkSYT
2 months ago
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