Outcomes do not come from services alone. They come from systems: relationships, incentives, data, power, behaviours and trust. Join the September 2026 National Commissioning Academy to develop the skills to work with that complexity. Contact [email protected]

My new working definition: 'Commissioning is the public craft of helping a place form and reform the relationships, capabilities, arrangements and conditions through which people can live well, with the system learning from what happens.'

Beyond provision: civic life is lived by people www.linkedin.com/posts/antler...

Beyond provision: civic life is lived by people buff.ly/ElCEcFQ

what do you tihnk would happen if I engaged a) everyone who offered to 'develop my pipeline on a no win/no fee basis' and b) everyone who said they represent someone with great interest in buying my company? (I mean, apart from bankruptcy, obviously)

I have a complaint in with the Financial Services Ombudsman. I receive a text message to log in for an update. I log in on the phone, receiving an MFA code via text to do so, and using my password keeper with secure MFA.

Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding - YouTube bit.ly/4vi24We

Donald Wheeler hisself on statistical process control Some Hazardous Ideas buff.ly/QTaAbyp

When the father of a murdered son makes a public statement saying "we do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension", then I believe it's incumbent on any news outlet reporting on Farage's comments to ensure people know he has chosen to disregard the family's wishes.

another day, another story about the administration's war on knowledge itself, all in service of allow its corporate patrons free rein to rob us blind and poison our world www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...

Most commissioning training teaches you how to buy services. The National Commissioning Academy helps you reshape the systems that produce outcomes. New cohort launching September 2026. Launch webinar: 14 Sept, 10:00–12:30.

LGR? The real challenge is what comes next www.linkedin.com/posts/antler...

LGR? The real challenge is what comes next buff.ly/4bc7CXK

RIP Jim Rutt (with John Krakauer on Why Neuroscience Needs Behavior and Tyson Yunkaporta on Ceremony, Skepticism, and Seeing in 3D) stream.syscoi.com/2026/06/01/r...

The next commissioning academy will launch this September - could you or your colleagues benefit? buff.ly/g1wFtqr

Problematique Dialogue 2026 retrospective – Ing (2026) stream.syscoi.com/2026/05/31/p...

“I don’t think we have reckoned, as a country, with how profound the scarring caused by the pandemic was, in almost every policy area. We are suffering from a sort of collective post-traumatic shock and only treating some symptoms, while refusing to talk about it.”

“I don’t think we have reckoned, as a country, with how profound the scarring caused by the pandemic was, in almost every policy area. We are suffering from a sort of collective post-traumatic shock and only treating some symptoms, while refusing to talk about it.”

Want to meet others in Manchester involved/interested in relational public services?

One thing I’ve learned after 17 years running a consultancy: the consulting industry often rewards dependency more than transformation. My appearance on the Consulting Leaders podcast www.linkedin.com/posts/antler...

Ill Health In Old Age Is Not 80% "Down To The Individual"

Play is an iterative interaction with something. The result is we learn something about that thing. Learning is an iterative interaction with something. The result is we learn something about that thing. Where is the distinction?

Are you in commissioning? If you described what your ‘system’ does, from a citizen point of view, what would they say? bit.ly/4uAmwSi

"Brief Thoughts on Maps" by Miroslav Holub: a poem about finding our bearings - Tolstoy Therapy tolstoytherapy.com/brief-though...

OK, Amazon! Ça suffit!

Can We At Least Agree to Stop Sucking the Joy Out of Their Lives? teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2026/05/can-...

Self-Directed Learners Live in a State of Alert Awareness teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2026/05/self...

This sort of thing is going to get increasingly annoying, isn't it.

Happy Combination Towel And Sue Gray Day: Don't Panic!

On this day in 1887, a Czech Jewish woman was born. On the 30 Jan 1942, she was deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto and on the 6 Sep 1943 to Auschwitz where she perished. Her name was Hedvika Pollaková Support @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social

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Long article but worth the read! How the institutional immune system defends the status quo, how external “edge” innovative actors bear the burden of translation, how to work to dampen the immune reaction

You can’t transform what you don’t understand - Operational Excellence Society

The challenges and changing landscape of public library collections orda.shef.ac.uk/articles/rep...

Healthcare's moral emergency: reconnecting healthcare with its mission and purpose www.bmj.com/content/393/...

Bet hedging (biology) stream.syscoi.com/2026/05/22/b...

This is a really important piece of work from Alison Turner and colleagues at The Strategy Unit. What if a large part of the public sector productivity crisis is actually the machine metabolising its own fragmentation? www.linkedin.com/posts/antler...

This essay on the ‘institutional immune system’ is one of the clearest descriptions I’ve read of a dynamic many of us in public service transformation spend our lives inside. www.linkedin.com/posts/antler...

Moving to community at the centre — and the challenge to commissioning www.linkedin.com/posts/antler...

Why we don't get complexity: Stafford Beer, 'requisite variety' and systems thinking. Claire Hartnell. stream.syscoi.com/2026/05/20/w...

XR Netherlands were out in the streets standing with migrants, facing down anti-asylum protests across 9 cities. In Nijmegen the fascists were outnumbered 10 to 1. This is what solidarity looks like. Proud of our Dutch rebels. ✊ www.dutchnews.nl/2026/05/thre...

Machine Intelligence is not Artificial - Part 7. Sean Manion. stream.syscoi.com/2026/05/20/m...

HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article. Front. Syst. Neurosci., 24 March 2022 stream.syscoi.com/2026/05/20/h...

The Cybernetics Thought Collective (Digital Surrogates) | Digital Collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library stream.syscoi.com/2026/05/20/t...

On Our Own Terms: Systems change through Lived Experience Leadership. Morgan & Co. stream.syscoi.com/2026/05/20/o...

Systems Practice as a Practice of the Middle Voice. Philippe Vandenbroeck. stream.syscoi.com/2026/05/20/s...

Conceptual understanding is a myth - by Greg Ashman stream.syscoi.com/2026/05/20/c...

Public services are still mostly managed as if they were machines with org charts attached. The organisation on paper and the organisation in reality are often entirely different species. That gap is where most transformation efforts go to die. www.linkedin.com/posts/antler...

A dataset of AI-generated podcasts created using NotebookLM dataverse.no/dataset.xhtm...