Paul Taylor
Social Innovation. Customer Experience. Service Design. Paul is an Innovation Coach with Bomford Lab. Learn more here .
Articles by Paul Taylor
- Opinion
Attention, Not Worry, Is Driving Organizational Short-Termism
Grief or the serious ill-health of ourselves or a loved one , other concerns such as financial matters or household upkeep seem to get downgraded
- Opinion
When Systems Ignore Real Lives, Performance Gets Worse
Faced with tightening budgets and growing complexity, modern institutions constantly seek ways to streamline processes, cut costs, and manage resources.
- Opinion
Are Institutions Stealing the Spotlight From the People They Serve?
The concept of Main Character Syndrome first emerged in internet culture, initially on TikTok, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Opinion
You’re Drowning in Work That Doesn’t Count
The emerging work, co-ordination and communication, had taken over from the real work, coding and designing.
- Opinion
How Ideas Go From Unthinkable to Policy Faster Than You Realize
Overton maintained that think tanks could influence public policy without directly engaging in the political process.
- Opinion
Scott McTominay’s Tomato Moment Reveals a Big Lesson About Innovation
The tomatoes McTominay experienced in the UK weren’t mediocre by accident; they were bad by design.
- Opinion
India’s Leapfrog Moment vs Britain’s Stagnation Trap
The worlds most populous country has a vibe about it that contrasts starkly with the UK.
- Opinion
Why Your Organization Needs a License for Heretical Thinking
Giving a mandate for constructive dissent must be moved immediately from a discouraged anomaly to a mainstream strategic imperative.
- Opinion
Stop Chasing Satisfaction Scores: Trust Takes Years, Not Metrics
Why do so many managers and leaders expect an almost instant improvement in satisfaction results after any change is made?
- Opinion
When Systems Fail by Design: Escaping the Accountability Sink Between the Silos
To understand this pathology and how they interact, we must define three concepts: silos, accountability sinks, and failure demand.
- Opinion
Crossing Boundaries Is Risky—but It’s the Only Way Innovation Survives
Workspaces , both physical and virtual, are designed to encourage it, and we actively recruit for people who possess a collaborative nature.
- Opinion
Big, Bureaucratic, and Broken? The Real Reason Innovation Dies After Mergers
The accepted narrative is that the bigger an organisation gets the more difficult it is for the organisation to innovate and/or change.
- Opinion
Breaking the Silo Mentality: Why Community Is the Most Powerful Unit of Change
Housing people largely talk to housing people. Health people to health people. Education to education. Justice to Justice.
- Opinion
How Can We Create Systems Where Knowledge Becomes Contagious?
Rooted in the power of the living word dialogue, song, and shared human experience was the catalyst for the unique, non-formal residential schools
- Opinion
Have We Lost the Ability To Do Big, Local Things? Reclaiming Community Power in a Centralized World
Knowing where to start, who to start it with , and mobilising the required resources to achieve it, seems difficult.
- Opinion
The Death of the Innovation Lab – And the Birth of a Hive Mind
The problem of organisations creating space for innovation and creative thinking, whilst prioritising business as usual, is anything but new.
- Artificial Intelligence
Digital by Default Was a $10B Mistake — And We’re Still Repeating It
Indeed, digital was touted as a silver bullet for efficiency and effectiveness, but as the evidence has mounted, it has proven to be anything but.
- Opinion
The Performance Myth: When Metrics Undermine Mission
Despite its pervasive influence and promises of productivity, the performance myth has largely failed to deliver its anticipated benefits
- Opinion
Efficiency Isn’t Everything: The Real Risk of a Narrow Focus
This narrow view can sacrifice quality, overlook complex issues, and create hidden costs elsewhere in the system.
- Opinion
The Agile Revolution: Turning Sectors Into Products for Speed and Scale
What if we stopped thinking of individual sectors and started thinking about of them as products that require interoperability? #Agile
- Opinion
Agile in Action: How It’s Revolutionizing Public Services
In trying to manage everything, they often end up feeling like they’re managing nothing that truly touches individual lives. #Agile
- Opinion
Why Community-Led Innovation Fails Without This One Ingredient
When faced with vast issues like global warming or national debt, we feel a deep lack of control and efficacy. #community
- Opinion
Can Modern Institutions Collapse Like Ancient Civilizations?
The average lifespan of a civilisation is 336 years, Big companies used to have a lifespan of 61 years, now it’s down to 18. #business
- Opinion
The Big Mistake I Made About Innovation and Design (And What You Can Learn)
I first got an inkling that I’d got it all wrong about innovation and design when I was lying in a hospital bed in April 2020. #innovation
- Opinion
Big Companies, Small Problems? Not So Fast.
That said, the bigger the company the greater the chance of bureaucracy. #companies #growth
- Opinion
Is Centralization a False Promise? The Truth Behind the Trend
Centralisation is often touted as being more efficient but it’s nothing of the sort. In truth it is a simply a corporate power grab.
- Opinion
Community vs. Organizational Memory: What Lasts Longer and Why
Our purpose – the reason we exist – can become servant to a metric. The work becomes a metric, and then the metrics become the work.
- Opinion
Innovation Pitfalls: Balancing Capability and Capacity
Strategic innovation is a war game against the legacy organisation, not a development of the existing culture and practices. #Innovation
- Opinion
The Productivity Problem: How Meaningless Metrics Hold Us Back
As we begin a new year, there seems to be, in much of the western world at least, a realisation that we have hit a productivity brick wall. #views
- Opinion
How Measuring Metrics Can Lead to Manipulation: What Gets Measured Gets Gamed
If your end goal is creating better relationships, consider how you’d measure your own relationships, and consider whether that’s possible
- Opinion
Imitation Breeds Mediocrity
When did the commoditisation, or even the McDonaldization, of the social sector begin? #innovate
- Opinion
The Importance of Connectors
A connector is a well known person connected to multiple groups in an organisation. #connections #business
- Opinion
What To Do When You’ve Become a Legacy Organisation
A legacy organisation is defined as one where all processes, technology and ways of working where in place before the modern internet. #organization
- Opinion
When Everything Is A Crisis, Nothing Is
By calling problems all the same we risk dealing with them all the same. Or worse, doing nothing because when everything is a crisis nothing really is.
- Opinion
The People vs The System ... and Why The People Rarely Win
We have an opportunity to be more different, more memorable and make more change than we ever have. #innovation #ideas #people
- Business Growth
The Difference Between Good And Bad Organisations
In reality, both mostly good and mostly bad organisations make mistakes, but the mostly good ones are better at learning from them.