In May 1991, a six-year-old girl was mauled in Bradford. Her name was Rukhsana Khan. The dog was a pit bull terrier. The injuries were terrible, and they were real. Within weeks, Parliament had a new law. The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 passed at speed. It named breeds. It ordered destruction. It was meant to settle a fear that had gripped the country through that summer. Three decades on, it is taught to law students as a specimen. Not of ...
Every NHS trust maintains a mandatory training matrix. Staff are tracked, chased, and occasionally threatened until compliance rates hit the target — typically 85% or above. The annual study day is booked. The e-learning is clicked through. The tick goes in the box. And then, overwhelmingly, nothing changes. This pattern is not unique to the NHS. In 2016, Beer, Finnström and Schrader published a landmark Harvard Business School paper they titled The Great Training Robbery. Their argument was blunt: billions ...
1. Introduction: The False Promise of the “Auto-Expert” The current discourse around AI in professional services—especially in high-stakes fields like Law, Social Work, and Psychiatry (LSP)—suffers from a significant lack of depth. A common fallacy suggests that all AI tools are interchangeable, as if a budget transcription service is equivalent to a high-end analytical engine. This reliance on “brute force” automated assessment creates a situation where human clinical judgement is traded for machine-generated simulations of understanding. This exploration traces the ...
Abstract “Cultural Restitution” is a term coined here to describe a neutral phenomenon in organisational dynamics. It addresses the well-observed tendency for teams and their established cultural norms to revert to a previous state following the introduction and initial adoption of new practices or standards. Borrowing from physics, the paper posits that organisational culture possesses an inherent restorative force, akin to a material returning to its original shape, pulling it back towards a former equilibrium, even if dysfunctional. Cultural Restitution ...
Lord Darzi was commissioned to undertake this rapid investigation of the state of the NHS by the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care. The report was prepared over a nine-week period between July and September 2024. Lord Darzi was tasked with examining areas such as the health of the nation and the social care system insofar as they impact the NHS, although these were outside the formal scope of the investigation. Read Lord Darzi’s letter to the Health ...
The concept of dysfunctional teams has been a topic of interest in organisational psychology and management research for decades. A dysfunctional team is characterised by a group of individuals who struggle to work together effectively, leading to suboptimal performance, decreased productivity, and a negative impact on the overall well-being of team members. The term “dysfunctional team” is often used interchangeably with “ineffective team” or “underperforming team,” emphasising the team’s inability to achieve its goals and objectives. Teams function on spectrum. ...
The biopsychosocial model of mental health recognises that our psychological well-being is influenced by a complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors. Within this framework, relationships play a crucial role in shaping our mental health. Strong, supportive relationships can provide a sense of belonging, emotional support, and a buffer against stress and adversity. On the other hand, strained or conflictual relationships can contribute to feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and depression. While the publisher and author(s) have used their best ...
Description Herd instinct, a concept predominantly associated with animal behaviour, implies a tendency to conform to social norms or follow the actions of a larger group, often for self-preservation or to maintain social cohesion. When examining this concept in humans, it is essential to scrutinise it from both psychological and sociological perspectives, while also considering neurobiological underpinnings. The title of this post does not imply that the herd instinct explains everything about loneliness. The instinct is taken as a template ...
Today I explore the term ‘systemic disempowerment‘ (SD) as pertains to large health and social care services. Health services are without doubt inseparably intertwined with social care services. The concept of SD moves beyond ideas of learned helplessness, which is so often thrown around. The concept of SD is far wider and deeper as this exploration will show. There is no easy way to make this blog readable in the desirable 30 second read; now widely popular among social media ...
The context of this exploration is twofold a) to examine how lessons may not be learned by individuals and b) difficulty for organisations in learning lessons. Repeatedly many UK organisations resolve to learn lessons. However the evidence shows that they are not learning lessons. What ordinary people expect Let us start by understanding how ordinary people might decide what is a lesson learned. I suggest that they may expect the following: The deeper reality Determining if an individual or organisation ...
