A colleague reminded me of this quote by Peter de Noronha:
The safest refuge when dealing with urgent, ticklish problems is sought in shirking responsibility, in gaining time by the formation of Committees, with the requisite Sub-Committees to tackle the problem. It is the well-known practice of Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone and end by letting things alone. But this cannot last for ever. Now the secret of these Committees is that they consist of a group of men, who individually can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done, whilst they know that the best Sub-Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent!
Not exactly PDSA.
The safest refuge when dealing with urgent, ticklish problems is sought in shirking responsibility, in gaining time by the formation of Committees, with the requisite Sub-Committees to tackle the problem. It is the well-known practice of Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone and end by letting things alone. But this cannot last for ever. Now the secret of these Committees is that they consist of a group of men, who individually can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done, whilst they know that the best Sub-Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent!
Not exactly PDSA.
4 comments:
Hi, Paul! First of all, really enjoying reading your blog. You have such great insight into the latest happenings in the nursing world. I would love to profile you as one of our TOP 10 Nursing blogs. Any way to contact you directly to discuss further?? Looking forward to hearing from you! --Abbye Klamann
I am on FB, Twitter, and G+. Happy to talk.
One of our differences :) as bloggers is choice of subject like. You are more essayish; I, the marketing guy, would have titled this "Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone: how to stall by committee." :)
Oy, I wish Blogger allowed fixing typos in comments, as WordPress does - of course I meant subject *line*, not like!
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