Rule 5: Understand How the Work Works

It sounds a bit smug, doesn’t it?

It isn’t enough to study the work, you also need to know how the work works.

What does it mean?

Let me give you a couple of examples:

1. How do you drive a car?

It is one thing to know how to drive; mirror, signal, manoeuvre.  That is a useful skill. Something you need to understand.

But that isn’t the same as understanding how traffic works. How does it flow around roundabouts?  Why does it bunch and relax in traffic jams?  What will happen when your local council decide to add a bus lane or change the way traffic lights are sequenced?

2. How do you X-ray a patient?

It is one thing to understand how to use an X-ray machine. How to position the patient and camera to create the sharpest images.

It is another thing altogether to know how many drunks will arrive in casualty on New Year’s Eve, or why targets leave patients waiting for treatment.

Work works at all sorts of levels

• Practice
• Procedure
• Process
• Policy

Or maybe you can think of the impact of:

• Customers
• Systems
• Employees
• Incentives

Work is complicated.

Rule 5. Understand how the work works

If you don’t  understand it, why on earth would you think you can improve it?

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