RE: Can local solutions prevail?

["Aidan Ward" <aidan_ward@antelopes.com>]

Andy,

You have described beautifully a core issue. All the components of the
advice that you need are in your posting already!

> What advice do people have about protecting 'local' solutions from
> management (a million miles away from the coalface) who are obsessed
> with imposing both targets *and* methods?

The purpose of systems is never simply what people state them to be,
least of all people accountable for their operation. In the world in
which we live to describe your purposes is to paint yourself into a
corner.

So the local "improvement" you describe is against a set of values that
are not actually shared although they are official. To describe the
situation you are in you need (as you have already done) to have a
hypothesis or two that explain the actions of the people in the
enclosing systems.

You then have a choice. You can try and have a conversation about the
values and purposes of the larger system in which different hypotheses
are aired, or you can find a system which actually has purposes and
values closer to the ones you want to pursue. Anything else is not to
respect your insights into what these systems actually do.

Regards,

Aidan 

Antelope Projects Ltd
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