Paul Skidmore

Should anyone 😬 be interested in a very readable single volume history of Liberia, I can recommend James Ciment’s “Another America” www.abebooks.co.uk/978080902695...

(11/11) But that doesn't make it more likely to succeed. If anything, it's a red flag that it won't. The "It's Always The Principal Principle" should make us extra cautious about proposing new structures to compensate for the weaknesses of a Principal, rather than to amplify their strengths.

(10/x) Sometimes we focus on structure because changing these other, lower cost things seems too difficult or not something the Principal is interested in or willing to do. A new structure in this scenario *is* actually the easier thing to do.

(9/x) There are lots of lower cost tools to reach for first: the leaders you pick, the teams they hire, the culture they build, the ways of working and coordinating they develop. The results might not look as neat but if they work, who cares? Conceptual neatness is over-rated.

(8/x) Partly this is because they are really hard and really distracting, with tons of the most senior people's time consumed by managing a messy change process, not focusing on the day job. The track record of Machinery of Government changes is particularly dire for this reason.

(7/x) Second, a new structure is about the most costly way to bring about a change in an organisation's ability to coordinate. Leaders quite like them because they are a way To Be Seen To Be Doing Something. But less than a third lead to the gains they are meant to.

(6/x) The problem with (b) is twofold. First, all structures are wrong, they are just wrong in different ways. Even if they make some problems better (not a given), they will make others worse. Yet "Grass is Greener" thinking tends to dominate "Better The Devil You Know" thinking.

(5/x) It might not be easy to find those sources of promise or potential right now, but I'd argue that trying to find them is essential if we want to actually make progress.

(4/x) (Digression but worth thinking about why building on what works...works. I think some of it is about knowledge and methods, some of it is about personnel, and some of it is about morale and motivation.)

(3/x) This is true in general and is specifically true of the TB second term CoG: neither the Delivery Unit nor the Strategy Unit were conjured from thin air. The former brought a template from DfEE to the centre; the latter built on units (PIU and FSU) set up in the first term.

(2/x) The problem with (a) is that often the best way to make progress is to figure out what *is* working and build on that.

I don't disagree with the thrust of Sam's excellent piece but I'd argue that when considering ANY organisational change it's very seductive a) to focus on the diagnosis of all the things that are wrong and b) to think that a new structure will fix it (1/x)

Yes, total bullshit. WTLBH and TS&TW deserve their place in the top 5. Paper Dolls is brilliant on loss, joy and memory and should be way higher. None of the others would make my list. For sheer creative genius I don’t understand how you can overlook Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book.

I ❤️ this paper, and not just because it touches on our work @risingacademies.bsky.social in Liberia. There is a fundamentally hopeful message here, namely: "Electoral rewards for the policy were commensurate with its effectiveness." Bravo @wsandholtz.bsky.social

This reminds me of the spectacular occasional @vizcomic.bsky.social series Half-Arsed Inventions, my favourite of which is the origin story of the sandwich toaster

A billboard with a public health message about the dangers of smoking. Image is a diseased lung and a list of the conditions smoking can cause, ending with “etc”

Can’t help feel the “etc” made it a little too obvious they were phoning it in

Having my first experience of GPT 4o just being absolutely *terrible* at a task it was really good at a couple of months ago.

As a Watford fan, this is a quite familiar experience, but not one I have had with AI before.

This is a great bit of reporting and my main takeaway is that the options that made the final cut were, astonishingly, the best of a truly terrible bunch.

I'm not sure it would ever have been possible to hold back the tide given persistent pressure on government spending. I basically stand by everything I wrote here about why that was predictable, and therefore the wrong focus. But I agree the sector didn’t help itself. medium.com/@pauljskidmo...

How the aid freeze affects nearly $60 billion in USAID spending The uncertainty around USAID’s future affects the tens of billions in unspent obligations that go beyond the current fiscal year.

Startling numbers from Devex on the impact of the USAID funding freeze: $56bn in undisbursed commitments across ~12,000 recipient organisations. www.devex.com/news/how-the...

Given that I *literally ran a school network for 10 years*, this is not a good sign.

In particular, why do user research AFTER announcing the draft standards rather than before? As a parent currently choosing schools for my kids (presumably a - maybe the - key user group?), I cannot see how the proposal on the table would be more user friendly and informative.

It is frustrating that every time there is an opportunity to test the more rigorous, more agile, more participatory methods the government championed in opposition, it seems to be ignored.

Opinion: As a CEO at an INGO, I know we need to adapt or die Our response at Save the Children to a “post-ODA” world is to move to new funding models and invest in scalable solutions.

Good (and brave) piece this www.devex.com/news/opinion...

I have successfully achieved a similar trick in persuading my two that there is such a thing as "grown-up" cereal (i.e. horrendously unhealthy sugary ones) which only I'm allowed to eat.

Big Organisation Syndrome: the tendency for large organisations (that don't have to worry about how to make payroll) to treat smaller organisations (that do) like sh*t.

And yes, this is a subskeet.

Great opening salvo from @raviguru.bsky.social. Love the idea about installers. Kevin @mulagostarr.bsky.social and his team like to ask their orgs "exactly who needs to do exactly what differently". This is a great example of how asking that question creatively gets you to interesting answers...

What a lovely thread. This is the sort of question my kids will ask and that I have never really thought about.

Never look back, that’s my motto

Ghana election result: John Mahama wins as Mahamudu Bawumia accepts defeat Although the ruling party candidate has conceded, no official results have been declared.

#Ghana showing how it’s done, with current VP and ruling party presidential candidate Mahamudu Bawumia graciously conceding before any results have officially been declared www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...