The Voice of Occupational Serfdom?

Artwork by Ursula Von Rydingsvard. Photographed by Peter Johnson at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2014

I recently attended an event organised for the benefit of those who work within, or who have an interest in the provision of healthcare. I'll say no more about it as I really want to protect the innocent – they seemed like nice people with their collective hearts in exactly place where the specialist, looking at the x-ray would expect to find it.

They were seeking to initiate new conversations about the way in which healthcare services are provided and run, and I, with my book to promote thought that it could be a useful opportunity to generate some interest in Making Light Work.

Tomorrow's People: A Sketch of a Post-Mechanistic IT Service Department

'Blue Sky Thinking'. Edale, Peak District. Peter Johnson, 2013

Regular readers of this blog and my followers on social media will be aware that in recent years I've taken to relentlessly critiquing the thinking which dictates the interactions between corporate IT and workers. It's fast becoming my online raison d’etre. That said, I have always, and will continue to acknowledge that much of what is designed and implemented by IT departments is useful, stable and appreciated by employees.

There is a however, however, and it is that IT is ever-evolving. Those of us who work in this area can never rest content on our laurels, safe in the knowledge that 30 years of the Tayloristic-cybernetic paradigm known as ITSM has delivered everything that our audience wants and could ever desire.

It doesn't.

Yes it's broke. The question is, how do we fix it?

Stones in my Garden. Peter Johnson, 2009

With my advancing years I suspect that I must have arrived at the state of mind often described as ‘grumpy old man’. In addition to regular gripes about the state of the roads and the priorities of the local authority in the city where I live, I've also noticed my becoming a tad dismayed with the never-ending stream of commentary about things that don't work as they should in ITSM and the ways in which we should fix them.