Essay
The company’s appointed advocate
Stephen Deason examines how purchasing managers, supervisors, and owners protect a company through assigned attention, decisions, and reporting.
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Systems
Stories and essays about the handoffs nobody owns, and the people who pay for them.
Essays
Essay
A complaint with an unfinished promise
Stephen Deason examines why reporting a care concern can leave the promised response unassigned, with residents and families carrying the unfinished work.
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What a Hospital Knows About the Cost of a Hip
A hospital can know what it paid for an implant while still lacking a patient-specific cost for the nursing around it.
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Where Feedback Points
Feedback can improve work or damage performance, depending on what the feedback directs a person to notice.
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Why Nobody Owns the Whole Thing
The work of preventing failure has no visible output, which is why it is measured only on its bad days.
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Why Nobody Pays for Coordination
Coordination has no separate line on an invoice. Payment can make the work possible, but payment does not assign someone to do it.
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What Gets Lost in a Handoff
Information dies at a handoff because the receiving form decides what survives.
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