Weeknote 3: finding a pattern

I’ve figured out that my weeks are like sandwiches. Mondays and Fridays are quiet, while Tuesdays to Thursdays are back to back meetings. With a sample of 3 weeks, is it really a work pattern or a short term trend? That question lingered as I was drawn into a couple of conversations about service patterns. I’ve always been a bit suspicious of any desire to organise and categorise just like I’m suspicious of ‘one size fits all’ t-shirts. More often than not, bespoke experiences (or fitted garments) take more time but lead to longer lasting products. It would be easy to take the 6 screening programmes (breast, lung, bowel, cervical, prostate cancer screening as well as diabetic eye screening) and say they all take similar approaches. They’re all about selecting people, notifying them they’re due for a test, sending them results. Sure. That sounds reasonable. But you take one step closer to the problem and you quickly encounter local constraints: the age of that screening service and…