Big Picture Thinking Research Articles

Using participatory action research to foster nurse leadership in Australian rural hospitals

This paper outlines the processes and results of a participatory action research study undertaken to identify issues that may impact on strategies to foster nurse leadership in rural hospitals. Five Directors of Nursing from rural regions of Victoria, Australia participated. The group activities involved discussion and analysis of previous research, a review of current literature and critical reflection of the leadership performance of their organization. The analysis identified five key themes; dispel the myths, adopt big-picture thinking, connect with colleagues, reflect on your own conduct, and create organizational buy-in. It is essential to have an awareness of contextual challenges, an understanding of the importance of your own conduct as a visible leader, and the need for effective communication to inform the development of strategies that may be used to foster nurse leadership in rural hospitals. The platform to discuss and critically analyze leadership saw a group consensus that affirmed the need for any approach to nursing leadership to be tailored to the individual healthcare organization.

All Systems Go: How Systems Engineering Can Improve Healthcare Technology

All Systems Go: How Systems Engineering Can Improve Healthcare Technology

Rethinking China's Strategy in Asia and Beyond: Can We All Get It Right?

A s Steven Levine astutely observed back in 1984, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was “a regional power without a regional policy.”1 Indeed, China was without an Asia strategy until the end of the Cold War. While a number of books have examined the rise of China in the Asian context or looked at Beijing’s relations with its neighbors, until now there has not been a study focused on how China thinks about Asia. Gilbert Rozman’s book Chinese Strategic Thought toward Asia is, therefore, an important book. Strategy is probably the most overused and least defined word in the lexicon of the U.S. national security community. The closest Rozman comes to clarifying what he means by the term “strategic thought” appears well into the volume when he says he is referring to “ideas...[about the] means to realize ends” (p. 68). What Rozman seems to mean by the term is what is widely known as “grand strategy” (pp. 2, 3). In essence, the book is a thoughtful and comprehensive overview of big-picture thinking about Asia in post-Mao China. There is probably no scholar better equipped to tackle this topic. Rozman has written extensively on Chinese analyses of the countries on China’s periphery and those states’ analyses of China. The result is a tour de force treatment organized chronologically and geographically with a stand-alone overview introductory chapter. The first part consists of four chapters that divide Chinese thinking into four periods. Chapter 2 examines the decade of the 1980s, chapters 3 and 4 survey the 1990s, and chapter 5 explores the 2000s. The latter part of the book examines Chinese thinking toward Asian countries or subregions. There are separate chapters on Japan and Korea, Russia shares

Rejoinder: Microarrays, Empirical Bayes and the Two-Groups Model

The Fisher–Neyman–Pearson theory of hypothesis testing was a triumph of mathematical elegance and practical utility. It was never designed, though, to handle 10,000 tests at once, and one can see contemporary statisticians struggling to develop theories appropriate to our new scientific environment. This paper is part of that effort: starting from just the two-groups model (2.1), it aims to show Bayesian and frequentist ideas merging into a practical framework for largescale simultaneous testing. False discovery rates, Benjamini and Hochberg’s influential contribution to modern statistical theory, is the main methodology featured in the paper, but I really was not trying to sell any specific technology as the final word. In fact, the discussants offer an attractive menu of alternatives. It is still early in the large-scale hypothesis testing story, and I expect, and hope for, major developments in both theory and practice. The central issue, as Carl Morris makes clear, is the combination of information from a collection of more or less similar sources, for example from the expression levels of different genes in a microarray study. Crucial questions revolve around the comparability and relevance of the various sources, as well as the proper choice of a null distribution. Technical issues such as the exact control of Type I errors are important as well, but, in my opinion, have played too big a role in the microarray literature. The discussions today are an appealing mixture of technical facility and big-picture thinking. They are substantial essays in their own right, and I will be able to respond here to only a few of the issues raised. I once wrote, about the jackknife, that good simple ideas are our most precious intellectual commodity. False discovery rates fall into that elite category. The two-groups model is used here to unearth the Bayesian roots of Benjamini and Hochberg’s originally frequentist construction. In a Bayesian framework it is natural

An Interview with Peter Denning on the great principles of computing

No abstract available.

Creative Problem Solving: Inside the Maze

Current educational interest in problem solving, both as an educational tool and as a major objective, is rarely reinforced by close examination of the processes involved. The present study aims to move beyond the adoption of ‘problem solving’ as a blanket objective, and to explore the complexity of processes and the diversity of strategies that must be utilised, by examining the nature of group problem solving in practice. Middle Level (Grades 7-9) gifted students (N=207) in 23 schools in four Australian states were administered a purpose-designed instrument to assess their levels of self-efficacy in problem solving before and after an intervention program that aimed at enhancing their strategies and developing their skills. Data were compared with those of 95 students of similar ability and grade levels who did not participate in the intervention. Possible reasons are offered for the lack of significant change in perceived self-efficacy in both groups.This investigation of the Future Problem Solving Program as one form of intervention has led to clarification of the clusters of components that underlie group creative problem solving. The particular importance of ‘bigger picture thinking’ has significance for teachers of gifted students.

You should use both sides of your brain, right?

Author Dan Pink argues that "nowadays, the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't is going to be mastery of these abilities that are more characteristic of the right hemisphere — artistry, empathy, big picture thinking. Those are the sorts of abilities that I think are really going to matter the most, not only in our individual career success, but also in our personal satisfaction."

An Interview with Peter Denning

Peter Denning teaches students at the Naval Postgraduate School how to develop strategic, big-picture thinking about the field of computing. Denning, a past president of ACM (1980-82), has been involved with communicating our discipline, computing, to outsiders since 1970. Along the way he invented the working set model for memory management, developed the theory of virtual memory, promulgated operating systems theory, co-invented operational analysis of system performance, co-founded CSNET, and led the ACM Publications Board while it developed the Digital Library. He is an ACM Fellow and holds five major ACM awards. He just completed a five-year term as chair of the ACM Education Board.

An Interview with Peter Denning

Peter Denning teaches students at the Naval Postgraduate School how to develop strategic, big-picture thinking about the field of computing. Denning, a past president of ACM (1980-82), has been involved with communicating our discipline, computing, to outsiders since 1970. Along the way he invented the working set model for memory management, developed the theory of virtual memory, promulgated operating systems theory, co-invented operational analysis of system performance, co-founded CSNET, and led the ACM Publications Board while it developed the Digital Library. He is an ACM Fellow and holds five major ACM awards. He just completed a five-year term as chair of the ACM Education Board.

Big-Picture Thinking

Big-Picture Thinking

The Psychological Barriers to Performance Management

Why has performance management failed to sweep the world? Why does it live more in rhetoric than reality? Possible explanations include those that are practical, political, managerial, and psychological. Seven psychological explanations, which reflect how people think about performance and results, create some significant barriers to their ability to focus on outcomes and value. Citizen thinking concentrates on personal results rather than societal results. Legislative thinking stresses where the inputs are immediately deployed rather than what outcomes might be eventually achieved. Public-employee thinking focuses on avoiding mistakes that will produce certain punishment rather than producing successes that might generate a little praise. Policy thinking emphasizes creating better policy rather than managing better within the existing policy framework. Assistant-secretary thinking specializes in crafting new policy innovation rather than on improving the organization’s capacity to perform. Distrustful thinking worries that “the big bargain”—more flexibility for more performance—will never produce any real flexibility. And big-picture thinking permits the enormity of the task to blind people to the opportunity to create meaningful improvement through a series of individually small but collectively significant wins. Overcoming these barriers will require a shift from performance management to performance leadership.

The encyclopedia of leadership: a practical guide to popular leadership theories and techniques

Section 1: Foundational Concepts. Section 2: Tools for Big-Picture Thinking. Section 3: Tools for Strategic Thinking. Section 4: Tools for Designing Productive Processes and Organizations. Section 5: Tools for Leading Change. Section 6: Tools for Critical Thinking and Innovation. Section 7: Tools for Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Quality. Section 8: Tools for Communication. Section 9: Tools for Leading and Influencing Others. Section 10: Tools for Leading Teams and Groups. Section 11: Tools for Leading Meetings. Section 12: Tools for Leading Relationships. Section 13: Tools for Leading Performance. Section 14: Tools for Learning. Section 15: Tools for Taking Care of Yourself.

Pharmacy without walls

Attributes of excellence in pharmacy management are described: big-picture thinking, the ability to exploit change, and willingness to take risks. Big-picture thinking means understanding trends that are shaping health care in order to determine where pharmacy fits. Health systems look beyond inpatient care and use case managers to maximize resource use; pharmacists might serve as case managers. Managed care has caused physicians to be more receptive to resource-management strategies, such as clinical pathways; pharmacists can collaborate in the development of clinical pathways. Pharmacists can serve as physician extenders; for example, by conducting anticoagulation or hypertension clinics. Pharmacists need flexibility to adapt to changes in the internal organization of acute care institutions; they will need to learn about the clinical, behavioral, operational, and fiscal aspects of managing the total patient. New reporting relationships give pharmacists the opportunity to demonstrate to other members of the health care team their role in preventing, managing, and resolving drug-related problems throughout the continuum of care. Risk-taking can mean setting ambitious goals. By setting and achieving ambitious goals for products and services, pharmacists can raise patients' and other health care providers' expectations for pharmacy services. Pharmacists' success will depend on their willingness to experiment with new services and discard services that do not substantially advance patient care. Pharmacists must monitor changes in the provision of health care, determine the implications for their practice and seek opportunities for participation outside the walls within which they have traditionally practiced.