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From Taylorism to Veganism — How Studying Leadership Changed My Diet
I’ve sustained myself on a plant-based diet for four months now. I’m not sure who is more surprised by that, my brothers (who are delighted that they’ll get all the Yorkshire puddings as well as the beef next time we get together) or me (who didn’t plan for this at all).
For a little background, I have eaten animal products all of my life. And thoroughly relished them. One of the foods I remember enjoying most was a cured meat from Italy that was 90% pig fat. Although I had tried to cut my meat consumption over the last couple of years, this was for health reasons more than anything else.
It had never occurred to me to be vegan. And yet, here I am. So what happened? I’ve asked myself that many times in the last few weeks and then I realised that it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t studied leadership. This is the story of that decade long journey.
Learning Improvement Theory
In 2011 I was managing the Yorkshire Stroke Research Network when I enrolled on a Clinical Systems Improvement Programme run by Warwick University. For the first time I was exposed to concepts like lean and I began to experiment with different ways of talking about the systems we used. My team saw me prioritise continuous improvement over binary success/failure…
