DHCW's measurable goals (headcount, spend, ISO certifications, award shortlists) are pursued at the expense of its actual goal (clinical systems that work for patients). The substitution is not accidental or emergent — it was witnessed. A close circle around the CEO deliberately optimised for the metrics that protected leadership while leaving the metrics that mattered for patients unaddressed. The measurement system rewarded what protected the organisation; what protected patients was outside the measurement frame.
What is the ‘seeking the wrong goal’ trap at DHCW?
Seeking the Wrong Goal is Meadows’ term for a system that is performing exactly as designed — but the design serves the wrong purpose. The system achieves what it optimises for. The problem is what it optimises for.
How It Manifests at DHCW
The analysis has traced this trap through three levels of understanding:
Structural view: DHCW appears to optimise for activity metrics — headcount growth, programme count, strategy publications — rather than outcome metrics like clinician adoption or patient benefit. The clearest single artefact: 14-15 sub-strategies pursued simultaneously by an 800-person organisation. An organisation that size cannot operationalise that many strategies. It can only publish them.
Leadership view: The optimisation is not accidental. Leadership choices consistently favour empire size, career positioning, and narrative control over delivery. The CEO accumulated a BCS Fellowship, FedIP registration, the UWTSD Professor of Practice title (awarded alongside two other DHCW directors in December 2020 — four months before DHCW’s founding board), and a “Digital CEO of the Year” award, all during the 2020-2021 transition to permanent CEO. The Compassionate Leadership Pledge was approved by the board in fewer than fifteen seconds with no questions, while staff burnout sat at 65% — a sequence analysed at Psychological Safety as exhibit of the cover-language that permits the wrong goal to be optimised against without internal contradiction. When asked what patient benefit corresponded to a 25% workforce expansion: “It would be lovely to demonstrate the value.”
Witness view: A close circle around the CEO deliberately directs resources, hiring, and decision-making to serve their collective interests. Sham recruitment processes with predetermined outcomes. Protege advancement at the expense of programme delivery. Empire-building observed in specific decisions by specific people for specific beneficiaries. This is not an emergent property of a dysfunctional system. It is a conscious, coordinated choice.
Pipeline view: The clique predates DHCW. Three successive NHS Wales CEOs emerged from a single health board (ABUHB), via a patronage pipeline controlled by Andrew Goodall (Welsh Government Permanent Secretary, formerly ABUHB CEO) and Judith Paget (Director General Health & Social Services, formerly ABUHB CEO). The UWTSD professorships described above were awarded — through WIDI, the Wales Institute of Digital Information — before DHCW had even held its first board meeting. The wrong goal was not adopted by the organisation over time. It was set by the people who built it. The clique is not a corruption of the design. It is the design.
Produced By
L6: The Manufactured Narrative — the internal perception of success supports the wrong goal. L8: The Loyalty Selection Loop — hiring for loyalty rather than competence builds an organisation optimised for control. L10: The Information Fortress — blocking external information prevents the wrong goal from being exposed. L11: The Oversight Obstruction Loop — degrading oversight ensures no external body can challenge the goal.
How is the ‘seeking the wrong goal’ trap broken?
This trap cannot be escaped by the current leadership because the wrong goal IS their goal. The goal changes only when the people who set the goal change. The people who set the goal have been directly informed of the harm their actions cause. They chose to continue. The escape route is leadership replacement — preceded by the accountability proceedings that make replacement unavoidable.
The blueprint’s Intervention 1: Competent Leadership addresses this trap at its root – replacing the people who set the wrong goal – while Intervention 4: Flip the Model restructures the organisation so the new goal is patient outcomes, not empire size.