DHCW responds to every problem by displacing rather than addressing it. Hire instead of fixing process. Outsource instead of building capability. Rebrand instead of restructuring. Each symptomatic fix relieves pressure temporarily — and weakens the structural capacity ever to address the cause. The burden is shifted from the part of the system that could have fixed it (engineering competence, programme governance) to parts that cannot (recruitment, vendor contracts, communications).
What is the ‘shifting the burden’ trap at DHCW?
In Meadows’ framework, Shifting the Burden occurs when a system applies quick fixes that address the symptom but erode the system’s own capacity to solve the underlying problem. Each quick fix makes the fundamental solution harder to implement, creating dependency on more quick fixes.
How It Manifests at DHCW
The quick fixes are familiar: hire more people instead of fixing the processes that make them unproductive. Outsource to vendors instead of building internal capability. Rebrand failing programmes instead of conducting genuine post-mortems.
But DHCW has added a more dangerous variant: dismiss the person who identified the problem instead of fixing the problem. The whistleblower’s role was replaced with a downgraded position — lower band, less authority. The oversight function was structurally eliminated. The problem didn’t go away. The person who could see it did.
This is burden-shifting at its most corrosive. The “burden” being shifted is not just a technical challenge — it is the discomfort of being held accountable. And the “quick fix” is not hiring or rebranding — it is removing the source of accountability itself.
The reflex is reinforced culturally. Board Secretary Mary Darling described DHCW as “very keen to please” — offered as a positive trait that simply needs moderation. In burden-shifting terms, “keen to please” is a precise diagnostic: a culture that defaults to whichever response makes the immediate problem stop, regardless of whether it solves anything underneath. Quick fixes do not have to be argued for in such a culture. They are the path of least resistance. The “keen to please” reflex is the cultural signature of absent psychological safety: staff optimise for making the immediate problem disappear and authority figures happy, not for surfacing root causes that might inconvenience leadership. It is the structural inverse of the digital-delivery prerequisite the research literature identifies.
The pattern extends beyond hiring, outsourcing, and rebranding to the structure of finance and strategy. DPIF — the discretionary investment fund meant for transformational programmes — was, in Evans’s words, “expanded to fit things that are arguably not that transformational. Not that transformational like Link and RISP.” A funding stream designed to compound long-term capacity was redirected to plug short-term operational gaps; the burden was shifted from operational budgets onto the transformation envelope. Vacancy savings did the inverse: a workforce shortfall was not addressed; instead, the deficit was paid down by leaving posts empty, transferring the burden to the staff who remained until 65% of them reported burnout.
The most ambitious burden-shift is strategic. Ifan Evans authored A Healthier Wales — the strategy DHCW was set up to implement, then failed to deliver. He has now been appointed to design the successor: the next ten-year “Blueprint”. The failure of strategy one is being shifted forward into strategy two by the same author. Authoring the successor is the largest possible quick fix — the past failure is, by definition, not the strategy now in flight.
Produced By
L1: The Hiring Trap — hire instead of fix. L4: The Rebranding Escape — rebrand instead of learn. L5: The Vendor Dependency Spiral — outsource instead of build. L7: The Competence Void — leaders who can’t diagnose the real problem reach for surface fixes. L9: The Whistleblower Suppression Loop — remove the problem-identifier instead of the problem.
How is the ‘shifting the burden’ trap broken?
Cannot come from within. The burden-shifting IS the leadership strategy — it is not a mistake they can be coached out of. External intervention is required: Welsh Government, Senedd, or legal proceedings that impose accountability from outside the system.
The blueprint’s Intervention 4: Flip the Model targets this trap directly – replacing the outsource-and-hire reflex with a structure that builds genuine internal capability.