Talking to health managers about change: heroes, villains and simplification.

This paper presents contextual and empirical analyses of the pressures on senior health managers in the NHS through an examination of the documents produced by the NHS National Co-ordinating Centre for Service Delivery and Organisation on "Managing change". The result is a discussion and advocacy of the means through which "knowledge" with "knowing" might be brought together in the NHS to move it more towards an evidence-based approach to management.