Category: 18. Tasks

Meetings are a productivity killer

According to a study reported in Fortune.com by Byjane Thier: “3 in every 4 meetings are totally ineffective – they really should have been just email”. 5,000 knowledge workers across four continents took part in a recent survey by Australian software giant Atlassian and the vast consensus among those respondents was that nothing wastes more of their …

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Extra task performance measures

Some interesting ideas follow from ‘Entrepreneur Europe’ on ways to assess the performance of a team – marketing or software development, say – and keeping a finger on their pulse Four extra performance measures are proposed: Planned-to-done ratios: How well have plans been executed? What % were completed satisfactorily, or better? Cycle time: Work is …

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Robots at Work

The Financial Times reported on a study “Robots at Work,” written by Georg Graetz, a researcher at the Department of Economics, Uppsala University, and Guy Michaels, London School of Economics, which examines the impact of industrial robots on jobs, productivity and growth. Industrial robots are programmable and are widely used for assembly, packaging, inspection and agricultural harvesting. In …

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Failure demand

The following article is reproduced en toto – it explains a concept which has an enormous impact on the efficiency and costs of many processes and staff morale – sadly, far too many managers, and consultants, seem unable to understand it or refuse to believe it – far worse, many of their customers, whatever the …

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Groupthink waffle or results needed

The following is a precis of part of an email from Professor John Seddon of Vanguard Consultants who  spoke at a public-sector ‘shared services’ conference The opening keynote was from the interim leader of the Government Shared Service programme – a very nice man – who said: We aim to be the best civil service in …

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CBI calls for more companies to use digital technology

According to the CBI – Confederation of British Industry – the UK needs ‘more companies skilled to find and adopt available technologies and management best practices known to improve productivity and pay’ In particular, the use of cloud computing, mobile technology, e-purchasing, cybersecurity and on-line procurement could result in a £100 billion boost to the …

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Robots to transform Education

An article in The Times reported that Anthony Seldon, former headmaster of Wellington College, UK, believes: “The imminent arrival of robot teachers will herald the greatest revolution in education” “Personalised learning, facilitated by artificial intelligence, will mean that every student from Eton to the most deprived school in Blackpool, will receive education of a standard …

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AI becoming mainstream in Retail

Expert systems to aid human and plant maintenance and clever OR (Operations Research) computer models (aka apps) to find optimum solutions to complex business problems have been around for over 50 years now AI (Artificial Intelligence) is just the latest moniker for much the same, albeit more powerful Retail Week recently published an article about …

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