Tag: Action

P.I.N. – a new productivity broadside?

Last week I attended the launch of a new initiative for improving UK productivity – I sent the following email to Kate Penney, PIN programme manager – she has already thanked me and promised to pass it on Kate, I thought the launch of the PIN (Productivity Insights Network) last Tuesday evening in London went well – …

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Better ways to boost UK productivity?

Sam Dumitriu of the Adam Smith Institute commented on UK Chancellor Philip Hammond’s budget and the OBR’s prediction that UK growth will be a sluggish 1.5% or lower for the next five years whilst the USA is growing at twice that rate Hammond has offered support to boost R&D spending and sort out the housing crisis …

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Government action for big productivity improvements

Words are all very well but good measures leading to worthwhile actions matter most to people and nations And, to boost national productivity, governments must look to: Boost their private sectors by helping them produce the profits which pay for everyone’s SoL (Standard of Living) and underpin their QoL (Quality of Life) Ensure all public …

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Great performers employ CI

There’s a direct read-across between how the best in business emulate the best in sport In an article in The Times, Matthew Syed asks ‘What separates greats from wasted talents?’: “Great athletes are hyper-confident – they don’t believe they have any weaknesses – they cannot be beaten – they’re already perfect and so cannot continually improve” …

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Productivity Commission (Aus) shows the way

Peter Harris, chairman of Australia’s Productivity Commission (PC), was interviewed on the airwaves The purpose of the APC is to deal with problems that the Government finds too hard – too difficult to solve – based on a fact-based analysis And it’s most important that their views are accepted as being independent The process they follow …

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FDI boosts productivity of UK firms

According to the ONS – the UK’s Office for National Statistics – UK companies that get foreign investment are twice as productive as other firms FDI – Foreign Direct Investment – comprises not just foreign cash injections but also foreign best practices and foreign management One has only to consider the success of foreign car-makers …

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Regional commuter network needs development

Several top business leaders are now pushing for government development of the regions as the best way to get UK productivity out of the current doldrums, back on track and closing the gap with the rest of the G7 In particular, they focus on the need to greatly improve public transport within, not between, those …

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Can PLG plug a big productivity gap?

Whilst investment, innovation, competition and luck all play a significant part in the performance of any organisation, public as well as private, it is its management that has the most influence The same applies at national level with government ministers And if managers and ministers, whatever their level, are to do their jobs well they …

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MGI assess productivity puzzle

The MGI (McKinsey Global Institute), the in-house think tank of the consulting giant McKinsey & Co, opened a recent ‘discussion paper’ on the productivity puzzle afflicting the USA and other developed economies by stating: “Now, as low birth rates slow the expansion of the labour force, increasing productivity, the output we get from every hour …

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Dismal productivity trends need not continue

The OECD – Organisation of Economic and Cultural Development – recently painted a dismal G7 economic picture claiming  ‘slowing rates of productivity growth’ in advanced nations over the last ten years or so Other data suggests the same trend is underway in many less affluent nations according to an article by Marc Levinson – his …

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Greatest AI value needs new business models

In the 60s and 70s, most firms invested in mainframe computers, then minis, to improve service, not output, and because everyone else seemed to be doing so – they were not investing in IT to improve productivity – and these IT investments were all focussed on supporting existing business models Josh Sutton, CEO of Agorai, …

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Political parties’ productivity plans

Productivity is the biggest peacetime issue facing all UK political parties Annual improvements are vital if living standards and average earnings are to be raised – so what did their recent manifestos say about it? Conservative party manifesto – essentially ‘to grow the national wealth pie’: Introduce a National Productivity Investment Fund – spend £23 …

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Passports to productivity Improvement?

Some say the ‘Productivity Puzzle’ is the result of a storm of problems affecting both supply and demand in G7 developed nations viz: Supply: In the past, major technological advances (aka Schumpeter discontinuities) enabled quantum leaps in productivity levels – G7 nations would all adopt them and improve at about the same rate – now, without more …

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Pareto analyses

Pareto, a 19th century Italian economist, spotted that “80% of effects arise from only 20% of possible causes” – apply this rule to national productivity levels and just the top quintile of companies determine whether improvements are made – and it has been ever thus In other words, the great majority of companies are doing …

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Basic steps to big improvements

There are various acronyms on offer for how to go about improvement projects viz: PDCA from TQM – Plan, Do, Check, Amend DMAIC from Six Sigma – Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control SREDIM from Work Study – Setup, Record, Examine, Develop, Implement, Maintain   All boil down to much the same process Managers, whatever their level and …

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It’s the rest, not the best, that’s the problem

The Brooking Institute’s Martin Neil Baily and Nicholas Montalbano considered the causes of the current global productivity puzzle recently “The most promising sign for future growth is that the most productive firms are growing faster than the rest – the frontier is still moving out – but the diffusion of best practices is not pulling the …

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Broad action needed post Brexit

In the Guardian, Katie Allen recommended ways Prime Minister Theresa May could ‘lift the UK economy’s post-Brexit’ blues – via: Tax cuts – especially VAT More infrastructure spending – traffic jams and delivery delays waste a huge amount of time, adding to unit costs and reducing national productivity Encouraging huge increases in housebuilding across the nation, …

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Wage levels versus Productivity

President John F. Kennedy believed that “a rising tide lifts all boats” but many question if that remains true today in the business world They point to data showing that productivity has risen sharply since the end of WW2 whilst wages have stagnated and conclude that productivity-driven economic growth does not necessarily benefit USA workers …

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Pin factory productivity

Adam Smith illustrated how the division of labour could improve productivity in the famous small pin factory example he used in his tome ‘Wealth of Nations’, 1776, viz: 10 workers, each specialising in a different aspect of the work , could produce over 48,000 pins a day However, if each of these ten workers had made …

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Full AI impact may take time

Erik Brynjolfson, an MIT economics professor, says: “We are optimistic about the ultimate productivity growth fuelled by AI and complementary technologies The real issue is that it takes time to implement changes in processes, skills and organisational structures to fully harness AI’s potential as a GPT (General Purpose Technology)”   Benefits from specific applications are …

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