About Us

Keen to put years of business experience to good use in retirement, and wanting to rehabilitate the concept of ‘productivity improvement’ as a win:win activity for every kind of private and public sector operation, this website is a free resource for anyone interested in improving productivity

Although marred by association with unfair pay deals and staff cuts, ‘productivity improvement’ is much more about recognising if time, effort or materials are being wasted, or customer loyalty squandered, or opportunities for greater profit being overlooked

And with national productivity being key to the country’s collective prosperity, every small improvement in any enterprise, or any public service, is to the good

Questions and comments will bring this ambition alive, and guest blogs will be warmly welcomed, but, in the meantime the content of this website is your starter for ten.

The focus is on measuring the right things and then closing performance gaps using approaches which clearly work well

Our views are offered for free on this website

They’re also supported by the latest version of our book Productivity Knowhow

We welcome questions and constructive comment from all readers

 

 

 

Introduction

Most organisations, and nations, perform well below their potential i.e. most could produce at least 30% more services or output using the same resources, or cut 30% of their inputs/ costs and still provide the same output/ outcomes You may be a manager or government minister of one of them and struggling with one or …

Aims

Productivity improvement is the biggest issue facing any manager at any level in any organisation in any sector – and the biggest peacetime issue facing any government minister too Hence, one would expect there to be thousands of books, seminars, conferences, courses, websites and apps on the subject, and specialist managers too – surprisingly, there …

Our people

We are a network of independent professional productivity improvers Each has successful experience in productivity improvement so that, together, we offer a wide, in-depth range of practical advice, comment and information to users of this website – all for free The basic criteria we use for selecting people to join the PK network are: A …

Our founder

Dick Smythe was educated at Bolton School, graduated in pure mathematics and statistics at St Andrews University and then took a masters in Operations Research at Birmingham University under the famous Professor Steven Vajda He became a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, Operational Research Society, Institute of Management Services and the Institute of Physical …