Category: 05. Approaches

Public sector waste

Re-reading C Northcote Parkinson’s pearls in ‘The Law and the Profits’, written 60 years ago, one might despair about how nothing much seems to have changed since then We all know his first law: ‘Work expands to fill the time available’ – administrators thus multiply Less well known is his second law: ‘Government expenditure rises …

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Wokism against climate change

In a splendid speech, Russian British comedian Konstantin Kisin at the Oxford Union – see youtube – discusses how ‘woke culture’ and climate activism have ‘gone too far’ and brainwashed young minds so they now only complain instead of putting in the effort to solve the problem – snippets follow – it’s well worth a …

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How to Answer America’s Productivity Slump

At long last, Erica Gunn, writing in Inc.com, focuses on how most of the current ‘productivity puzzle’ which baffles our leaders could be resolved – not by government ministers and economists at the macro level, who indeed have a role to play but only impact some 20% of the total picture – but by managers …

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The Occam’s Razor Of Productivity

Good practical sense from Professor Jim Woods in stockinvestor.com for all busy executives out there – and stock investors too Want to achieve more in life? Of course, you do. Yet for most of us, the idea of achieving more comes with the corollary notion that we are going to have to do a lot …

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Billionaires reveal their secrets

An interesting piece by Jade Scipioni in a CNBC news piece ‘Beyond the Valley’ There are some 2,600 billionaires in the world — and more than two-thirds are self-made A few have of the latter have shared lessons on life and how they found success Warren Buffett, worth some $80 billion – Invest in yourself: …

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Effective change management

The following is a punchy article by journalist Simon Caulkin describing the best way, by far, to improve customer service whilst minimising costs – it’s counter-intuitive, and ignored by big consultancies – however, it works well, and puts their approaches to shame Google ‘change management’ and you get half a billion hits. ‘Change management models’ …

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Help for SMEs to get practical

Under the above heading, Alison Rose, chief executive of commercial & private banking at NatWest wrote the following article which all SMEs would do well to consider As we gear up for Brexit, the UK’s flagging productivity performance is continually in the fore of media headlines and economic analysis Following a further fall in productivity …

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Be single-minded

The following is an article by Professor Martin Hansen of the UC Berkeley School of Information The secret to productivity? Do less, obsess more Do one thing well, not lots averagely   In October 1911, two teams raced to be the first humans to reach the South Pole. One leader and his team achieved the …

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The ‘Unipart Way’

Unipart is a car parts company, founded by John Neill some 30 years ago and a huge success given it now has £1bn revenue and 10,000 employees This week I was invited by Frank Nigriello, their Director of Corporate Affairs, for what turned out to be a long chat about their approach, the ‘Unipart Way’ and …

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Vanguard lead way for big improvements

Productivity is the most important peacetime issue facing any nation or organisation – therefore, one would expect all governments and major business schools, management organisations and consultancies to focus on it  Not so For example: The UK has no well-known, well-supported productivity ‘centre of excellence’ e.g. a UK Productivity Centre – HMG might occasionally set …

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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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