Not all ‘productivity’ is good. The word is used for a ratio of something to something and is able to suggest ‘improvement’ without defining improvement of what. Be careful with the term. Watch the video!
Continue readingCategory Archives: continuous improvement
Continuous Improvement, Motivation Matters Creating environments where people want to give of their best, increasing productivity and helping you and your business be a success
LEAN IMPLEMENTATION
As a Manufacturing Advisory Service Champion (MAS), I had the delight of seeing various implementations. There was no doubt that the experts were very competent at Lean. Unfortunately they forgot that there isn’t a good process that people can’t make worse, or a bad process that people can’t make work. I watched a competent Lean implementation in a large SME, and every visit I asked the same question: Are your people involved in this?
Continue readingCreating a positive culture
It’s strange but true, that no-one wants to work in a negative culture, but most of us have! Why not make sure your people get everything they should from their employment with you, instead of a culture which uses negative culture to make sure your staff to the minimum acceptable. Do you manage your staff to make sure they achieve the minimum acceptable performance? Have you tried explaining that decision? Enjoy the video.
Continue readingNational Minimum Wage Hikes
The National Living Wage is due to increase by 6.6% from April 2022. The media always claims the impact of the April rise in the minimum wage “ramps up” costs. Although it’s not so easy to fill a job paying the minimum these post-pandemic days. Even then we would be behind our erstwhile friends in Europe. What effect does this 2022 6.6% increase in minimum wage have on your business?
Continue readingToday Has Been A Good Day!
Motivating people at work is quite a difficult thing to achieve. The correct actions are simple in themselves but choosing which of the vast range of possible actions to implement, is complicated. The right action depends on the organization culture, the work content, the individual’s aspirations and, of course, the desired behaviour. One thing I do recommend, however, is a daily note of achievement.
Continue readingTraditional Benchmarking
This was very much the fashion in the 80s. It’s still a useful technique with a 21st Century twist. Enjoy the video.
Continue readingRighteous Robots And Erroneous Executives
Let me be extreme to make a point. The Executive View People work for money People do as little as possible for it They don’t follow instructions The Employee’s View
Continue readingA Higher ROI
The Board, and the Chief Executive in particular, are aware that the shareholders would prefer a higher return on their investment, everything else being equal. The route to enhanced returns in the long term is through raising the operating profit from a given turnover. I’ve published much about ways to reduce input costs, overheads, and of the ideas behind making people more willing to work toward your goals. Improving people’s performance, in the long term, is a difficult management challenge. It is very easy to establish and incentivise SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound) goals and make people work toward them. Do you think you can create an incentive scheme that will cover all eventualities?
Continue readingLet them eat cake
I contribute to discussions on LinkedIn. A recent discussion asked for opinions on the best strategy to develop engaged staff. Opinions poured in on successful practices so I thought I would add mine. My management style is one of pointing the way, not taking you blindfolded to the destination. I hope my words make you think and form your own questions rather than lay down a heavy tome of “facts”. I want to point you to learning. It’s a coaching style in the main. If I have learnt one thing, in my scientific research of people’s behaviour at work and 46 years of honing that knowledge, it is that what is obvious, is always more subtle and layered where people are concerned. I pitched into the discussion and described a successful action that helped to build the momentum of behaviour change and added to the excitement that something different was happening.
Continue readingDistributed Intelligence
In 1999, work started on MEMS (Micro-Electromechanical Systems) at the University of California, Berkley. The aim was to produce a sensing, computing and communicating system in a one cubic millimetre size. These dust motes, dubbed Smart Dust, could be scattered or carried in the air forming a sensor web covering a wide area. The project closed in 2001 having reached a mote size of a few cubic millimetres. Certainly, there was a lot of R&D activity in the next size up – the insect size. So, the next time you take a swipe at a Bluebottle fly remember it may just be doing a TV audience survey! The distributed intelligence idea is interesting though. Henry Ford is attributed with the complaint that whenever he hired a pair of hands, he got a brain too. Of course, these days we recognise that you cannot run a successful organisation without using all the brains you employ.
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