Many companies now encourage staff to get involved in charitable work. Some even organise it and provide resources, especially time. The motivation is usually to improve the company image amongst the local community. However there is a much more important reason for engaging with charitable work. We want our employees to engage with us, to

I am not immune from careless or overhasty thinking. Recently I read a report on new developments for air conditioning making devices more energy efficient. My immediate thought was that we should just get rid of air conditioning and, for example, stop living in places where cooling is necessary. Of course, at the time, I

There are great hopes for autonomous vehicles - though some worry about whether the technology is ‘up to the job’. There are some driving situations and conditions where autonomy is relatively easy and others (driving in busy high streets for example) where problems are greater and the autonomy mire difficult to achieve. Goods vehicles, though,

I have been doing quite a bit of work with Lean approaches and techniques recently. I like Lean ... not because of the tools and techniques (which are excellent on the whole) ... but because it is based on clear and firm principles. To practise Lean it is much more important to be guided by

The benefits of workforce diversity are well documented. Usually, however, these relate to diversity in race, gender and sexuality. There are also benefits in an age-diverse workforce where the different attitudes and skills that come at different life stages can be used to create balanced, ‘superteams’. In Western developed countries, this is well known and

It is difficult to change the behaviour of a child who is a fussy eater. If you try to punish, you reinforce the negative associations of the food they don’t like. If you try to reward you remind them that the reward is so much better than the food they don’t like. Sometimes, motivation is

Many people look to famous entrepreneurs as role models. They see people driven by success, working hard over long hours and completely focused. However, they fail to realise that such people might be ‘wired’ differently than the rest of us.  For us mere mortals there are things we can do to improve our abilities without

One of things we do, as productivity professionals, is to examine the evidence - the performance data - to identify where problems and Improvement opportunities exist.  Indeed, we often go further to investigate the root cause of a problem so we know we are not merely addressing the symptoms of an underlying problem which might

Many firms believe that technology will make them more productive - technology in their main processes and in their communication/administrative processes. Technology, of course, can be an aid to productivity. But it is only really effective when the firm is already quite efficient. We have all seen firms where technology has simply automated or accelerated

A few weeks ago I wrote about the need to take some time away from the pressures of work to recharge your body and mind and come back stronger.  Here is little tip (hack?) complementary to that one Most of us have a ‘To Do’ list, things we have to get done. We might use