The UK Government is set to fund a business-led initiative designed to improve management skills and business productivity, after Chancellor Philip Hammond’s announcement within the Autumn Statement 2016. The new UK Productivity Council will help narrow the “long-standing productivity gap” between the UK and Germany, the USA, France and Italy and encourage start-ups and small

There are lots of blogs and magazine articles offering 'productivity hacks'. What impact do these have on the productivity of an organisation? Well, most of them are aimed at personal productivity.  They may help some people be marginally more efficient. But their impact on the organisation is almost non-existent since they don't address organisational systems,

How will Brexit affect UK productivity? Well, it looks as though tax revenues will be lower.  But employment looks to be holding steady. The uncertainty will lead to slower investment by some firms. But the real answer is ... no-one knows.  The UK has been struggling to reach pre-financial crisis levels of productivity.  Post- Brexit,

Just last week there was a near collision between a passenger jet and a drone. Drones have, in fact, had quite a bad press.  Yet their potential is immense. There are all sorts of ways in which drones can be used †o improve productivity. Just think of farmers keeping an eye on stock or on

Frontier companies are those who operate at the technology frontier - early and effective adopters.  Unfortunately in the UK, there are few such companies and far too many laggards who adopt technology late and often reluctantly. We need to convince these laggards to evaluate technology as an opportunity, not perceive it as a threat.  At

Sometimes it seems  difficult to get the productivity message over to people - the young aren't interested and it seem to be way down the priority list of many business people and politicians. So, perhaps we have to try communicating in different ways - ways that 'chime' with intended audiences, using language thy relate to

One of my great 'life lessons' came about from reading a quotation which I think is attributed to the Dalai Lama. "If you are in control of a situation, there is no need to worry.  If you are not in control, there is no point worrying.  So, why worry?" Similarly in business, there are things

Do your employees turn up at 9am and leave at 5pm, having completed their day's work.  Was it satisfying for you to watch them beavering away?  Were they productive?  How much more productive might they have ben working from home or from their local coffee shop? Employees often find certain tasks difficult to complete in

When you hire new people how do you induct them into the organisation?  Too often this consists of introductions, 'policy sessions', issuing of email ids and passwords .... and little else.  Your new people are informed - but bored. Yet, in many organisations there is one activity in which you could engage new staff that

Automation brings rewards to companies that invest.  The auto industry has installed many thousands of robots over the last 10 years - numbers of employed people have fallen, quality has risen, productivity is up. Great for the companies -and their shareholders: not so good for those now unemployed workers whose jobs have gone to the