Communicate

By |2020-03-19T22:46:54+00:00July 12th, 2014|

I was looking at a PowerPoint presentation the other day (not one of mine) and I thought "What a great job this person has done of making a complex issue understandable."    It reminded me that we often have two important, overlapping roles - acting as technical experts to solve problems and make improvements ...

Forget the mystery

By |2020-03-19T22:46:54+00:00July 5th, 2014|

A number of you sent me comments to try and unpick the (UK) productivity mystery I referred to in last week's post.  Some of these were backed up by serious analysis. Yet, after reading them all (which i did - gladly) I remain confused - and the mystery remains unresolved. It just made me glad

The UK Mystery

By |2020-03-19T22:46:54+00:00June 28th, 2014|

British productivity was growing steadily if slowly in the years before the financial crisis struck but it’s now some 16% below its pre-crisis level. The Bank of England has published a paper in their  quarterly bulletin of economic research, examining the competing explanations for the productivity puzzle and has a stab at estimating how much

Governments need to get it right

By |2020-03-19T22:46:54+00:00June 21st, 2014|

Many countries have productivity centres to advise their government of productivity and related issues. But do they do any good? Is productivity something that can be shaped and steered by government? I would say 'YES' from my experience in the UK - but not always in ways that might be expected. Twenty or thirty years

:Pick up the banana skins

By |2020-03-19T22:46:54+00:00June 14th, 2014|

Most of the time we get things right.... at least if we have the skills to accomplish what we set out to do  Occasionally, though, we slip on a banana skin - and we get something wrong. A defect in Lean terms (one of the 7 wastes). It is almost impossible to avoid all defects

Where can I find the solution to my productivity problem?

By |2020-03-19T22:46:54+00:00June 7th, 2014|

I have been in the productivity' business' for longer than I care to remember. Sometimes, I feel that the longer I am in the business, the less I know - or the less I feel confident to declare. I started off as a 'work study engineer' - great training, but I soon realised that studying

Is useless expenditure justified?

By |2020-03-19T22:46:54+00:00May 31st, 2014|

As a productivity professional, I am used to counting every penny/cent spent and justifying the expenditure by the benefits it brings - its (perhaps tiny) contribution to the aims of the organisation. Sometimes, however, firms decide to spend money on things which have no direct utility - corporate art, charitable giving, etc.  Can such expenditure

What’s Your Specialism?

By |2020-03-19T22:46:54+00:00May 24th, 2014|

Consultants usually specialise in .... productivity, quality, organisational development, innovation, or some other 'improvement' topic. This suggests that the business world is full of tools and techniques that must be selected carefully according to the kind of situation - and kind of problem - being considered. However my experience is that most of the tools

The Pace of Change

By |2020-03-19T22:46:54+00:00May 17th, 2014|

I was recently looking at some documents I had created a few years ago.  My first thought on reading them was that they were out-of-date, but on re-reading them, I realised the format and appearance was out-of-date but almost all the content was still relevant. Sometimes we get confused by, or seduced by, the medium

Is Piketty right?

By |2020-03-19T22:47:11+00:00May 10th, 2014|

I'm sure that even if you haven't read Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty First Century, you will have seen the controversy surrounding his suggestion that we need to substantially raise taxation of the wealthy to force a 'better' redistribution of wealth (or more properly, of capital). Picketty takes special aim at those with capital

Go to Top