Recently a colleague was bemoaning the fact that he had taken a bad decision. When I questioned him about the decision, and about the outcomes, I formed the view that he had taken a 'correct' (or sensible) decision given the information he had available at the time. As an example, consider the decision to make
For about 10 years now wage increases in Germany have not kept up with the development of productivity, by a long stretch" said European Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor in an interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag recently This, of course, makes Germany highly competitive compared to other European states. Is this a problem? Is this unfair?
When we make changes to (try to) improve productivity, we subsequently measure results and assess impact. (Or we should if we want to evaluate our own performance and impact.) However, in many complex situations, we cannot be clear that what we have done has resulted in the changes we observe. What would have happened if
In my recent discussions with PAPA (the Pan African Productivity Association), the topic of the Ebola virus came up. Just as Africa seems to have recovered from the great HIV/Aids crisis (having largely got the 'epidemic' under control), the continent is hit by another great health problem - likely to have severe implications for those
John Heap, President of WCPS, was in Mauritius as advisor to the National Productivity & Competitiveness Council. On this visit he has been involved in a number of projects involving support for SMEs - including one supporting small, women-only cooperatives. While there John gave a keynote presentation at a Board
Well, I’m here in Mauritius and I’ve been having an interesting time. I spent a few days with the Board of PAPA (the Pan African Productivity Association) discussing the productivity status and opportunities in Africa. Many of the productivity centres and champions are working under a range of funding, cultural and political constraints but there
The 'something in the air' i refer to in the blog title is ... ME. As you are reading this, I should be in the air (if I'm not waiting at an airport terminal) en route to Mauritius. Those of you who follow this blog know that I make this trip regularly - I have
Big Data in 'in' - its a fashionable topic, its 'cool' and exciting. But is it useful? What are the applications where it will 'make a difference' - on a global level. Well, I've been doing some work in Agri-business recently.... and one useful trend has been to make data available (on yields, prices and
I have been doing a little work recently in relation to productivity and performance measures. The thought struck me after trying to construct appropriate measures for a particular organisation in a particular situation that the measures we use are not as important as the fact that we use measures to track progress against strategy and
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 ...