We have all experienced sensory overload due to the deluge of emails we receive. This is even more so for those of us whose organisations have provided us with a range of helpful (?) productivity tools like Google Docs, Slack, Teams, WhatsApp and so on. These were often introduced during the pandemic to enable remote
A new trend is emerging of organisations organising review and retrospection meetings - perhaps every 2 weeks or so to allow employees (collectively) to review what they’ve done, what they’ve achieved, what went well and what didn’t. The meeting is a safe space in which employees can speak freely and honestly, even critically. It helps managers identify
Lots of countries that expanded their productivity through the 1980s and 1990s have slowed to a crawl. Their 'growth engines' seem to have disappeared or been dismantled. COVID-19 may have been the final nail in the coffin (or the puncture in the tyre). Many of these companies are still trying to restart their engines -
Getting people back to the office is proving difficult for many organisations. Employees have got used to the flexibility, and to the lack of commuting, associated with home working. Many organisations have saved money by allowing users to use their own technology and furniture (saving the organisation the cost and trouble of providing and supporting it.) But this
We all need more food. The world population continues to grow. At the same time, however, we devote less land to agriculture as we create mega cities and urban sprawl. The only solution is increased agricultural productivity. However, an annual report from Virginia Tech University in the US shows agriculture is behind the pace of meeting the
I remember once walking past an office and the staff in there were obviously enjoying themselves. They were laughing - at what, I know not. My first thought was ‘How odd. Shouldn’t they be taking their work more seriously? We pay them to work, not to play. “ But, of course, first thoughts are quite often wrong thoughts. This
In this world where many workers are still workings from home - or hybrid working - some managers find it hard to assess the performance of their staff. There has been a sharp increase in the use of employee monitoring software - often seen as intrusive and unfair by the employees themselves. Yet we know that
A very simple way of thinking about productivity is to identify the things that block or slow down throughput and eliminate them. I know this is an oversimplification because in some case, removing a bottleneck just creates another one further down the process …. but you will almost certainly have made some impact by removing
I get concerned when I see famous people in all sort of fields (‘celebrities’?) give advice to youngsters saying something like “You can be anything you want to be, do anything you want to do. You just need a goal and to work very hard.” Now positivism is good - and encouraging youngsters to work hard
Someone once told me if you want innovation in engineering, don’t ask an engineer. They’ll give you accepted (and workable) engineering solutions but they won’t give you groundbreaking, innovative or creative solutions. What you need is to ask a non-engineer to give you ideas for new ways of addressing your problem - and then ask an