Lots of workers (in manufacturing) are concerned about losing their jobs to robots, as the inexorable rise of automated machines and AI gathers pace. One common ‘defence’ is to suggest that robots only take over the drudgery - leaving the humans to take on more skilled, more knowledge-based tasks, and making the workplace safer. This
It is amazing how a problem, and especially a disaster, can focus the mind ... focus efforts of individuals and teams ... focus organisations - and even focus nations. The current pandemic has been very much ‘pan’ - crossing countries and continents. It has seen remarkable global cooperation and collaboration in the search for an
The obvious answer is ‘Yes’ but is that the right answer? it depends on what you means by ‘worry about’. The CEO needs to worry about ‘big issues’ - those that directly affect achievement of strategic aims and the overall mission. Of course, productivity is important. It is a useful measure of ‘future profit’, of
Two trends have come together to transform attitudes to technology. Firstly, hardware (closely followed by software) has become so advanced that many tasks previously thought incapable of being computerised or digitised have now come within application areas Secondly, people have become used to using technology since they now use their mobile phones for a range
A crisis like the one the world is at the moment changes political, economic and business thinking. Long-strategy understandably gives way to survival thinking.... “How can we get through this?” So, longer (but not that long) issues such as climate change become very much a ‘future nice-to-consider’ rather than an impending issue. Individual firms (and
Which governments succeeded and which have failed in meeting the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic? Well - as ever - it depends on your definition of succcess. There are two main factors against which the future will judge governments: the first is public health and well-being; the second is economic performance. The first will
Many, if not most, companies are looking to improve productivity these days. They may design single, initiatives or projects to look at key issues or, if they are smart, have an ongoing ‘movement’ that systematically addresses all business processes. Too often, however, even the smarter companies concentrate on ‘up front’ processes and tasks - the
Do you want your employees to work hard? (Yes, we’re starting with the easy questions.) Well, actually you don’t. If those employees are doing the wrong things, or even doing the right things but in the wrong way, then hard work can, at best, be sub-optimal and ,at worst, counter-productive. What we want from our
I have written and spoken recently about the growing realisation that resilience must be a key factor in industry development where security and consistency of supply becomes ever more important when selecting working systems and processes, and especially logistics services and processes. Nowhere is this more true than in agriculture where food security becomes ever
When we carry out future -gazing or horizon scanning, we can often see likely large-scale changes ahead. For example, self-driving vehicles are coming. We are not sure when but they are coming. What does this mean for those who currently have driving jobs? Well, many of them will simply lose their jobs. However, take parcel