Do you know which factors of your business are important? What, if it changed, would have the biggest impact? A 5% reduction in your material costs, your energy bill,your wage bill, or ...? If you know which are important, you know where to focus attention and improvement activity. If you don't, then who is managing

Many people think that raising productivity means doing more things ... but sometimes, it means doing fewer things more effectively. Some even think the more things they have to do, the more important they are. However, at a personal level, if people concentrated and focused more they might avoid endless 'email tennis' and cut the

Recently, US Vice President Joe Biden claimed that U.S. workers “are three times as productive as any worker in the world.” Of course he was currying favour but it does no good in the longer-term to pretend other than the truth. The US is a highly productive nation - but much of that is down

The world population will rise to 9 billion by 2040 (from the current 7 billion). This has massive implications for all sorts of human activity and human well-being ... perhaps first and foremost being the questions about how we feed and water that population. There are all sorts of answers we need if the world

We all know that planning is essential ... it allows us to create structure and efficiency. We plan at various levels - from detailed production or marketing plans for our company to personal ToDo lists. However, the other day I felt my own ToDo list was so long that it was starting to make me

The UK looks to be doing a little better than most people thought. Rather than contracting - and leading the UK into a further recession - growth has been positive, based on improved service sector activity. Is this a good sign? Well, its probably better than the alternative ... but reading too much into short

Small businesses often use 'involuntary IT mangers' (IITMs) .... non-technical, untrained staff who, by accident or through organisational prompting, take on the role of managing IT operations.According to a recent small business survey commissioned by Microsoft, this costs the US about $24 billion in lost productivity, largely because these staff are taken away from their

'Bring Your Own Device' is the term given to the situation where companies allow staff to take in their own smartphone or tablet and have it connected to company networks and data sources. What does this do for productivity? Well, I dont think we have enough evidence yet to suggest this is a help or

New data on the workplace by Evolv, a startup that monitors hundreds of metrics from Fortune 500 companies, suggests that social media should not be considered the the bane of employee productivity. Rather, the more social networks an employee uses, the more productive they are. In the study it was found that employees who regularly

Most developing countries are following the same development path - aping the West in terms of urbanisation, increased use of fossil fuels, technology and increased consumerism. This is understandable - after all the West has enjoyed the trappings of 'the good life' for many years and has done a good job of 'selling the ideal'