What Are Your Employees Doing?
This question is easy to answer if you manage a factory or other work involving physical effort. You see items coming off the production line, being modified in some way. beingg painted or whatever. But
AI Improves Productivity – or Does It?
There seems to be two major views about the impact of the increasing use of AI on the productivity of organisations. One school of thought suggests that AI can streamline processes and systems, enhance knowledge
What Are We Missing?
We all know that productivity growth has slowed over the last decade. There have been numerous shocks to the global economy and trading system - the biggest being the financial crisis and the COVID epidemic
No More Typing
It always seemed odd to me when many managers lost their secretaries and took over their own typing - simply because word processing had been invented. Most also organised their own diaries, scheduled their own meetings
Its A Mess
Politicians in the UK have been going on about 'growth' for some time now. All major political parties have 'growth on their agenda and claim that they are the party that can deliver this growth.
Inspiring Others
Leadership is a difficult concept to 'bottle'. I have studied leadership theory and even contributed a little to it. Yet I would have trouble boiling the concept down to a couple of sentences - to go in
Heed the Lessons from other Sectors
It is amazing how so many sectors fail to observe, and adopt (or adapt) successful moves in other sectors. One of the most successful innovations (and productivity improvement moves) of my lifetime is the introduction of
Youn Need Soft Skills
I've spent a lot of my life helping individuals and organisations acquire the skills needed to help improve productivity. In doing so, I have observed that it is often HOW changes are implemented that determines their effectiveness
What Should You Be Doing?
Most people find, or think, they have too much to do. Naturally, they try and concentrate on those things that they consider to be the most important. However even this can be fraught with difficulty. If
Productivity is Not about Cost-Cutting
Many people (even quite a lot of managers and directors) think that productivity improvement involves cutting costs. It can - and certainly cutting costs should improve productivity. However this should not form the basis of a productivity
Diagnosis can be confusing
I read a lot of papers and articles about productivity - or more usually, about the lack of productivity. Most Western nations have had little productivity growth over the last few years. Many of these
The debate continues on WFH
There has been much debate over the relative productivity effects of working from home (WFH) versus office-based versus hybrid working. Companies who sought to reduce property expenses by switching to WFH have generally been disappointed by
Its Not Better – or More – HRM you need
A recent article on the Gartner website suggested that with other approaches not producing effective results, what the business world needs is better human resource management to improve labour productivity. I couldn't agree less. I've
Bring People Together
We know that innovation often arises from an odd or unexpected coming together of people with disparate skills, different attitudes, different knowledge sets and perhaps different attitudes. There are even innovation approaches and techniques that aim
Doomed to be Disappointed
I was reading some research recently which suggested that managers and employees have quite different assessments of how much time might be saved by the introduction of AI to an organisation, with managers expecting significantly
Talk To Me!
Do you spend a lot of trime reading- and writing - emails? Are you an avid user of Slack or What's App? Many people do / are. Well, perhaps you need to rethink your approach to
Reflections
Now is the time to reflect on the last year. What went well? What went badly? What have you learned? What should you have learned? What new skills have you developed? If you are not
Making It Big!
It is often said- probably because it is true - that small businesses are the bedrock of a healthy economy. Business leaders know this; even leaders of large businesses, for their businesses were small once. One
I Give Up
I've been using AI systems for a while now. I mainly use Chat GPT but I have tried a few others to see how they compare. My executive summary is that particular systems may be better at
Like Me
There has been a tendency since forever for companies to hire new people that are like the existing people. This results partly from both conscious and unconscious bias but also from a 'reasoned' argument that like
In The Right Job
During the pandemic many people changed jobs - though some people also lost jobs. Quite a lot of the changes invalid a switch to a different ,location and/ or to a different industry as people
Think longer-term
In the UK (snd many other Western countries) companies find it difficult to plan further ahead than their next 3 month reporting period. If their reported performance drops, so does their share price - end
UK Workers Don’t Work Hard Enough
This is a statement you will often see in the UK press (and those in other countries will see similar statements with their country replacing the UK.) IBu is it true? Well, firstly the statement
Government stewaerdship of AI
AI has significant potential to help improve healthcare. It can (hopefully) save lives, improve the work and job satisfaction of health professionals’, and make health systems more people centred. It can help address some of