Most western democracies are going through turbulent economic times. Of course, recently we have had the various troubles relating, at least in part , to Donald Trump - tariffs that seem to change on a whim - and wars and unrest that seem to pop up with increasing speed. But Western woes predate the current
In most organisations, outputs come not from the work of individuals but from the work of teams. In our new AI-powered and supported world, how do we build teams that include chatbots or robots. To be honest, I don't know - and I suspect that very few others do. Like people involved in ream-building I
Lots of people, and organisations, are looking to AI to give them a productivity boost. Of course it might do so by improving the speed, accuracy or value of specific processes or transactions. However, those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I often warn about using any technology to speed up
The exhortation above is not meant for my 'normal' readers (assuming some of you are normal) but for the politicians who face some big choices and decisions over the next few years. We have heard a lot over the last 20 years about the threat of automation to jobs (especially manual jobs). Now we have the
Over the last several decades society - and work - have become more complex, more complicated - with vast increases in rules, regulations and associated bureaucracy. This has created entire layers of employment focused on managing this complexity. In both the public and private sectors, millions are primarily engaged in navigating rules sand ensuring compliance.
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 and skills and generally have a positive impact on productivity. . The other ays that AI will simply reduce costs
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 - and catalysts such as advancing technology have lost their impetus as dramatic change (in the technology) has slowed. Of
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. Now you and I know that growth - in this context - is really a shorthand for productivity since
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 articles will make some kind of diagnosis - what has gone wrong or what needs putting right. Occasionally I
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 the resulting productivity delivered and quite a few have tried to encourage or even insist upon return to office-based working (RTO). Employees,