The Irony of AI Success

By |2025-04-15T10:21:35+00:00April 19th, 2025|

Being introduced to one of the new AI services (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.) is like meeting a genie who offers you three wishes. What should you ask for? The power of AI seems so immense that it is difficult to think of the prompts to give your AI or the questions to ask it. So,

Productivity Needs A Long-Term View

By |2025-04-10T21:45:48+00:00April 12th, 2025|

Long-term planning can be difficult for CEOs.  A company is only as good as its latest quarterly report (according to many investors), so today's results are crucial.  Yet, real change— especially culture change— can take years to bring about. Workforce planning needs to be undertaken alongside strategic change, technology change, and process change—all of which are long-term

Improving Work-Life Balance

By |2025-04-05T09:04:31+00:00April 5th, 2025|

Physical and mental stress are all too common as more people seem to find the pressures of completing expected work tasks and expected in-office time too much to bear.  As firms shed labour to cut costs, the problems become worse. Work-life balance is not merely about cutting working hours or simply  dividing hours between WORK and HOME  life'

Where Will Your New Employees Come From?

By |2025-03-26T20:23:00+00:00March 29th, 2025|

Times are tough for both commercial organisations and governments in terms of recruiting the labour needed for economic growth.  Employment is high in most developed countries and there is a trend towards disengagement and ’quiet quitting’. This means that firms have to look further afield (than traditional labour markets) to find new staff.  This ‘distance’ brings into

Building Engagement

By |2025-03-17T12:04:35+00:00March 22nd, 2025|

Engaged employees are more productive.   This is not surprising.  If employees feel they have a  significant part to play in the organisation they work for, they are much more likely to share the goals of the organisation and to contribute fully to those goals. The culture of the organisation is a major determinant of the nature and level of

Improving Productivity in the Modern Workplace

By |2025-03-15T10:12:40+00:00March 15th, 2025|

Over the last two decades and especially since the pandemic -  the workplace has undergone significant transformations. The rise of technology-driven companies brought flat hierarchies, attractive employee perks, and open-office concepts. Meanwhile, the integration of productivity tools like Slack, Trello, and generative AI has aimed to make workflows more efficient. However, despite these advancements, more employees

Thankyou, Sergey

By |2025-03-07T11:21:50+00:00March 8th, 2025|

Last week, I asked “What should we measure?” And talked about the need to measure outputs/outcomes rather than inputs - in terms of workers’ contributions.  Working long hours is not a key to success.  Those hours have to make a contribution to strategic goals. Now, I read that Google co-founder Sergey Brin has called the

What Should We Measure?

By |2025-02-27T09:59:25+00:00March 1st, 2025|

There is an old management adage… “If we can measure it, we can understand it”.  This is broadly true.  Certainly if we don’t measure, we find it hard to assess or judge. So. if we want to improve effectiveness and productivity, what should we measure? There is one basic answer to this.  We should measure what is important

Engage and Reward

By |2025-02-17T10:08:53+00:00February 22nd, 2025|

I have written before about my belief that WFH imposes a brake on productivity.  There are all sorts of reasons - big and small.  The other day I thought of another reason which I thought I should bring to your attention. When working from home, employees obviously (well it’s obvious to me anyway), have less engagement with

Don’t Multitask

By |2025-02-11T17:00:34+00:00February 15th, 2025|

If, on reading this headline, your first response was “If I don’t multitask, how do I get through my long and varied To Do list?”, then read on. If you switch regularly snd swiftly between tasks, or even worse, try to do two things at one, (like handle your emails while in a meeting), you

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