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
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 and did much of their own financial planning and budgeting using the new wonder - the spreadsheet. Now things look
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
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 a dictionary, for example. This is partly because there are different kinds of leadership - for different types of organisation,
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 the containerswithin the logistics sector. We are so used to seeing ships laden with hundreds - or even thousands - of
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 and their success Too many managers think their role is to be tough, uncompromising leaders doing unto the workforce what
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 you are not clear about your long-term goals, deciding what is important is difficult. Here is a 'trick' worth trying.
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 improvement strategy. Concentrating on cutting costs tends to lead to, at best, sub-optimal changes in the organisation and, at worst,
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,