A crisis like the one the world is at the moment changes political, economic and business thinking. Long-strategy understandably gives way to survival thinking.... “How can we get through this?” So, longer (but not that long) issues such as climate change become very much a ‘future nice-to-consider’ rather than an impending issue. Individual firms (and
Which governments succeeded and which have failed in meeting the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic? Well - as ever - it depends on your definition of succcess. There are two main factors against which the future will judge governments: the first is public health and well-being; the second is economic performance. The first will
Many, if not most, companies are looking to improve productivity these days. They may design single, initiatives or projects to look at key issues or, if they are smart, have an ongoing ‘movement’ that systematically addresses all business processes. Too often, however, even the smarter companies concentrate on ‘up front’ processes and tasks - the
Do you want your employees to work hard? (Yes, we’re starting with the easy questions.) Well, actually you don’t. If those employees are doing the wrong things, or even doing the right things but in the wrong way, then hard work can, at best, be sub-optimal and ,at worst, counter-productive. What we want from our
I have written and spoken recently about the growing realisation that resilience must be a key factor in industry development where security and consistency of supply becomes ever more important when selecting working systems and processes, and especially logistics services and processes. Nowhere is this more true than in agriculture where food security becomes ever
When we carry out future -gazing or horizon scanning, we can often see likely large-scale changes ahead. For example, self-driving vehicles are coming. We are not sure when but they are coming. What does this mean for those who currently have driving jobs? Well, many of them will simply lose their jobs. However, take parcel
We should be able to assume that most business leaders are aiming to improve the productivity and performance of their organisation. Yet, not many of them seem to be successful in doing this. This suggests these leaders are doing the wrong things or not doing the right things correctly. I think many of therm have
A lot of productivity writers and bloggers advocate a morning routine to set you up for the day. The problem with routines is that they tend to result in routine thinking. If you want fresh, innovative thinking you need to break out of the straight jacket of your established routines and establish some new routes
When improving performance, we often urge companies to take a longer term view. Forget short term gains and concentrate on the gains to be made year in, year out over many years, Yet, sometimes, companies should concentrate on the short term. If a company is in trouble, it might not be able to wait for
I was musing the other day about 'off the wall' inventions that might do good for the wrong reasons - or were designed to solve a problem that no-one knew existed. My starting point was some old news (2019) that a UK firm had designed a toilet that was specifically designed to be uncomfortable -