I've been in India for a week talking about a number of issues, including skills development.  India is making a big investment in Sector Skills Councils to try to work with industry to identify and fill skills gaps. Unfortunately, this dialogue is not proving easy.  Industry is not used to being consulted and to participating

The UK has had severe flooding this spring – especially in the South West of the country. The reasons are not fully clear – but the weather conditions have been remarkable and relentless. Over the last few decades, farmers in the affected area have been encouraged to drain the peat moors to improve grazing for

Paradigm changes are rare - and when they occur, they can be very disruptive and threatening to those with a significant (financial or emotional) investment in the status quo. They are also unexpected - almost by definition.  'Normal' thinking tends to be analytical and constructive - and we tend to get what we expect to

How many people in this world do you trust? My answer is 'All of them' until they suggest to me that they cannot be trusted.  If we start from a position of trust, we normally end up approaching discussions and negotiations in a positive and constructive frame of mind.  if you trust employees, for example,

Our office is quite small - a few desks ... and computers of course.  One of our members of staff is a graphic designer (amongst other things, for of course we cannot afford single-specialism staff) and this week I provided him with a graphics tablet. He was slightly surprised - but very grateful. More importantly

Last week I talked about the need to cross organisational boundaries - to avoid creating 'silo management' where each department takes decisions on its own information to suit its own ends - resulting in sub-optimal performance for the organisation. This week I return to boundaries to use very briefly on whether approaches to productivity development

Many of us are defined by our academic qualification or professional status - as engineers, managers or whatever. But most of us have learned that we need to be able to talk to those in other roles ... and need to understand their knowledge base, their expectations, their way of thinking. How to cross those

Sugar gives you an 'energy rush' - very useful when you have a demanding task to perform.  That is why we like sugary snacks throughout the day when we're at work or taking physical exercise. The problem is that these short term fixes do not do us any long-term good; in fact, quite the opposite.

We went through the 'quality revolution in the 70s/80s - now everyone (well all the big guys) has ISO 9000 and some have been through TQM programmes. Why is it then that it is so difficult to get good' service'.  Service in the UK has largely been off-shored to India and other places - clearly

I want a new guitar. I admit I don't need one (I have 4)... but I want one. The problems is that my wife says we don't have the space.  She has initiated a new house rule for guitars - one in, one out.  But I'm emotionally attached to my guitars so selling one is