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Spies Like Us

28 December, 2009 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

I have reached that age when for Christmas I am given socks, chocolates and paperbacks.

I am half way through this year’s crop of paperbacks and found this quote in a John le Carre novel.

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world”

I learnt the same lesson working in a factory (though admittedly nobody was shooting at me).  We were getting customer complaints about a product and spent hours around desks and in meeting rooms brainstorming what the problem was.  We couldn’t work it out until one of my team went for a walk down the manufacturing line.  When he saw it the problem was blatantly obvious and we fixed the issue in about 20 minutes.

So what has this got to do with running an administrative process?  If you want to understand what is going on you need to get away from your desk and look and listen to what is going on.  Making judgements without this information is a dangerous and stupid thing to do.

Photo by Chris Nguyen on Unsplash

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: back to the floor, Christmas, gemba, manufacturing, monitoring

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

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