The Squawk Point

Organisational Mechanics

  • Home
  • Blog
    • People
    • Data
    • Process
    • Wild Cards
    • Index
  • Podcast
  • Book

Too Clever by Half

9 September, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Most lifts have the buttons inside, the ones that tell the lift which floor you want to go to.

Yesterday I used a bank of lifts that had the buttons on the outside.  You choose your floor before the lift arrives, this gives the computer extra time to figure out the most efficient way to use the lifts and send you one that will go straight to your floor.

All very clever, except nobody told me.  I spent about 20 minutes getting in and out of the first lift to arrive and ending up on the wrong floor.  It was like a French farce.

Somethings, like the QWERTY key board are easy to improve, but because everybody uses them and they work well enough the inertia is too much to overcome.

Sometimes “good enough” is… well… good enough.

Photo by Bruno Kelzer on Unsplash

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: clarity, complexity, continuous improvement, error proofing, good enough

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.

www.squawkpoint.com/

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Explore

accountability assumptions beliefs best practice blame bureaucracy capability clarity command and control communication complexity continuous improvement cost saving culture customer focus data is not information decisions employee performance measures empowerment error proofing fessing up gemba human nature incentives information technology innovation key performance indicators learning management style measurement motivation performance management poor service process control purpose reinforcing behaviour service design silo management systems thinking targets teamwork test and learn trust video waste

Receive Posts by e-Mail

Get the next post delivered straight to your inbox

Creative Commons

This information from The Squawk Point is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Creative Commons Licence
Customer Experience Update

Try This:

  • Fish Bone Diagrams – Helpful or Not?

  • Circles of Influence: Do You Want Your Team Flexing Their’s?

  • Should You Punish Mistakes?

  • Sex and Soap Powder, Trial and Error

Connect

  • E-mail
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • YouTube
  • Cookies
  • Contact Me

Copyright © 2025 · Enterprise Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in