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Information Overload

9 February, 2019 by James Lawther 2 Comments

A broken valve In the early hours of the morning on March 28th 1979, a valve broke on a water pipe. That pipe was at the nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.  The failure resulted in the most serious nuclear incident that the USA has ever seen. Chain reaction The broken valve led to […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: accident prevention, analysis paralysis, clarity, data is not information, data presentation, key performance indicators, mixed messages

The U-Turn

29 January, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Executive express There is a new model of executive saloon on the market. It comes with all the bells, whistles and gizmos: Adjustable heated leather seats with multipoint massage to reduce stress Drinks cabinet with crystal glass decanters and walnut inlay for further stress reduction Five litre super charged, turbo charged, fuel injected engine for […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: blame, culture, human nature

It Stands to Reason…

23 January, 2019 by James Lawther 3 Comments

Test and Learn

Books or concrete? Imagine you are on the board of an educational charity.  You are trying to improve the standard of education in Sub-Saharan Africa. How should you invest the charitable donations?  What would be the most effective way to spend the money? In his book Adapt, Tim Harford tells the story of the Dutch […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: assumptions, continuous improvement, human nature, learning, test and learn

How to Get Better at Anything — Almost

14 January, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Performance Improvement

How to lose weight There is a tried and tested way to lose weight…. Commit to losing weight. Measure progress — stones or kilos, whichever works. Find the most important input, the one with most leverage, (calories) and measure that as well. Try things that will have a positive impact on the important input. Use […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: accountability, best practice, continuous improvement

Blame or Solutions?

8 January, 2019 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Finding Blame

Blame is natural The minute something goes wrong we seek out somebody to blame.  Somebody to take the rap.  It is human nature to find a fall guy when things go belly up. Blame is easy We live in a connected world.  We work within a mesh of colleagues, customers and suppliers, so there are […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: blame, culture, root cause analysis

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