The Squawk Point

Organisational Mechanics

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

Brain Scan

8 December, 2009 by James Lawther 3 Comments

Ambulance

Glasgow’s Western infirmary owns a £500,000 CT scanner (computerised tomography if you must know, though I am not much wiser).  Apparently it is used to scan patients’ brains if they are thought to have had a stroke. Unfortunately it has been idle for the past six months as the radiographer who operated it left the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: capacity, medicine, silo management, transportation waste

Don’t Trust Your Customers

5 December, 2009 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

A supermarket in Poole refused to sell a woman a bottle of wine because her son was with her. Checkout staff at the Co-op, told the furious mother that she might be buying it for her 12 year old son.  Better still, when challenged a spokeswoman for Co-op said: “The Co-op group stands by this […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: poor service, purpose, risk assessment, trust

Fooling Yourself

4 December, 2009 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Very often the solution to all administrative ills is to have somebody carry out “Quality Control” on everything that is sent out.  That way you can be absolutely sure that it is all correct, with no chance of error.  Some departments have an army of Quality Controllers who don’t release anything unless it has been […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: process control, quality assurance, quality control, video

Running out of Doctors

4 December, 2009 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The British Medical Association claims to have uncovered department of health data that shows that there was a shortfall of 3,000 junior doctors at the end of 2008.  Two factors are being blamed for this, changes to immigration legislation that prevents people from outside the EU coming to train as doctors and also the European […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: bureaucracy, capacity, capacity planning, medicine, recruitment

Is Bigger Better?

4 December, 2009 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

West Yorkshire council may start sharing services in a bid to cut costs.  Councillor Andrew Carter who is the Conservative deputy leader of Leeds City council has suggested that the councils of Leeds, Calderdale, Bradford, Kirklees and Wakefield could share services such as HR and payroll. There may be efficiencies to be had, but I […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: bureaucracy, economies of scale, local government, shared services

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 160
  • 161
  • 162

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?

  • Should You Punish Mistakes?

  • Sex and Soap Powder, Trial and Error

  • Blame or Solutions?

Connect

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

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