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Better to Be Approximately Right Than Precisely Wrong

12 July, 2018 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Ice-cream van

Spurious accuracy Thirty years ago I sat in a factory office with my head bowed low, looking at the dirty grey lino floor.  My boss, a middle-aged, overweight man wearing a white coat smeared with ice-cream was berating me in a broad west country accent. Apparently I was wasting both my time and his.  I […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: analysis paralysis, assumptions, over-processing, spurious accuracy, statistics, test and learn

The World’s Most Toxic Culture?

5 July, 2018 by James Lawther 4 Comments

The Four Pests

Organisational culture If you have been reading this blog for a while you will have noticed that I am a caught in a repeating loop.  The human equivalent of a stuck record. I write about organisational improvement.  There are lots of fascinating advances in technology, management thinking and other whiz-bang solutions that I could pontificate […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: blame, command and control, culture, human nature, incentives, management style, rhetoric, targets

Management Experiments and Idle Gits

26 June, 2018 by James Lawther 4 Comments

homeworker

A glamorous life The company I work for has offices in: Cambridgeshire Essex Greater Manchester Merseyside Sussex Tyne and Wear Yorkshire As an ops guy I get to visit them all.  If I am lucky I get invited to London to talk strategy as well.  I spend my life on a train.  Being part of […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: assumptions, results only work environment, test and learn

The Perfect Point of View

18 June, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Tree Perspective

Perspective When you look at a tree, what comes to mind? Do you see: A marvel of evolution An organism that has developed to hold as many leaves as possible, maximising surface area so it can catch every passing ray of sunlight. A commercial product A resource waiting to be harvested, processed, transported and sold. […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: assumptions, human nature, ignorance, innovation, what don't you see

Never Trust a Single Number

12 June, 2018 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Big Point Metric

Dubious statistics Journalists love to use single numbers, they do it all the time: Three British women will get pioneering womb transplants 4,000 foreign criminals including murderers and rapists we can’t throw out  NHS hospitals save £400,000 by switching to same brand of surgical gloves But single numbers are meaningless.  People quote point metrics and […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: availability heuristic, data presentation, measurement, point measure

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