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100% Utilisation Isn’t a Good Idea

25 April, 2015 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Fully Utilised

Improving Efficiency Your job as a manager is to deliver the best service at the lowest cost. Cost and service are all that ever worries the guys upstairs. Conventional wisdom is that the easiest way to do that is to keep your staff fully occupied. Ensure they are always working as fast as possible without […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: backlog, best practice, employee performance measures, key performance indicators, short term thinking, staff utilisation

Do You Understand the System?

24 April, 2015 by James Lawther 7 Comments

The pressure is on Your cost base is spiralling upwards, your boss is squealing, and his boss is squealing louder. Unless you get a firm grip of the situation you are going to get lots of “executive help”.  You need to do something and do it now. When caught like this it is easy — perhaps […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: complexity, root cause analysis, short term thinking, systems thinking, video

The Potato King

12 April, 2015 by James Lawther 6 Comments

behaviour change and the potato

They were dying of hunger In 18th Century Prussia bread was expensive, people were malnourished and famine wasn’t uncommon. The King at the time was Frederick the Great. He was wise enough to realise that unfed subjects were not a good thing — it is hard to run a kingdom effectively if people keep dying of starvation — […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: human nature, leadership, political will, reinforcing behaviour

A Bad Attitude

5 April, 2015 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Bad Attitude

It happens… Some times it all goes a bit Pete Tong. (An explanation for any American readers).  Things don’t go according to plan: Your deliveries are too slow Your operation costs too much Your customer service is too…  Well it is rubbish. How do you respond?  There are two ways: When it goes belly up there are two […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: blame, empowerment, problem solving, teamwork

Management Beliefs

29 March, 2015 by James Lawther 7 Comments

Performance Management

The way we act is based on our beliefs Sometimes these beliefs are based on strong evidence and sometimes, well, less so. Of course this is as true in management as any other human endeavour. Are our management beliefs based on evidence? Have a look at the slideshare below and tell me what you think? […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: beliefs, performance management, SlideShare, systems thinking, targets

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