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Cameras, Pictures or Memories?

15 March, 2024 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Photographers Customer Needs

What Does Your Customer Need? “Your customer doesn’t want a drill. He wants a hole.” You have no doubt heard that one before. Working through customer requirements is difficult, particularly when customers don’t know what they want. Do Customers Want Cameras? I found a story in an old 1990s textbook (The Leader’s Handbook). It goes […]

Filed Under: Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: customer requirements, data is not information, gemba, Konica, Peter Scholtes, test and learn

Can You See the Forest for the Trees?

14 March, 2024 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

waldsterben forest trees

A Broken System Waldsterben is a nasty word. It is a German noun that means “death of the forest.” Trees have been dying across swathes of Germany and central Europe since the 1970s. Leaves and needles fall, and the bark drops off, leaving great tracts of tall, dead stumps. It is a dismal sight and […]

Filed Under: Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: management style, point optimisation, systems thinking, waldsterben

Take Me To Your Leader!

26 July, 2023 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Dalek Leadership

Leadership Versus Management Fashions change, over the past twenty years we have stopped valuing management and started to value leadership. In an effort to promote leadership, businesses around the country have rechristend their “senior management teams” as “senior leadership teams”. I even worked for an organisation that insisted that all managers were called leaders, presumably […]

Filed Under: Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: human resources, job titles, leadership, management, management style, purpose

The Planning Fallacy

11 July, 2022 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Example of The Planning Fallacy Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera House Perhaps the most famous example of the planning fallacy is the Sydney Opera House. Located on Bennelong Point on the banks of Sydney Harbour in New South Wales, the Opera House was designed by the Danish architect Jørn Utzon and opened to the public in 1973. It is one of the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: anchoring, assumptions, capital investment, planning, planning fallacy, project management

Efficiency versus Effectiveness

15 June, 2022 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Is the cybertruck efficient or effective?

Quality Problems How do you define efficiency versus effectiveness? If you google “Tesla build quality“, you will uncover a mountain of complaints and dissatisfaction. [There] are problems with the rear-view mirrors, trim pieces, uneven panel gaps, sun visors, top halves, and rubber seals. ~ autoevolution.com Tesla has long been known to have issues with quality control, especially when […]

Filed Under: Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: continuous improvement, cost of poor quality, efficiency versus effectiveness, Peter Drucker, Russel L. Ackoff

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