The Squawk Point

Organisational Mechanics

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

Estimates and Anchors

23 January, 2014 by James Lawther 13 Comments

Nottingham Riviera

Sometimes you will be asked a question and you won’t know the answer… How many customers will call? How many products will you sell? How much will the project cost? Sometimes you have to start with an estimate. How do we estimate? Let me explain with a question: how many people live in my home […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: anchoring, assumptions, decisions, estimation

Are You Missing out on the Next Big Thing?

22 December, 2013 by James Lawther 18 Comments

Pumpkin Carving Tool Set

Consultants always have a tool kit, a fancy method and a book that you can use to improve performance. There is always something new: Systems Thinking Total Quality Management Theory of Constraints Lean Thinking That is just for the process improvement guys, let us not forget that Numbers and acronyms always sell books You really […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: assumptions, human nature, problem solving

The SMART Goal Myth

19 December, 2013 by James Lawther 20 Comments

I have been on a leadership course. I’ve learnt that if I want to improve my team’s performance I must set them all SMART goals.  A goal that is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time bound — I bet you’ve been on the same course. A good SMART goal is something like: “increase sales rates from 15% to 22% by […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: assumptions, management style, objective setting, SMART goals

World Class Rhetoric

1 December, 2013 by James Lawther 6 Comments

rhetoric

The other day I was sent a report.   It went a little like this… (The names have been changed to protect the guilty)   World Class Performance It has been implied that our performance could be improved.  All available data suggests that this cannot be the case Market Context We have the highest satisfaction […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: assumptions, beliefs, credibility, fessing up, group think, ignorance, integrity, rhetoric, self belief, statistics, W. Edwards Deming

Scientific Proof – Politicians are Stupid

17 November, 2013 by James Lawther 14 Comments

politicians are stupid

The power of belief Have you ever wondered why people hold onto their beliefs despite statistical proof that they are wrong? Is it that we don’t understand what the numbers are telling us? Or is it that we just chose to ignore them? Dan Kahan is the professor of Law and Politics at Yale University. […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: assumptions, beliefs, clarity, data is not information, human nature, statistics, video

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • …
  • 10
  • Next Page »

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