The Squawk Point

Organisational Mechanics

Welcome to the Squawk Point

The Squawk Point is all about service operations and our ability to make things far more complicated than they really need to be.

Running an operation should be as easy as finding out what your customers want, then giving it to them. Nothing more or less.

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Customers are a Pain in the Back

15 April, 2011 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Service is all about flexibility and being able to accommodate your customer’s every whim. Or is it? If you go into a delicatessen you expect them to be able to give you a chicken piri piri brown baguette with extra pineapple, hold the mayo. That is flexibility, that is great service. But once you have […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: accountability, being too helpful, constraints, service design

The Mother of Protracted PowerPoints

12 April, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Peter Bregman writes an interesting post in the HBR blog about wasted time in large organisation. He points out that employees of large organisations spend hours and hours with “unnecessary meetings, unimportant emails, and protracted PowerPoints”. He suggests a three question test to guide us on whether or not we should become involved: 1.  Am […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: being too helpful, clarity, cost saving, purpose, root cause analysis, waste

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