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The Management Conundrum

16 March, 2020 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Trust or control? Imagine a scenario where your employees keep on changing things.  All in the name of improvement and innovation.  Everybody is spending time making your organisation run that little bit better.  It sounds great, a management nirvana,  until you realise that they are tinkering with processes, messing with procedures and running roughshod over […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: command and control, compliance, Dilbert, human nature, management style, trust

The Strategic Comms Centre of Excellence

9 October, 2017 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Management Speak

Management Speak I reached out to my boss first thing this morning.  I had to square the circle about one of our strategic imperatives.  Fortunately he cascaded the relevant information.  He had the helicopter view, I was too busy searching for low hanging fruit. If there is one thing that is guaranteed to set me […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: communication, credibility, Dilbert, jargon

The Project That Couldn’t Fail

15 July, 2017 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Plan to Fail

Trite management sayings Managers love clichés. They pick them up as they gain experience and seniority. The most popular are those that prove their superiority and make others feel small. A couple of my personal favourite statements of the obvious are: “Fail to plan and plan to fail” and “Poor Planning leads to P### Poor Performance”. […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: ballistic model of success, command and control, culture, Dilbert, political will, project management

Do You Really Need Big Data?

19 January, 2014 by James Lawther 5 Comments

You think you need big data You need to understanding all those interactions and connections You need databases and decisioning tools and analysts and consultants You need to know what all those patterns are telling you You need the competitive advantage After all, knowledge is power, it is obvious, isn’t it? Maybe you could start […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: big data, data is not information, Dilbert, information technology

Simple is the New Clever

30 December, 2013 by James Lawther 10 Comments

Management is about clarity But clarity is a rare gift… Most of us like to be more strategic in our communication… We love to look serious and feel clever… Nobody likes to sound simple We must penetrate the customer base vertically and horizontally If we reallocate our assets we can achieve synergy and benefit from […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: communication, complexity, Dilbert, management style, simplicity

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