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Do You Believe in Brainstorming?

2 January, 2019 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Conventional wisdom Noun: The generally accepted belief or opinion about a particular matter. Conventional wisdom may be proven to be untrue. Example: It is widely believed that before the voyage of Christopher Colobus most people thought that the world was flat. This is however not true.  The myth of the flat earth Brainstorming What do you do when you need a novel solution? The answer is obvious, you hold a brainstorming session. I’ve been doing them for 30 […]

Filed Under: Blog, Tools & Techniques, Wild Cards Tagged With: beliefs, best practice, brainstorm, dogmatism, innovation

Old Wives Tales and Conventional Wisdom

12 April, 2013 by James Lawther 7 Comments

Girl with scarf

I spent Easter with my mother, siblings, their spouses and eight children. The weather was truly awful. I caught my daughter singing; “I’m dreaming of a white Easter”.  In the bleak North of England it snowed on Good Friday. There are few things as unpleasant as 8 children running around a house screaming.   So despite the weather […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: assumptions, dogmatism, test and learn

Bias

12 May, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

I have just read a blog post about the claimed link between autism and the MMR programme.   It is a fascinating read.  Despite the numerous surveys that have been undertaken to prove that there is no statistical basis for the claims, the writer still persists.  I guess that no amount of facts or data will […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: assumptions, constraints, dogmatism, learning, reinforcing behaviour, video

Earth Quake

25 April, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The cause of the recent eruption in Iceland was scantily dressed women. According to Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi a senior Iranian cleric (but not an operations analyst) “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes”. Yesterday (Monday 26th April) an […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: clarity, dogmatism, measurement, root cause analysis

Dogmatic Ignorance

19 March, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

I had an interesting conversation today with an auditor.  I asked him why auditors don’t see the blindingly obvious, why they don’t dig into problems, why they are so easily hoodwinked, (go on, admit it, you have pulled the wool over an auditors eyes), why they are, frankly, so stupid.  I didn’t put it quite […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: accountability, auditors, communication, dogmatism, ignorance

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