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Organisational Mechanics

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The Elephant in the Office

22 March, 2024 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Elephant in a Suit

Silo Thinking In every business, the work flows around the organisation something like this… That is a little simplistic, as the work can ebb, flow and go back on itself. It may also be that your organisation employs underwriters, data specialists or doctors, but the principal points are the same. Work flows around the organisation […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: cooperation, cross-functional processes, efficiency versus effectiveness, ignorance, poor service, silo management, systems thinking, waste

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

Penny Wise Pound Foolish

14 November, 2016 by James Lawther 3 Comments

Penny wise, pound foolish

Economies of scale For a while I worked in an organisation that obsessed about costs.  Everybody had a target to cut the costs that they managed.  If everybody reduced their costs then the total cost would go down.  Or so the logic went. The cost of printing There was a man who owned the stationary budget: paper, […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: bottleneck, capital investment, cost saving, economies of scale, efficiency versus effectiveness, point optimisation

What Gets Measured Gets Done

13 March, 2015 by James Lawther 8 Comments

what gets measured gets done

You show me how I will be measured… … And I will show you how I will behave We all know it’s true. There is scientific evidence to prove it. If you set someone a goal they will try to hit it. It is so effective that measurement and target setting have become the number 1 […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: customer focus, efficiency versus effectiveness, incentives, key performance indicators, measurement, objective setting, performance management

Tedious but Important

11 April, 2014 by James Lawther 5 Comments

Dog Food

Some jobs are just plain boring In the dim and distant past I was a Development Manager for a frozen food company.  My role was to launch new products, beef-burgers, potato waffles, ready meals, you get the idea. Part of the job was very exciting, but part of it was as dull as dishwater. The […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: capital investment, defects, efficiency versus effectiveness, innovation, test and learn

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