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4 Ways to Change Behaviour

26 December, 2013 by James Lawther 11 Comments

There are 4 ways to change people’s behaviour: The first is the stick: Beat people until they do what you want. The stick works, but people hate being controlled, they will rebel — sooner or later.  Repression is not a great strategy. The second is the carrot: Provide an incentive.  Incentives work beautifully, until you remove […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: conformity, customer behaviour, group think, human nature, incentives, motivation, political will, reinforcing behaviour, video

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

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

Sexism and Process Improvement

7 November, 2013 by James Lawther 5 Comments

The Big Five are five symphony orchestras in the United States that “lead the field in musical excellence and calibre of musicianship”. If you went to listen to them in the 1970’s, you would have noticed that about 5% of those excellent musicians were female. If you do the same thing today that proportion is more like a […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: assumptions, human nature, service improvement

Are You Too Clever for Your Own Good?

5 October, 2013 by James Lawther 10 Comments

Locked or Not

I travel a lot with work. It is not glamorous.  I’d love tell you that when I said I was in K.L. I meant Kuala Lumpur, but unfortunately it is far more likely to be Kings Lynn (for those of you who are not from the UK, Kings Lynn is sometimes, albeit unkindly, referred to […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: accident prevention, automation, complexity, East Midlands Trains, human nature, less is more, service design, simplicity

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