The Squawk Point

Organisational Mechanics

  • Home
  • Blog
    • People
    • Data
    • Process
    • Wild Cards
    • Index
  • Podcast
  • Book

Quality Control Doesn’t Work (and how to fix it)

12 January, 2013 by James Lawther 5 Comments

Here is a bold statement, “inspection doesn’t work“; (literally bold).  Yet every organisation I have ever worked for uses and pays for quality controllers.  They can’t all be wrong can they?  What makes me think I am so right? Maybe, if you read this I will convince you: The shadow illusion. Or perhaps this: Fooling […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: error proofing, human nature, quality control, vigilance decrement, wasted intellect

“Group Think” is no Laughing Matter

9 January, 2013 by James Lawther 4 Comments

In the 1970’s the psychologist Irving Janis coined the term “group think” to explain why group pressure results in poor decisions, or, as he explained it, why groups show: A deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement That is a little more erudite than the way I would put it, but the phrase […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: assumptions, colleagues, Dilbert, effective meetings, group think, human nature, sacred cows, stereotype, teamwork, what don't you see

Process Design and Human Nature

30 June, 2012 by James Lawther 5 Comments

Mothers were dying In 1840’s Vienna they were dying of “childbed fever”.  In one hospital the death rate was alarming, roughly 1 in 10 mothers perished after childbirth, some months this statistic climbed to a horrific  30%. A young doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis, working in the maternity hospital noticed that in a neighbouring hospital death rates were a far […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: accident prevention, error proofing, human nature, medicine, reinforcing behaviour, service design

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17

Explore

accountability assumptions beliefs best practice blame bureaucracy capability clarity command and control communication complexity continuous improvement cost saving culture customer focus data is not information decisions employee performance measures empowerment error proofing fessing up gemba human nature incentives information technology innovation key performance indicators learning management style measurement motivation performance management poor service process control purpose reinforcing behaviour service design silo management systems thinking targets teamwork test and learn trust video waste

Receive Posts by e-Mail

Get the next post delivered straight to your inbox

Creative Commons

This information from The Squawk Point is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Creative Commons Licence
Customer Experience Update

Try This:

  • Fish Bone Diagrams – Helpful or Not?

  • Glory Lasts Forever

  • Regression to The Mean

  • Brilliance Alone Won’t Take You Far

Connect

  • E-mail
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • YouTube
  • Cookies
  • Contact Me

Copyright © 2025 · Enterprise Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in