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Short Breaks Will Kill You

21 May, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Quantitative or Qualitative Analysis? An apocryphal tale… A statistician working for a large organisation was asked to explain why sick pay was increasing.  The business had an ageing workforce and sickness levels were rising.  He gathered lots of data on lots of things: Working patterns Demographics Employment related illnesses Commuting times Office locations…  The list […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: gemba, insight, learning, quantitative or qualitative, root cause analysis

Walk in My Shoes

17 September, 2018 by James Lawther 2 Comments

In Head Office They think that the people on the shop floor: Can’t see the strategic imperatives Don’t understand the business priorities Don’t use the newly developed tools Aren’t prepared to “own” the running of initiatives Don’t respond to training Are resistant to change Don’t care about performance On the Shop Floor They think that the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: gemba, insight, listening, management by wandering around

Issues, Incidents and Risk Events

13 April, 2016 by James Lawther 3 Comments

Scoop out your eyeball

Boring meetings Issues, incidents, risk events, screw ups, call them what you will, we all have them.  Somewhere in your organisation somebody is logging them, categorising them and recording them.  That somebody also has a target to reduce them. And every month they hold a meeting to discuss how they are doing. And — be honest — […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: customer complaints, insight, measurement, objective setting, targets

What do You Give to a Man in a Desert?

17 July, 2013 by James Lawther 5 Comments

That is a very simple question I’ll bet a simple, obvious answer has popped into your head My answer was a bottle of water, how about yours? What was your answer? Does he need… A camel? A map? A tent? An oasis? A fire? Some food? An oil rig? A phone? Some sun-cream? A dune […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: assumptions, customer surveys, insight, listening

Eating at McDonald’s Gives You Acne

13 July, 2013 by James Lawther 8 Comments

Correlation isn't causation

That is a libelous statement, but it is fairly obviously true, I was in McDonald’s with my children only last weekend and it was jam-packed full of spotty teenagers. It is a slam-dunk case of cause and effect.  All those burgers will make you spotty. Really?  What else could be going on? If you are a […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: assumptions, insight, McDonald's, medicine, statistics

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