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Outputs and Outcomes

31 January, 2017 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Stockpile

Similar but not the same It may be semantics, but I think we confuse outcomes and outputs: Customers desire outcomes, organisations deliver outputs.  They are not always the same. Where do you place your attention? Outputs are easy to measure and manage.  Output data rolls off systems and out of processes.  Outputs are easy to quantify, target […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: incentives, measurement, office productivity

Productivity for Productivity’s Sake

15 May, 2016 by James Lawther 7 Comments

stock waste

The obsession We love to make things more productive. We strive to be cheaper, more efficient, higher yielding.  It is the holy grail, taking up most of our working hours. More for less in itself isn’t a bad goal, but who decides if we are being productive? Myopic measurement Imagine you flip burgers for a living and you […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: lean thinking, McDonald's, measurement, office productivity, over-production, stock, systems thinking

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

The Simplest Way to Improve Performance – Possibly

3 January, 2016 by James Lawther 15 Comments

An interesting story: Courtesy of Donella Meadows: Near Amsterdam, there is a suburb of single-family houses all built at the same time, all alike. Well, nearly alike. For unknown reasons it happened that some of the houses were built with the electric meter down in the basement. In other houses, the electric meter was installed in the front […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: key performance indicators, measurement, systems thinking

What Gets Rewarded Gets Done

26 November, 2015 by Bernie Smith 1 Comment

The walk I have always thought sheep dogs were intelligent. I didn’t realise, until recently, that they are smarter than me. I was walking with Kate — a friend of mine. Her sheep dog, a Border Collie called Harvey, was with us. After 10 miles or so Harvey seemed to be flagging. He stopped at […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: employee performance measures, measurement, targets

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