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, […]
What is an Organisation?
You can’t improve it if you don’t understand it You can’t improve your organisation if you don’t understand what an organisation is. So I googled organisation, this is what I found: Organisation: noun /ɔːɡ(ə)nʌɪˈzeɪʃ(ə)n/ An organised group of people with a particular purpose. – “a research organisation” The action of organising something. – “the organisation of conferences” The quality […]
Are Sales Incentives a Good Thing?
Should you incentivise your sales staff? It is widely known that if you want to drive sales you need to incentivise your staff. Sales men are a mercenary lot and they only respond to cash. Paying out large sales incentives is the default option. Yet a few companies that don’t believe in individual incentives. Instead, they […]
The Elephant Problem
Manage the numbers We love to manage by targets and numbers. We divide our organisations up and target managers with very specific goals: Reduce waiting times Increase top line Minimise operational cost Maximise market penetration And off we go, convinced that our number is the most important number, striving to make it go the right […]
Chelsea Tractors, Rapport and Process Improvement
Process improvement should be easy You just stop doing the things a customer wouldn’t be happy to pay for. Spend a day with some brown paper and post it notes and you will find a whole host of ways to improve your processes. So why is it so hard? Because people don’t believe that their processes are […]