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The Problem with Solutions

1 February, 2015 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Hiding Problems

Clever management phrases When I was a graduate trainee I had a manager who loved to say: “Do not come to me with problems, come with solutions” He believed it was a clever and motivational sort of thing to say.  It would make me more creative, I would start to think ahead and develop my own solutions, and — […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: ignorance, leadership, listening, problem solving

Assumptions Kill Creativity

3 September, 2014 by James Lawther 8 Comments

Innovation in reading

The population of India is well over 1.2 billion people. Second only to China in size. Roughly a quarter of that population can’t read or write. Or, depending on who, how and when you count, there are something like 300 million illiterate people in India. This is a problem that is worth fixing. But how? Teaching 300 million […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: assumptions, innovation, literacy, problem solving

5 TED Talks

18 April, 2014 by James Lawther 7 Comments

TED Talks

You can find just about anything on the internet The web is full of ideas, answers and solution.  Some of it is good, some of it is bad, and some of it — for some reason that is beyond me — is about laughing cats. If you must waste your life surfing the net (and I […]

Filed Under: Best of the Web, Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: Dan Ariely, Daniel Pink, happiness, innovation, motivation, problem solving, purpose, Shawn Achor, Steven Johnson, TED talks, test and learn, Tim Harford, 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

Are You a Lazy Manager?

25 June, 2013 by James Lawther 4 Comments

lazy manager

I’m all for blanket policies, they make life easy, everybody knows where they stand: Everybody on the same pay scale Everybody entitled to the same amount of holiday Everybody gets the same computer If you treat everyone fairly then everyone feels fairly treated. But I’m not so keen on blanket solutions A few years ago […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: bad process, employee performance measures, problem solving, public relations, root cause analysis

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