I don’t know much about football As a teenager I used to play in the school yard. When they picked teams I was always the last poor sod standing there. I was usually dismissed to the other team with a “Oh you have him“. I was fat I was slow I lacked talent (Keep your thoughts […]
Snakes, Rats and Your H.R. Policies
Have you heard of the Cobra Effect? In Victorian times, at the height of the British Empire, the governors of Colonial India were very worried about the number of cobras in Delhi — no self-respecting bureaucrat has a liking of venomous snakes. The governors came up with a plan. They offered a reward for every […]
The Big Problem With Systems Thinking
There is lots of talk about systems thinking. The talk sounds a little like this: Organisations are a system of connected parts It is the connections in the system that dictate performance If we improve the system we can improve performance It is a fascinating conversation — no really it is. But there is a […]
The Demons of Management
Why is operational improvement so difficult? Maybe it is because we are our own worst enemies. Here are a handful of our own organisational demons. Dogmatism ~ an unquestioning belief in our own “rightness” Instead of questioning our own beliefs we plough on regardless. The more senior we are the more dogmatic we become, after […]
How do you Make a Pencil?
In 1958 Leonard E Read wrote an essay about making pencils. He described: The growing of trees The work of a lumberjack The operation of the saw mill The making of the saw The transportation of the logs The mining of the graphite The production of the rubber The mixing of the paint The sourcing […]