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Sweat the Small Stuff

10 September, 2018 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Things go wrong There is small stuff that goes wrong and there is big stuff that goes wrong. Size matters We are taught to focus on the big-ticket items, to seek out the silver bullets and pull the big levers. Think big not small Focus on revolution not evolution Be radical not incremental We are […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: continuous improvement, pareto principle, waste

Pointless Conversations

30 August, 2018 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Management meetings Do you ever lose the will to live in management meetings?  Sometimes they are so bad I want to scoop out my eyeballs with a tea-spoon.  I’d do anything to get out of the conversation. I hate futile meetings that are a waste of everybody’s time — usually highly paid people’s time. Here […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: bureaucracy, command and control, cost saving, diversity, effective meetings, employee performance measures, forced fun, key performance indicators, management style, motivation, objective setting, office productivity, performance management, targets, waste, wasted intellect

Management Cardboard

11 September, 2017 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Management Cardboard

Management control Rather longer ago than I care to admit, I worked for an FMCG company.  I worked in R&D, and developed new frozen food products for a living. There were two things we worried about: The contents – the product that customers pay for, the fish finger or ice cream. The container – the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: bureaucracy, command and control, complexity, waste

The Ninth Waste

30 April, 2016 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Missed Opportunity

The Seven Wastes When Womack and Jones wrote The Machine That Changed the World they coined the term Lean and identified the seven wastes: Transport Intellect Motion Waiting Over Production Over Processing Defects Stock The observant among you will notice that is eight wastes not seven. Somewhere along the line somebody thought to add Intellect. On that […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: lean thinking, waste

Layering Your Problems In

13 March, 2016 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Creating Problems

How to cook a leg of lamb When my wife cooks a leg of lamb she asks me to cut off the last 7 inches – the shank. Cutting the last few inches off a leg of lamb is not easy.  It requires a hack saw and good deal of gusto.  By the time the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: bad process, complexity, quality control, reinforcing behaviour, waste, work around

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