Ban retrospectivity!
Why does the government set out to create conflict? Is it to distract attention? The current "debate" on cigarette packaging is a silly nonsense, a politically inspired furphy. Obviously it is in the community's interest to reduce smoking rates, smoking kills, and...
4 Drivers of culture
Culture is most often defined by repeating Michael Porters assertion that "culture is the way we do things round here". However, this leaves the question of what drives the way things are done. From my observations over many years, there are a number of elements: The...
Thoughts on e-tail
Retailers have spent 50 years offering a wide range of options to scratch any shopping itch. They have trained consumers to expect, indeed demand, a wide range, but given their walls are not elastic, is it any wonder that that when the elastic walls of the e-tailer...
“Five S” misused
The lean tool, 5s, is often a starting point for lean implementation. It makes sense, as on the surface, it is relatively easy, "straighten, sweep, set, standardise, and sustain", but it is this last bit that catches people out. A clean, tidy workplace with everything...
Something old is new again.
It is a bit ironic to think that in the midst of the information revolution that is surrounding us, that we are in some ways reverting to the ways of pre-agricultural humans. Bit of a stretch? Just think, pre-agricultural humans lived by what they knew, where the...
Small business is wary of social media
They are.. Just look around at what they are doing. I wish I had written this post.
Microsoft’s challenges with Skype
It will be worth watching the way Microsoft goes about leveraging their $8.5 Billion (should have paid Aussie dollars?) purchase of Skype, there will be a swarm of lessons to be learnt: Integration of a "free" service into a product/profit business model. This...
Lean and 6 sigma revisited
In a recent conversation I again found myself between two smart blokes, one who was a black belt 6 sigma consultant who believed the problems of the world could be fixed by some aggressive, numerical focus on process improvement, and an exponent of Lean, who was of...
The process of developing solutions
We humans like to do things in a consistent manner, each time we do something, it is comfortable to do it the way we did it before. This is great if the way we have done it delivers the optimal outcome, but presents difficulties when the outcome is sub-optimal, and...
Thinking about cloud computing?
Last week I attended a seminar run by www.Salesforce.com a very impressive dissertation on the capabilities they and their partners can bring to bear on the CRM challenges faced by all businesses. Obviously, the objective is to sign you up, and the challenge for non...