Hire for attitude, then educate
How do you find the right people to contribute to the growth and prosperity of an organisation? This task is generally recognised as a core management function, but so often a new hire makes little real difference beyond delivering more of the same, if you are lucky....
The thinking can be as important as doing
Consider, what the people on the production line are thinking about right now, finishing work, the fishing trip on the weekend, the necessity to get the car fixed and registered by next Monday, how can they pay that huge electricity bill, the game last night? Think...
Agenda management
Setting an agenda for a meeting is a crucial but easily dismissed management tool, although the capacity of the chairman to stick to it plays a role in how effective the meeting becomes. When setting an agenda, it is useful to consider the interaction of the thee...
Service innovation
Considering in a recent workshop the parameters of service innovation being delivered by the enterprise concerned, we boiled down the variables to just two. What is it that the customers is trying to achieve that using our product will deliver better than any...
Rip van i-Winkle
Just imagine Rip going to sleep in 1991. His world was made up of pyramid shaped organisations organised geographically, and most likely he worked for one person in the same location. Rip got his news in the paper the next day, so long as he paid for it, and the...
Strategy is making difficult choices.
Strategy is all about making choices about where available resources will be allocated, considering both the benefits and risks of alternatives in the context of opportunity cost. In this country we have reserves of natural gas tied up in seams below some of our...
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...