Paradox of choice.
So much choice in everything we do, isn't that great? Maybe not. There is so much choice in most things that now we are running the risk of paralysis, procrastination, and often, we just walk away. Barry Schwartz, a psychologist and terrific communicator puts the...
Money is just a scoring mechanism.
People stress over money, how much they have, how hard it is to make it, what others make, how much the house is worth, how much the share portfolio has tanked, and so on. The reality is that money is just a scorecard, an entirely one dimensional method of comparing...
Wal-Mart, Woolworths and logistics.
In Australia, the major chains are seeking ways to expand their scope of activities, and staying within the Trade Practices Act is increasingly difficult given the dominance of the "big two", and now the "rest" have further consolidated with the take-over of Franklins...
Lean manufacturing and Demand chains.
Two differing approaches to management improvement you may think? Not so. Both require extensive: * Collaboration, * Transparency, * Robust processes, * A set of values imbued through an individual organisation, and group of organisations in a demand chain, *...
“Values”. What does it mean?
"Values" is a widely misused term, one that is often a key break out subject at the annual senior management off site session, subject to sage pronouncements, then usually ignored. Having participated, and more recently facilitated many of these sessions over the...
Innovation in Afghanistan.
Straying from my usual "beat" I read the Rolling Stone article that caused the downfall of General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan. It seems to me that he was fired, not because he was insubordinate, but because he failed to manage the politics...
The power of candor
Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, the worlds largest manufacturing company recently made some unflattering remarks about the Chinese and US leadership, and has been widely pilloried. What happened to freedom of speech? We seem to have become immune to the facts, or one persons...
Fact and hyperbole.
It is often pretty easy recognise marketing hyperbole when we see it, particularly in a category where we have some knowledge. However, in a category where we have no knowledge, it probably is not as easy to pick the fact from the flummery, so even some of the more...
Statistics and thinking
A statistical analysis should give a black and white answer, and it does, but the answer is only as good as the information that is used, and the manner in which it is used. It follows then that the application of analytical tools should be in the context of a way of...
To improve health, get Lean
In the last federal budget there was money allocated to the task of digitising health records allocated, and there was some pretty unedifying comment on the amount, the progress to date, and the implications on privacy. What dross. Australian health costs are huge...