Two questions to ask before deciding.
There is no situation that requires a decision that cannot be enhanced by asking two simple questions: Is the information right? Is it the right information? These are different questions that often become confused. An accurate piece of data is of no...
6 strategies to choose between opportunities.
Opportunities abound, and are hard to ignore. They emerge to consume resources, distract attention, divert investment, obscure the focus on strategy, and generally disrupt operations. How do you ignore, or better still, systematically, and quickly assess them,...
Bureaucracy is necessary. Unfortunately.
Bureaucracy evolved to enable operations to be scaled as mechanisation started to slowly take over from individual effort in the 1800's. It enabled tasks to be allocated, completed, and managed where the expertise resided, rather than one person doing...
The illusory comfort of confirmation bias
Every adult on the face of the earth has a set of biases deeply rooted in their brains. This is nothing to be surprised, ashamed, or confused about, it is the way we evolved. Our biases serve the purpose of freeing up cognitive capacity for more important,...
What makes seemingly sensible rules stupid?
When a rule is made by some institution, seemingly in the best interests of the community, most citizens accept the rule and do their best to adhere. This applies from the rules introduced by local councils to moderate litter, to the larger tax and commercial...
The practise of marketing needs more practice.
There is an enormous difference between knowing the name of something, and truly understanding it. Most move through school, university, and life by skimming, remembering bits about which questions are asked, and judiciously using jargon to get away with it....
Issues we will not hear about in this election campaign.
Following is the full version of the edited remarks published in Australian Manufacturing on April 29. I did the editing, as the following was way too long for the publication. What is blindingly absent from this election campaign, and politics in this country...
The expanding inflation rate: a cyclone, or a storm in a teacup?
Last Tuesday’s prime rate increase has been positioned as a disaster level cyclone by the opposition, and an inevitable but minor storm in a well-managed teacup by the Government. Which is it? Anyone who has been using their brain over the last months...
What is good for the financial goose is poison for the gander.
The Financial service industry is the last bastion of the defence of the 20th century business model where the seller had control over the vital product information. In those old days, you went to your bank branch where the manager knew you, your kids,...
The ‘water metaphor’ of process improvement
Any company that has grown bigger than about twenty or so employees has developed functional silos as a necessity. The bigger the company, the more focussed and powerful drivers of behaviour of functional employees those functional silos become. At some point,...