Profit maximisation has been the goal for so many organisations since time began. In the days when cheap, obedient labour was the main resource and hire and fire was the name of the game then profit maximisation by keeping costs low was achievable. However, things have changed. Let’s look at…
It is a given that it is important, some would say vital, to know your customer. If you read the LEAN literature then everything should be done having listened to the Voice Of The Customer (VOC) and anything for which the customer will not pay is defined as waste. We…
A recent study of 1,000 American workers (and you can bet your life it’s not much different in the UK) by Zippia.com a career resource website found that in a typical 8 hour working day the average worker only spends 4 hours and 12 minutes actually doing work. That’s why…
We have discussed in a previous blog how You Can’t Manage Time But You Can Use It Better but let’s not trouble ourselves with semantics here. This is the simplest time management system ever. Every time you start to do something you ask yourself one simple question: “Is this the most…
There’s and old phrase “all things to all people” and so many businesses and people try to do just that. They try to find products and services which are for everyone and so inevitably fail. These blogs are not for everyone, the work I do is not for everyone but…
Many will be looking at attempting to plan for the coming year but with things moving so quickly there is a temptation to fail to plan on the grounds that everything will change. What we need to do is see how to be effective in uncertain times. Uncertainty is not…
Work from home has exposed a huge problem that has been sitting in so many organisations like a ticking time bomb for so long. That of poor management and even worse leadership. We have seen a large number of high profile organisations (you know who you are) with “leaders” and…
One of the mistakes so many leadership courses make is that they teach how to lead others but forget that effective leaders start with themselves. If you can’t lead yourself then you stand no chance leading others. One of the founders of VISA, Dee Hock is famous for saying “if…
Times are hard, for both businesses and individuals and we need to look at effectively increasing profitability or in the case of individuals income. There are many ways of doing this from increasing sales by cutting prices to cutting costs but we need to look at how to effectively increase…
We keep hearing about the vision of the organisation or the company mission statement This strange because organisations can’t have visions but people can. An inanimate organisation can’t have vision it’s only the people in it who can. The trick of a good leader is to lead people in the…