Today is the 1st October 2025, or to put it another way Happy New Year. Before you think I have gone bonkers let’s discuss the effectiveness of four years a year. The great thing about New Year is that people look on it as a fresh start, time to make…
As a species we seem remarkably poor at learning from experience. The past is not necessarily a guide to the future but it is always a source of lessons to be studied. Everyone agrees that we currently have a huge skill shortage in areas such as engineering and manufacturing and…
There’s been a lot of talk about all the things that A.I. can do, and I am a big fan of many of them, but here’s the one thing A.I. will never take away from effective businesses, that’s the concept of “cover”. Let me explain. An effective business does not…
The oldest tools that can be shown to have been made by “humans” have been dated to 3.3million years old. Our species, Homo Sapiens has existed for around 300,000 years. We therefore have evidence that our species has been manufacturing things for at least 300,000 years, and it is reasonable…
Every day we hear it. “We must be more productive.” “The UK is falling behind on productivity.” The thing is, productivity is not the problem, and never has been. The same applies to efficiency. You see, productivity without effectiveness is nothing. I’ve written about this before and will do again,…
We live in a world where automation and robotics can make the same “perfect thing” over and over again. AI can produce “perfect” services over and over again. The problem with perfection is that as every day goes by it becomes easier and cheaper to achieve, but look around you…
I have a number of AI assistants and they are very helpful, but sometimes I wonder what they do around the virtual water cooler, and I ask myself are my AI assistants plotting to replace me? One of the things that is mentioned almost in the same breath as the…
After a huge amount of thought and procrastination, I’ve taken on a new employee. The good news is that even our current Chancellor hasn’t found a way yet of charging National Insurance on this one. The other advantage is my new employee is cheap (less than £1 per day) and…
Fear of failure often means that making a decision to do nothing and stick with the status quo is the safest thing to do in the short term, but will nearly always result in long term trauma. The problem is that too many people take decisions based on the “if…
Much has been spoken and written over the years about leadership, and it is pretty much acknowledged that effective leaders are not as common as they should be. Leading a team of diverse individuals has always been difficult and, in truth, is getting more so. Just to add petrol to…