There’s a well known cartoon showing a person frantically mopping the floor as the sink overflows. It is obvious to everyone but the person with the mop that the effective thing to do is to turn off the tap. That’s why effective plumbers don’t mops floors. Whilst we can all…
For most organisations the necessity to have people working in the old way of turning up at a certain hour, doing work for a certain number of hours and then going home at a certain hour has gone. This is even true in many areas of manufacturing where prior to…
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big a fan of measuring things. Data is really important and very useful in taking decisions but I have a problem with Big Data. Too many people and organisations are using the outputs without looking at why big data can be efficient but not…
I have no interest in football except that it got me thinking the other day – why do people go to football matches and what can it teach us about effectiveness? I realised the answer is a great example of why effective and efficient are not the same thing. For…
We constantly hear about the problem with productivity. So many people keep comparing productivity rates and saying that the company or country with the highest rate is the best. Productivity is measured in terms of output either per person or per hour but we need to think again and see…
I love honey bees. My other business is a honey farm and I have over six million of them flying around making honey. Because of the waggle dance where the scout bees communicate to the hive where the best pickings are to be found everyone assumes that honey bees are…
One question I am often asked is “given that you are always going on about effectiveness, what’s the difference between efficiency, productivity and effectiveness?” The easiest way to answer the question is with an example. Let’s take the health service. A productive health service sees as many patients as possible…
In order to have an effective, rather than just a productive day I use the Ivy Lee Method. Who or what is Ivy Lee I hear you ask? Ivy Lee was an American productivity consultant who was engaged by Charles Schwab (one of the richest men in the world in…
I had a very pleasant lunch yesterday with a colleague that I worked with a few years ago and it got me thinking that opportunities are there but you have to invest to find them. Lunch was good – the food was very nice and the conversation interesting as always.…
I read an article today about how a poor management decision lead to a company losing a fortune as a result of ignoring the request of a worker and it got me thinking – Why do we need management? It’s clear that we need leaders and strategic decision makers but…