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Showing posts from July, 2008

Electronic vs. Face-to-Face

You can track the performance of projects in many cases to the amount of face to face contact that takes place during the life of the project. E-mail is an amazing tool that helps to deliver messages at a lightning pace, and often this gives people the impression that face to face contact can be minimised. Many times have I seen people sitting in the same office reciprocating with e-mails whilst both are seated - and it's an ongoing conversation! Looking into someone's eyes when you have a project update meeting can tell you so much more that by just reading an e-mail. I accept that there is a justification for efficiency, but is the balance right in your organisation? Smartspeed Consulting Limited 'For When Results Matter' http://www.smartspeed.co.uk

Clarify the distractions

When you look back at the end of a working day - what do you see? Do you see a whole raft of accomplishments that will help to improve your business performance, or a load of inconveniences that only served to hinder? If you do spare a couple of minutes at the end of the day to review these annoyances you can often start to find patterns emerging. When you find a pattern you can then do something about it. One of the best ways to do this is to use the '5 Why' tool to delve down into the root causes of the problem and solve it once and for all. It never ceases to amaze me how many other problems just disappear at the same time - obviously they are symptomatic of the original problem. Smartspeed Consulting Limited 'For When Results Matter' http://www.smartspeed.co.uk

What's in it for me?

When a discussion around improvement is taking place it is pretty easy to see who is interested in taking part and who is not. One of the most interesting discussions that takes place is when you turn around the discussion to the people who we need to convince. Asking them 'how would you be better off from doing this?' or 'what could you get out of this?' are two questions that usually throw up some interesting answers. When people see the improvement as just a necessity that is going to make life harder for them we have an opportunity to discuss with them the positive aspects of the project, and if we can get them onboard (as usually happens when doing this) we can find a better solution that really does leave them better off than when they started. Next time you find yourself getting stuck 'negotiating' an improvement feel free to try asking the above questions. Smartspeed Consulting Limited 'For When Results Matter' www.smartspeed.co.uk