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Showing posts with the label productivity

Stop firefighting, start performing!

Another weeks passes and another example of unnecessary fire fighting demonstrated by a business I have been to help. If you have this taking place in your business, let me ask you a few questions: 1. What keeps on happening? Regain control with this practical book Can you pin down what it is that you keep having to do, to get out of trouble? If you can't, is there a pattern you can observe? 2. Do you want it to stop? Is it causing you enough of a problem that you want it to stop? If the answer is yes, keep reading, if not park it for another day. 3. Find out what is going on Do you know why you are having this issue? If you aren't sure where the issue is arising from, then take a few minutes to have a look around. When you have some idea, go to the next step. 4. Cause and effect Do you know what is truly causing the fire fighting situation? If you spend the time to get to the root cause of the situation , you have a good chance of permanently eliminating this situation. Most p

Does Email Kill Your Personal Productivity?

A manager at one of my clients came up to me at the end of a meeting. I had been talking about some of the factors that was stopping us from delivering on time and one of them was not making decisions in a timely fashion. Many of the people in the meeting put up some of their arguments about why they had so little time and email came up repeatedly. So, I asked them a qualifying question: "How quickly do you need to respond to your emails?" They largely looked at each other, rather than responding. I continued by asking them whether they were processing their emails in a systematic fashion, or being distracted by their email program (with their 'helpful' pop ups telling you that you have new messages). I got a mixed response to my question and observation, but a couple of them got the point I was making: email is a tool and you get to choose how to use it. In Lean manufacturing there is the reference to 'just in case' manufacturing; product being m

Do You Set Your Team Up To Win?

I had a great time tonight watching my daughter and her peers at the ice skating competition. Some of the skating was great, some was less so, but every single skater performed which was brilliant to witness. Every skater, no matter their performance, got several rounds of applause and it was deserved in every case. Everyone wanted to see them win and communicated this with them through their applause. This got me thinking. I often ask my clients if they set their teams up to win, usually reflecting on a current performance objective or continuous improvement goal . In many cases the conversation raises a few opportunities that my client can look at that can increase the chances of their teams winning at the challenges before them. Considering this same topic, with the skaters I saw tonight they: Had been given / made time to learn and practice. Were supported by someone that could mentor and guide them. Their objective was crystal clear to them. A clear plan was in plac

Free Business Improvement Guide

I have just re-published my guide: 7 Ideas to Gain Control and Improve Profit for Your Business You can download your copy by visiting:  https://mailchi.mp/smartspeed/7-ideas-to-gain-control-and-improve-profit-for-your-business If you are looking for simple but effective methods to drive up your business' productivity, performance and profits then this is a great resource to push you in the right direction. To get your free copy you just need to sign up for my email updates. Hopefully you will find them to be useful to you and your business and you can unsubscribe at any time. Enjoy, Giles About the author Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes. Giles is also the author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the ' Making It Happen ' continuous improvement toolkit.

Keep Your Team Actions Visible – If You Want Results!

Let’s be realistic, days very rarely run smoothly. Most teams have bumps in their day to day working, which need to be resolved . This is normal, but the effectiveness of a team’s ability to deal with this massively impacts the overall performance of the function they are responsible for. Making the issues (and corresponding actions) visible and ‘in your face’ is a big part of this effectiveness. An example of a simple approach to managing an action log When the actions are visible they don’t get lost. They are constantly in your line of sight and the actions required to close out the issues have a higher chance of being completed if they are in the front of your mind. Out of sight, out of mind is certainly true in this case (and strategy doesn’t often get results). If the actions are visible there is a great chance that they will get worked on during the course of the day and not five minutes before the next meeting (in a state of panic). Many people are bad at taking notes a

Want more time for your projects? Try the 'Hour of Pain'!

Do you find your day being broken up by interruptions, stopping you from getting on with your work? Continuous improvement projects often fall foul of this. The day can become so inefficient through the constant stopping and starting that we only just seem to have enough time to get the 'day job' completed. I was in a meeting last week where this same issue cropped up. It also cropped up today. It's nothing new, but it is still a pain in the rear! So, let me share with you an approach that has worked for my clients - the 'Hour of Pain!'.

Three quick strategies to help your business win!

Is your business geared up to win? More importantly, are you team geared up to win? Setting people up to win isn't a common expression, but one that I wish I would hear more often when I work with businesses. The opposite, setting people up to fail, is a more common expression and might give us (as a culture) a clue as to one of the pitfalls of organising our business activities. There are a few different ways that we can set our business up to win . These include clear business standards, KPIs and corresponding targets and effective routines.

What Does it Mean to be Productive?

Whilst driving to a client's this morning I caught a few minutes of a debate on the radio about increasing productivity. It was a very general discussion, of course, but there was one part of the discussion that caught my attention. The host of the show asked the guest (a member of the UK government I believe) why productivity wasn't increasing in the country when we have so many devices available to us to allow us to work remotely and deal with our emails before normal working hours. As you would have noticed, productivity is not  measured as the host indicated: Productivity ≠ everything you do / the length of time taken I'm not sure how widespread this mis-understanding is, but it raises an interesting point about how many people are measuring the wrong things when it comes to either their own, or their business', productivity. When you work in a manufacturing environment calculating productivity can be relatively straightforward. You may measure the t