A better question can lead to a better answer. One of the discussions I find myself in on a regular basis is around the quality of questions. Depending on what kind of question you ask can affect the type of answer you will receive. Intuitively this makes sense but, from the conversations I have, does not appear to be a common practise. An area where this type of situation often arises is during meetings about continuous improvement projects. When there is a lack of clarity around a subject we often accept the answers we receive and act upon them accordingly, as if they were the gospel. By reflecting upon both the question and the answer and how you feel about both elements will help you to determine whether a better question needs to be asked. We can tighten the focus of our questions, or we can relax them. We can ask open ended questions, or clarify specifics with closed questions. We can shorten or lengthen the time period the question refers to. We can

In last month’s update we discussed having a healthy business information system, and how we need to ensure that the information in the system is correct, either through a better understanding of why the system needs to operate in a certain manner, or through better training. Following on from this is the need to establish specific disciplines, or habits, that make keeping a healthy business information system in place easier. There are number of methods to help you put in place the habits needed to operate you business systems. Most of these ideas (whether visual, team based or electronic) require some form of defined routine to give them direction. If you think back to your school time table you will recall that people knew where they needed to be at what time, and what the subject was. I’m not suggesting that your team needs to endure the absolute rigidity of a timetable like this, but some form of structure about what tasks / processes need to happen and when can do a lot t

One of my clients used to joke about their business delivering on the 37th of the month, meaning that they missed their end of month delivery dates by several days. I still smile when I think of this phrase, especially when I am helping new clients overcome their scheduling issues. A lumpy order book that isn't managed properly is one of the main causes I have found to affect on time delivery performance. The fix isn't too difficult either, spend some time to reschedule the order book so that you can give your customers a realistic delivery plan going forwards. Slightly more tricky is ensuring your business doesn't get back into the same position by changing how you accept work into your order books in the first place. This is something we discuss in ' Business Process Re-Engineering ', available on Amazon, and a great place to start if your on time delivery performance isn't where it should be. Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartere

Available for the Amazon Kindle I had an interesting chat with a friend of mine, David Hicks , about working in office environments the other day. We were discussing how in trays can hide all manner of work and I was saying how they needed to be flushed on a regular basis. David however offered a nice and simple solution to the problem. When certain members of his team weren't progressing with their work as expected he would periodically go to their in tray and invert the stack of work in the pile. This was done with the person present, so that it wasn't an underhand trick. So, the work that was tucked away at the bottom of the in tray would now be at the top and have an increased chance of being worked upon. Unmanaged in trays were the inspiration for the front cover of the ' Office Productivity ' book (see image to the right) and if you have any ideas on this specific theme then please let me know! Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Charter

Available at Amazon Standard Operating Procedures (or SOPs for short) are a great tool for managing processes and actually improving a business' productivity. From the many questions I have been asked over the years, and via this blog, I thought it was time to put pen to paper. Just released on the Amazon Kindle platform , 'Visual SOPs' looks at these instructional documents from a slightly different perspective - how do I integrate my SOPs with my team's day to day working so that they actually become useful? The book also comes with five downloadable files / templates to use in your own business. For more information, visit the ' Visual SOPs ' page on Amazon (opens www.amazon.com). Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

Don't just jump into your next business improvement project, be selective. When we have a range of business improvement ideas available to us we need to be able to discriminate between them so that we can optimise our time and maximise our results. When I speak to many businesses about this a good number of them treat all improvements as being equal, but: They won't all produce the same level of benefits, They won't all require the same amount of resources. They won't all need the same degree of problem solving. In summary, some ideas will be impactful, cheap and easy. Other ideas will be marginal, expensive and hard. Discriminating between improvement opportunities in some sort of (semi) formal manner can really help a business to improve both the rate of change and the level of success endured. Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer

Don't lose your team's continuous improvement ideas! When we manage to hit upon a vein of enthusiasm with our teams we always run the risk of having a deluge of ideas come our way. What a great problem to have. The only trouble here is when you end up with more than you can process / evaluate then you need to be conscious of the need to manage the team's expectations. Let people know where you are with the improvements, let them know if you are not going to be able to spend any time on them, let them know if their improvement is next up. Don't lose the ideas, work them out of your system by all means, but just don't lose them in the process. Even a simple list will do! Giles Johnston Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer P.S. For a simple method to generate Continuous Improvement ideas with your team check our out short guide on Amazon, available for the Kindle reading app.