I've just got back from holiday with my family and enjoyed a simple example of visual management in practice whilst away. We went on a boat trip where there were a few options on what route / trip you could take. When we got on the boat my family got a blue sticker attached to our t-shirts.

I had a really good meeting with a client the other day about their ' Sunrise Meeting ', a short daily meeting to help drive productivity and effectiveness in the workplace. They looked at me sheepishly and told me that they had changed it. 'Great!' I replied.

There are many good books on project management available. Sometimes we take the time to read them, and sometimes (even better) we learn how to improve our effectiveness at delivering projects. But what about the learning you get from your experience?

There was an online article published yesterday about a drop in UK productivity (you can see it here:  http://ukbusiness-today.co.uk/news/uk-productivity-subdued ). This reminded me of a project I have just recently finished where productivity was at the core of the work carried out. The team I was working with were all hard working. They were skilled at their jobs, but they had come to live with many inadequacies that robbed them of the high levels of productivity that they were capable of.

Sometimes the best improvements are the simplest ones, the ones that are often sitting under our noses. Simple ideas get implemented. Simple ideas stick.

I had a really interesting conversation at the end of a workshop yesterday. The person I got talking to was concerned that although they now knew how to implement the changes they were unsure as to when they would be able to do the work - it just seemed like too much. The basic application of the Takt Time approach, that follows, was how we ended the conversation.

Recently I have been working with a client to help them bring a project back on schedule. The conversations that took place at the start of the project were interesting; we reviewed the targets that were set for the production rates within the project.