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Is clarity critical to achieving higher levels of performance?

I was sent a link the other day to an article on the Guardian website about universities improving their student retention rates (so that the students actually complete their courses) – you can read the article here ( https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/jun/13/universities-student-retention-priority ). There were a few highlights made in the article, these included: Being clear on expectations. Having a timetable for communication. Sharing ideas. Don’t you think that these ideas could translate directly into your business? Could you improve the clarity of the outcomes, process metrics and the management activities that your managers are held accountable against? Could you formalise your communications through regular management meetings that contain a combination of standard agenda items, KPIs and process ‘ checks and balances ’? Could you find better ways to share ideas and accelerate your continuous improvement endeavours? Principles nev

Don’t miss out process steps if you want to see results!

I was recently involved with a discussion on behalf of one of my clients with a marketing agency. I was involved not because of my marketing skills, but because I knew the business well via their operational processes (and how they were aligned with their business plan and goals). The discussion with the agency seemed to make sense for the first fifteen minutes, until I realised that we were in fact talking about two different things. I thought we were at the start of the process and they had decided that we were at the back end of the process. It was like reading a book only to find out that someone had ripped out a big chunk of pages from the middle of the book. It was like we had skipped to the end. Naturally this conversation had to be reversed and we both had to start at the beginning again. Time was wasted through confusion and frustration. This is very similar to many improvement projects that I see (prior to my involvement of course!). The project is planned out and

Do You Understand What Your MRP System is Doing?

It's always a trick when it comes to operating an ERP or MRP system... knowing what it is trying to do. I was in a situation today where there were at least three frustrated parties, all frustrated by the output of their MRP system. Changes had been made to their master BoMs (Bill of Materials), this had been done correctly. The Stores Team were frustrated by a lack of change to the information, they couldn't see the change. The Planning Team were annoyed too. They could see that the changes hadn't taken effect either. None of the three parties realised that they had to delete the kitting orders from their system and re-create them in order for the new information to appear. Now, you're probably thinking that this information would appear in time and you would be right. Unfortunately these guys would have had to wait about four months if they hadn't followed through with the right actions. My point here is not to try and explain a basic principle of MR

Making It Happen - Free Tools

I have just set up the free tools section for my Making It Happen  toolkit. You can start to improve your business at no cost (not even a sign up is required!) with the five free tools available at  http://www.making-it-happen.website/free-tools/ . You can find out more about the full toolkit here , but otherwise enjoy using the free tools and improving the performance of your business. All the best, 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.

Maximise your improvement hit rate – master the follow up!

Loose ends…. Don’t you hate them? I see loose ends all over the place, from reporting structures, to management meeting actions to promises made to colleagues. They’re everywhere and they really limit the rate of improvement a business can make. If you are new to my blog and are wondering what is one of the best ways to make a business improvement happen try this simple two step action plan: Identify the improvement. Keep hammering away at the improvement until it is fully embedded. A simple improvement strategy is all that many businesses need! If you’re thinking that this is the most obvious thing you have ever heard let me ask you this question: “Does your business have strategies in place to make sure that this approach is a reality?” Relying on your memory is not a great strategy. Hoping that someone else will undertake the action is not a great strategy. Praying that the day-to-day busyness of working life won’t overtake the improvement is not a

Seeing the Improvement Wood for the Chaos Trees!

How are you feeling about your business the moment? Are you feeling frustrated and irritated by the apparent lack of progress being made with your improvements? If you answer ‘yes’ to this second question, don’t worry, you are not alone! We all feel this way at times and the reason I am writing this article is that if you feel this way right now then I want to reassure you that there is a simple way to get out of this situation. I have been in this situation many times in both my operational life and as a consultant. It is normal and taking a deep breath and stepping back from the noise of the day-to-day is essential. Let me take you through the three quick steps of Stopping, Assessing and Acting. Take stock of where you are right now In order for us to step back and try and see some of the ‘improvement wood’ as I refer to in the title of this article we need to have a simple question to focus our attention. A question I recommend that you ask is: “Do our current proces

Learning at Work Week

Last week I was interviewed for one of my clients, Jasmin Design , as part of the Learning at Work Week . The interview asked me about my thoughts on training in the workplace and why it was worth doing: Yesterday, we heard from Jo from JK Training Ltd about the one-to-one coaching she has been doing with our staff.  Today, we are pleased to share some insights from Giles Johnston, from Smartspeed consulting, who has been working with us to refine our business processes and structures to offer customers the best possible products, services and prices. How have you been working with Jasmin? “The main focus of my work with Jasmin has been to look at the business processes that drive order delivery: assessing everything that happens from an initial enquiry through to delivering the end product to the customer. “The aim was to work alongside the team, look at the whole thing and identify any missing processes and where things could be done better or more efficiently.” What d

Do You Put Enough Effort Into Changing How Your Business Works?

If you're reading this blog post it is a fair guess that you are looking to improve how your business works. So, what do you think about the question I have posed as the title of this article? The reality is that if you could make a change happen with the same amount of effort that you current expend in your business changes would be happening left, right and centre. If you want to make a change stick in your business you need to increase your levels of effort temporarily. Without this increase in effort it is unlikely that the change you want will take place and sustain. I recall when I worked as a Production Manager and the OTIF ( On Time In Full ) performance of our business was certainly not where it needed to be. For years the business had struggled to raise its level of performance; no additional effort had been expended. I planned out sixteen small improvement projects to address this and I got started with the changes. It was hard work at times and the work was on

Tolerance - a Killer of Innovation and Improvement

Being tolerant is a good thing in many situations, such as when people are in training and learning the ropes. However, when we are tolerant of sub-standard working practices, the non-adoption of great ideas and failing to subscribe to formality within businesses this is a different matter. Tolerance in these situations can kill our ability to improve and innovate how we operate and perform. I recall a business that I did some work for where the staff didn't seem bothered about the poor quality of the products. Customer returns were a part of their normal life and apparently it had carried on for years. I was only invited into the business because one of their managers had decided to no longer tolerate this situation. Another client of mine was tearing his hair out because of the poor on time delivery performance of the business. For years this hadn't seemed to bother the business, but this particular manager was relatively new in position and was sick of lying to

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

Five Words to Improve Productivity

At one of my clients I have been running a shop floor improvement project to create a new manufacturing cell with the apprentices. I think that there is always some good learning to be had from improvement projects and I was keen to expose the apprentices to some additional experiences. However, the last few weeks of the project have not been going to schedule and not wanting to miss the learning potential I asked them what they had learned about implementing a project of this nature. They summarised the discussion that we had as being: I wanted them to summarise the discussion as these key 'words' / phrases might stick in their heads a little longer and help them to avoid the same pitfalls in the future. I can't fault the words that they chose and the team nicely linked them together as indicated in the sketch above. I have summarised their comments as follows: Planning Good planning is essential and in particular having accountability and realistic target

The 'Doing' versus 'Decision' balance

When businesses are struggling to deliver their products and services on time I often see the conflict between the doing tasks and decision tasks. It seems to be a balance that most of us have to deal with at some point in our careers and I think that most of us have a natural preference. As we progress through our job roles we move from lots of doing to lots of decision making, and in-between will be that balance where we find that just working harder won't be the solution. However, when there are decisions to be made in a business it is important for us to be aware of which side of this balance we are leaning towards.

'Designing KPIs to Drive Process Performance' now available in paperback

I'm pleased to announce that my popular KPIs book is now available in paperback via Amazon. The book is aimed at Operations Managers and Directors that need to define key performance indicators that will help the business to improve their performance levels. If you need to improve your on time delivery rates, reduce your costs or improve quality levels then this book can help you get you on your way. If done right, your KPIs can help you to react and steer your business in the right direction, not just tell you how bad (or good) things have been! To get your copy of the book please visit: US :  https://kdp.amazon.com/amazon-dp-action/us/dualbookshelf.marketplacelink/1521247986 UK :  https://kdp.amazon.com/amazon-dp-action/uk/dualbookshelf.marketplacelink/1521247986 Enjoy the read, 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