Many businesses that I visit seem have either one, or two, people that seem to have an inordinate amount of information held in their heads. These people are often referred to as ‘Oracles’, or similar and they are often the go to person when trouble hits the business. Move your business away from the re-active superheroes with Losing the Cape. Available on Amazon. When I started my working life I was, understandably, in awe of these individuals. How did they know so much? How did they get so good? I was impressed with their abilities and what they were able to do when it was crunch time.

My first book in three years has finally arrived - Losing the Cape ! Do you have super heroes in your business? Losing the Cape  is on the hunt for the super heroes incidents that shouldn't exist, the ones that they have to leap into action for because of poor management and badly executed processes. This is your time to shine and root out the real problems that are lurking in your business, the issues that are masked by people leaping into action. The issues that zap your productivity and ability to run your business as you would want. We all need our heroes, for when the time is right. But, for the majority of situations, they have to leap into action because something simpler, and in our control, is broken. The book is split into two halves. Part one looks at what the cape is and why it exists. Part two offers a range of strategies and methods to help you quickly and practically remove the need to wear capes in your business. Good news  - as part of the launch of L

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

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

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

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.

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