Change can take a really long time for some businesses to engage with. I don't mean the kind of rapid change that our businesses need when things are going wrong, I am talking about the longer term improvements that we all need to engage with. Do you ever watch your staff / colleagues agree to a new way of working, only to watch this approach ebb away after a few days or weeks? There may be a million reasons why the change doesn't stick. I'm sure that you can think of a whole host of reasons just off the top of your head, I know I can!

My next book to go through paperback conversion is Takt Time . Now available on Amazon, this book explains the Takt Time principle to help you better understand the degree of change you need to make in your business.

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!'.

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.

Welcome to 2018. Around this time of year many of us reflect. Mostly this reflection is around our personal lives; making resolutions for the New Year. It is also a great time to reflect on the previous year in our business' and feel energised about our plans for the upcoming twelve months.

Continuous improvement can be addictive. Identifying new improvements and making them come to life can be really satisfying, especially when you can see the benefits appear in your Key Performance Indicators . So, why do some people get lost? Is it because they have gotten involved with improvement for the sake of improvement and lost sight of why they need / want to improve? Get clear before you begin Clarity around what the improvement is meant to deliver, the target needing to be achieved, is vital. If we don't know why we are improving and specifically what needs to be improved any improvement is a good one... except we know that they are not - some give far better benefits for the same amount of effort! Like the inverse of root cause analysis, it is possible to have many outcomes if you don't control the journey. With root cause analysis you can have many symptoms stemming from one root cause. Root cause analysis works so well because it drives a st

During last week there were a number of productivity boosting lessons laying themselves out for my clients as part of their improvement projects. I have summarised them here for you to consider: Basic Office Software Skills Time and time again the ability to use the software we have in our offices comes to the fore. A small improvement in learning how to use the tools we have infront of us can make a huge difference if we have to handle information on a regular basis. If you feel that you have some weaknesses in this area then it might be really worthwhile speaking to your colleagues about how they use their software, or looking online for shortcuts and tips. Ownership versus Execution When there is no ownership of a process it can go off course! No surprises there. What was interesting last week was finding out that some of my clients were struggling with the 'execution and ownership' issue. Owning a process means that you are responsible for it. Executing a proc