I was in a meeting today where the topic of options came up for a restructure of a business unit. These sorts of topics don ’ t normally come my way, but the nature of the conversation was the bit that piqued my interest. It was clear that there was already an option on the table, and because of this option every other alternative was being ignored. In many cases, the other options usually contain good, or better, results than the one being discussed. Getting stuck with the first option that comes your way is not often a great strategy. Being stuck with just one option can limit the results that can be obtained. What if the ideas of the rest of the team members could be mixed up to produce new ideas? It is often the partial ideas of others that can allow a new and improved solution to be stitched together. I recall working with a group of apprentices and their ‘ half-baked ’ solutions (as their former manager called them) were able to be linked and this resulted in a quadrupling

Nine new modules have been added to the Making It Happen programme, my online course sharing straightforward and effective continual improvement strategies and approaches. The really good news is that have all been added to the free month section of the programme! (You can find out more about the Making It Happen programme at  http://www.making-it-happen.website/ ) This means that the free month of the programme now includes: On day one you get access to the  Productivity Boost  modules: The End of a Process A quick review of your main business processes’ effectiveness by focusing on the last step in the process. Hour of Pain An effective strategy to buy some time to help you with your improvements. Measuring Your Productivity If you don’t know where you are now, how will you know when your projects have made a proper contribution to your business? Personal Losses If you don’t know where your time gets sucked away to you will be less effective

Would you like a tour through my You ’ re Late!!! guide, to help you put the ideas into action? If you sign up for my email updates using the link below you can download my guide right away and then receive fifteen emails over the next fifteen days to help you get the most from the ideas and strategies that are in the guide. You ’ ll get help and advice on:          Driving up your OTIF performance.           Prioritising your improvement plans.           Building a team around you.           Making sure your improvement plans realise their results.          Getting stuck projects moving. I hope that you ’ ll find the email course to be really useful. 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 impr

I was in a fast food restaurant the other day. KFC was shut due to the chicken shortage and I used one of their competitors. Don't judge me, I had just gotten over the flu and now I was hungry! My experience was fascinating; this other fast food business was in absolute chaos. Their staff were all looking confused, food was building up in a pile on a table near the serving area and it took me nearly twenty minutes to get my order... No, this isn't a sob story this is a reminder to all of us that we need to stick to our operating rules (when our rules are right, of course). The business in question is usually a fantastic example of a well oiled team with a slick operation , but with a slight increase in custom they tried to adjust their system 'on the fly' and got it wrong. In this business everyone knows what they have to do, when they have to do it and how well they need to do it. On this particular visit I could see supervisors trying to 'help'

Yesterday I got notification that my book ‘Losing the Cape’ is now available on iBooks. Losing the Cape is written for those of you that are fed up with the constant fire fighting that takes place within your business and want a way out of this situation.

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

I am in the process of developing the Making It Happen site to host the Improvement Club. This updated site will not only include the original Making It Happen library, but also the other courses, kits and products that I have created over the years. As part of the subscription there will be the opportunity to ask me a continuous improvement question each month, specifically for you and your business. I would very much like to get some feedback on the direction I am currently taking with this new service. If you have three minutes to spare could you answer the following questions? Thanks, Giles Loading... 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. Discover practical improvement strategies to drive up productivity f