There are many myths in the world, ranging from Bigfoot to bumblebee's defying the laws of physics (they don't) and of course the Loch Ness Monster (who is just shy and wants to be left alone). It seems that myths are still very real in the world of work as well. Work-life balance is impossible, remote working is inefficient, workplace conflict can...

The Daily Check in is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, its a check in session where daily schedules, activities and issue alerts are shared between the team so everyone starts on the same page each day. The meeting should last no more than 5 minutes, 10 minutes at the most! There is no agenda for this meeting and you sho...

Productivity is a fickle thing, it can drive you to make some interesting and costly decisions in the name of getting more out of your process. Organisations the world over get sucked into the belief that to improve productivity, you have to open the wallet and spend the profits (or the overdraft) to become more productive. How much are you being b...

I always remember the 1st time I helped implement 5S into a factory. 5S (Sort, Set, Shine, Standardise and Sustain) is one of the many 'tools' used by organisations when moving to lean thinking. The driving force was actually from the maintenance department at the time rather than operations, which still surprises some people. People stil...

One of the challenges with quality management is building systems and processes that are simple enough for people to use, and want to use, but be robust enough to give you what you need to achieve. As I've talked about before, we spend a lot of time with clients helping them simplify their systems, people will use a simple system every day of the w...

As part of a run down on the 4 Meeting structure which really comes out of Patrick Lencioni's book Death By Meeting (also referenced in his book The Advantage) last week we talked about the 5 minute meeting, this week it's the Weekly Tactical Meeting we're discussing. You'll remember from our summary (check here if you don't!) that this is the 45-9...

Every organisation has problems, it doesn't matter how big or how small the organisation, there are always problems. They come in all shapes and sizes from little niggles like there's no A3 paper for the printer again to we have to do a full recall of the product all the way to the more serious we may have to shut the company down. There is a myria...

Unfortunately, Most continuous improvement programs fail, either completely or they fail to live up tot eh hype and expectations that are set up front for them The reason for this is that they are focusing only on delivering the "big bang", they make a big song and dance about this new latest thing and hope that it'll work, like the noise of t...

How many times have you heard that a new process or a business change was being done to align to 'best practice'? Other phrases in the same mould are 'that this new process or methodology has worked in many organisation before it'll work here' or even better, 'we work to 'industry standard'? They are all the same thing when it boils down to it, a s...

We were recently invited to take part in a webinar with the Craig from Mango to talk about continuous Improvement and how a little can go a long way. When it comes to Continuous Improvement there seems to be a belief that you have go large if you want to have any major impact on your organisation. You don't! In fact, more than that, you s...