Design Error I’m in the doghouse. Mrs Lawther asked me to do the washing whilst she was out. As I am a modern man and expect to do my bit, I was happy to comply with the request. Unfortunately, there was a complication. The washing included my wife’s very chic and expensive dress. Ordinarily, this […]
The Power of Cooperation
Koffie Met Slagroom Anyone? I went on holiday last month. No sun-soaked Caribbean beach for me. Instead, it was the joys of Northern Europe. It rained every single day and then the rain became stormy (you should experience the Rotterdam to Hull ferry in a force eight gale, it is a big boat but it […]
A Very Public Screw Up
Blame Culture, Isolate the Problem, Not the Person At the Portuguese Grand Prix in 1991, Formula One racing provided a textbook example of why organisations should avoid a blame culture. Nigel Mansell, driving for the Williams-Renault team, was in first place as he pulled in for a pit stop. What should have been a slick […]
Take Me To Your Leader!
Leadership Versus Management Fashions change, over the past twenty years we have stopped valuing management and started to value leadership. In an effort to promote leadership, businesses around the country have rechristend their “senior management teams” as “senior leadership teams”. I even worked for an organisation that insisted that all managers were called leaders, presumably […]
Risk Compensation
Understanding Risk Compensation — Because Error Proofing Isn’t Enough Road safety is an excellent example of a system where many have tried to change the public’s behaviour and stop things from going wrong. Error proofing is a common approach, making things easy to get right and difficult to get wrong, but it isn’t without its […]