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The Art of Managing Complexity

26 May, 2020 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Fire Fighting In the late noughties, Michelle Barton and Kathleen Sutcliffe carried out a study of wildfires in the US.  They were interested in understanding how the firefighters went about managing complexity in their job. The researchers wanted to understand why some fires were well controlled and brought to a swift and happy conclusion, whilst […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: command and control, communication, complexity, culture, gemba, management by wandering around

We Don’t Need Another Hero

30 March, 2020 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Strange times The world has turned upside down.  We are staggering from crisis to crisis.  The word unprecedented is no longer unprecedented.  I might just punch the next person who uses it. Our plans unravel, we have no idea what the future holds and we don’t have a scooby how it is going to end. […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: culture, empowerment, listening, management style

Stopping the Suicidal

23 November, 2019 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Preventing bad behaviour From the start of the industrial revolution to the mid 20th century, we British have used town gas. It lit our streets, fired our boilers and cooked our roast dinners.  Town gas was a by-product of the coke manufacturing industry.  Heating coal in the absence of oxygen removes the impurities and produces […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: accident prevention, culture, error proofing, human nature, reinforcing behaviour

Stating the Blindingly Obvious

7 August, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

High Performing Teams If there’s a subject that will get the good people in H.R. excited it is high performing teams.  They are the holy grail of human resource management.  Everybody wants a high performing team. Conventional wisdom tells you to get the “best-of-breed”. Find the most capable sales men, ops guys, marketeers and technical wizards and […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: communication, culture, listening, office productivity, organisation, performance management, research, SMART goals, systems thinking, teamwork

The Performance Pyramid

6 July, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

F1 Professor Mark Jenkins Mark Jenkins is the Professor of Business Strategy at Cranfield School of Management. He has spent time studying Formula One, trying to understand what creates great performance. I’m a bit sceptical of people who study “great” organisations. The genre leading books In Search of Excellence and Good to Great have both […]

Filed Under: Best of the Web, Employee Engagement Tagged With: continuous improvement, culture, learning, management style, purpose, teamwork

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