Management meetings Do you ever lose the will to live in management meetings? Sometimes they are so bad I want to scoop out my eyeballs with a tea-spoon. I’d do anything to get out of the conversation. I hate futile meetings that are a waste of everybody’s time — usually highly paid people’s time. Here […]
The Rules of the Workplace
The 20 rules: Prioritise the work Don’t make your customers wait There is always more work than people Study the work Understand how the work works Standardise the work If the work is important write it down Train your staff Make the work easy Build systems Stream line the work Find the bottleneck Clean the […]
“Group Think” is no Laughing Matter
In the 1970’s the psychologist Irving Janis coined the term “group think” to explain why group pressure results in poor decisions, or, as he explained it, why groups show: A deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement That is a little more erudite than the way I would put it, but the phrase […]
Do You Hold Morning Briefings Like a TV Star?
If you are of a certain age you will have Hill Street Blues burned into your memory. One of the biggest TV shows of the 80’s. It was horribly schmaltzy. Admit it, you watched it Now you might be wondering, what that has this got to do with running a service operation? At the start […]
6 Ways to Avoid Endless Meetings
I spent 7 straight hours in meetings yesterday Have you ever thought to yourself that: you might just be able to do some of the things that you said you would do in one meeting if you didn’t spend all your time in the next meeting explaining why it is you haven’t done what you […]