The land grab In the 17th and 18th centuries the European superpowers; Britain, Spain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands were racing to conquer the world. They were hell bent on colonising the Americas, Africa and Asia for themselves. The Europeans were engage in a land grab of monumental proportions. The colonies were dependant on the […]
The Quick Fix Makes Things Worse
Shifting the burden Lord I have had a bad day! I knew it was going to be a bad day when my diary showed I was stuck in back to back meetings for eight hours on the trot. Worse still, those meetings had been shrunk to 30 minutes each. That way I could have […]
Short-Term Management
The curse of short-termism We focus on the immediate future: The stock market obsesses about interim returns Politicians like to see instant results Managers must hit quarterly targets We rarely look beyond the next 6 months. It is easy to hit a short-term target It doesn’t take too much talent or imagination: If you have to cut […]
100% Utilisation Isn’t a Good Idea
Improving Efficiency Your job as a manager is to deliver the best service at the lowest cost. Cost and service are all that ever worries the guys upstairs. Conventional wisdom is that the easiest way to do that is to keep your staff fully occupied. Ensure they are always working as fast as possible without […]
Do You Understand the System?
The pressure is on Your cost base is spiralling upwards, your boss is squealing, and his boss is squealing louder. Unless you get a firm grip of the situation you are going to get lots of “executive help”. You need to do something and do it now. When caught like this it is easy — perhaps […]