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I keep on knocking but I can’t get in
If you were running a repairs service, how many times out of 100 would you expect someone to be in when you knocked on the door? You would want to get as close to 100 as possible wouldn’t you, as...
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Office Politics
Are you a Manager? Are you reading this in the comfort of your own office? Your very own office? Well done! Having your own office is important; it lets everyone else know that you are important and...
View ArticlePerfect Flow’s Smarta Bid Wins Support From Local MP
Reaction to Perfect Flow being named as one of the 100 most innovative and disruptive small companies in the UK; “It is good to see that a local company, Perfect Flow Solutions, have made it into the...
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Tales from the Private Sector; the rush to get the figures out
Month end is the dread of every finance department. The pressure is always on to “get the figures out”. The figures are normally based on monthly management accounts and contain some sort of variation...
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Run for the hills; it’s Lean and Investors in People!
Two, true tales from the coalface today; Little Miss Lean and Mr IiP. The first tale is one of Little Miss Lean. I have heard and read Seddon’s thoughts on lean, but had no strong feelings about it...
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Battleships
The recent blog by Systems Thinking For Girls about the Corporate Shame Avoidance Scheme brought back some exciting memories of pre-meetings and shame avoidance tactics we engaged in as repairs...
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Little Boxes – a blog of two halves
The boxes you see below were a feature of all repairs services throughout the country in the last decade. As it happens, the photo was taken earlier this year, proving that they are alive and well in...
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Little Boxes Pt2 – Jigsaws Are Better
In part one of this blog, I concluded that repairs scheduling is fundamentally flawed. Maintenance companies try to shoehorn irregular shaped jobs into nice, standardised boxes and it leads to...
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Say cheese, but don’t smile
This blog post owes a debt to John Seddon’s excellent tale about chicken wings on the new Vanguard website. The reason for writing this is that, whilst in Pizza Express the other night, I found myself...
View ArticleA room without a view
It’s probably not a good idea to blog angry, but here goes. This was supposed to be about my own recent experience of NHS treatment, but that blog is now on hold after I went to visit my Gran in...
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Admirable Service
Failure demand – caused by the failure to do something, or to do something right, from the customer’s perspective. What does that mean then? How about a hypothetical example to help me explain: Suppose...
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The Unnecessary Inconvenience of Click and Collect
Two observations this week have caused me to return to my favourite topic: home deliveries. Whilst driving home yesterday I was listening to BBC Radio 5 Live. The discussion turned to the financial...
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What Poses More Danger To The NHS; Dirty Data Or Dumb Leadership?
Writing blogs on poor management of the NHS is like shooting the proverbial fish in the barrel, but two articles in the papers this weekend have raised the insanity levels higher than ever. The first...
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A Very Average Blog
An article in the Independent on Sunday reminded me of a nice little exercise we do to help people identify the difference between good and bad performance measures. Take a look at the below table,...
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Deeply Dippy from Dangerous Data
News agencies across the country have been frothing at the mouth over the possibility of a triple dip recession. I have puzzled over this term for a while now, as headline-friendly economic analysis...
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Insurance costs down! Or up! Maybe.
Thanks to @SimonJGuilfoyle for pointing out this fantastic good news story about record falls in the cost of our car insurance. You see, the AA tracks price changes in our insurance costs and publishes...
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Clutter!
Recently, I was lucky enough to stay in a wonderful old house in France. You could actually feel the history in the place and it provided a wonderful setting for a break. What intrigued me about the...
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Customer Careless
Take this simple test to find out how good your organisation is at looking after its’ customers. Award yourself one point for each of these features that your organisation boasts: Performance...
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Happy New Year?
Happy New Year! No, really, I hope 2014 is very happy for you. How happy is ‘very happy’? Very happy indeed, I say. How will we all know if you’ve succeeded in having as happy a 2014 as I’m wishing...
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Losing Your Cherry and Nominal Value
Hands up who does their grocery shopping online? Now keep your hands up if you’ve ever taken delivery of an item that has left you scratching your head? That’s all of you then. This delivery...
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