Why does our productivity rarely meet our own expectations? When planning our work, most of us make a reasonable effort to estimate how long we’ll need. While any given task seems perfectly doable on its own, when we string together a sequence of them we rarely achieve our target. If we were as productive as
This is Part Two of our series on the ‘Explore’ phase of The U Journey to guide an organisation through a transformation. In Part One we looked at how to set up the Foundation Workshop for success. We considered its purpose, where it fits in the overall U Journey and some social processes required to
Bringing about deep change in an organisation is hard. Legendary management consultant W Edwards Deming claimed that transformation was simply not possible without profound knowledge: appreciation for a system, knowledge of variation, theory of knowledge and the psychology of people society and change. With my engineering background, I appreciate the systems view, understand variation, and
In the movie City Slickers, cowboy Jack Palance is riding with Billy Crystal who’s slowly shrugging off a midlife crisis. He asks if Crystal knows what the secret of life is. ‘No, what?’ The old-timer raises his index finger and, pausing for dramatic effect, says, ‘One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and
The latest in our series that uses the ‘book review’ format as a springboard into a wider conversation about the world of work—and how to do it better. One Mission by Chris Fussell ____________________________ It’s become fashionable to rail against hierarchy and to assume that people, once energised by their mission, can organise themselves into
Have you heard about this amazing form of personal transport? In a city, it’s often faster than a car; in the country, it connects you to nature. It’s cheap, green and keeps you fit. The bicycle may not be the jetpack we hoped for as children, but it does all as advertised. So why aren’t
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