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Posts Tagged ‘continuous improvement’

Innovation and Kaizen: Problem Solving and the Rule of 72

Posted in Process Improvement, tagged , , , , , on January 31, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Innovation and Kaizen are related, and one goes with the other. Innovation deals with large changes while Kaizen carries out small daily continuous improvements

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4 Principles of continuous improvement

Posted in Process Improvement, tagged , , , , on September 30, 2011 | 1 Comment »

1. Visual management. At first, finding problems to solve is relatively easy, but some have existed for so long that workarounds seem like standard practice. Rooting them out can be one of the greater challenges in later phases of the Continuous Improvement journey. The key is for people to be able to see problems when [...]

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Is it ‘good luck’ or ‘bad luck’?

Posted in Management, Process Improvement, tagged , , , , , on September 19, 2011 | 3 Comments »

There is an old Buddhist allegory about the relativity of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ luck: A wise farmer had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing this news, his neighbors came to visit him. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The next morning the horse [...]

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Kaizen versus Innovation

Posted in Innovation, tagged , , on December 16, 2010 | 4 Comments »

An ongoing debate is that innovation is better than problem solving. But in reality you cant have one without the other. Innovation is usually large scope change, kaizen is the small continuous change demanded daily. Innovation – that is large scale is scary – the smaller low key circumvents the fear mechanisms. It’s the frog [...]

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5 ways to make cost savings last

Posted in Cost Control, tagged , , on December 1, 2010 | 1 Comment »

ON THE McKinsey Quarterly website (subscription required), Ankur Agrawal, Olivia Nottebohm, and Andy West, offer insights into how companies can save money and improve productivity with “Five ways CFO’s can make cost cuts stick.” While McKinsey acknowledge the recovery is underway around the world – “the cost cutting so prevalent during the recent recession looks to [...]

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Better business technology

Posted in Process Improvement, tagged , , , , on October 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I came across this case study by McKinsey, (subscription required) which illustrates why IT should not drive business projects, that IT is an enabler not the solution itself. Otherwise we’d sack all the sales people and just employ robots and software progams. In case you don’t get a chance to read it, here is a summary: It’s [...]

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Attention and focus.

Posted in Self Management, tagged , on August 10, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Recently I wrote about attention and focus. It sparked some further thoughts. So much of consulting is about bringing to my clients attention what is not being focused on that should be. Then helping to designed systems and processes to help tem focus on the right things at the right time. For example the measurements [...]

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Putting More Energy In

Posted in Leadership, Success Factors, tagged , , , on August 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Making money is easy. If you look around at how average most thing are done, with little thought or initiative surely if you did things a little better it would be easy to make more money and take the cake. Most businesses you visit have poor service, the environment is dirty or at least not [...]

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How To Simplify Your Business

Posted in Articles, Process Improvement, tagged , , , , on April 7, 2008 | 1 Comment »

7 Steps To Streamline Every Area of Your Business For every step you introduce into a process the complexity increases exponentially. Actually is increases by the ‘square’ of the number of steps involved. That is one step has a complexity factor 1 squared = 1. A two-step process has a complexity factor of 2 squared [...]

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