When you parked your car this morning did you lock it and put valuables in the boot, so they don't get stolen? What about when you left your house, I bet that was locked up, windows closed, oven and cooker off so as not to burn the place down. You don't want come home and find that your house is empty of all your possessions, that your family photo...

When you make the decision to really look at information security there are a number of options available to you in terms of how to do it and what standards to follow - NIST, COBIT, ISA, CIS or ISO. The great thing about ISO27001 for Information Security is that it really does cover all the bases and like the updates to ISO9001, 14001, 45001, ISO 2...

I get asked pretty much every week what Lean is, what's its purpose, how can it possibly help my organisation, we don't make cars, or volume or even, we don't make anything – we are a service organisation! From time to time I also get told "we don't want lean here – we don't want to see people losing their jobs". I've even had the whole 6 sigma vs ...

"If you want to cut someone's hair, they need to be in the room". I heard that phrase a while ago and it's continued to bounce round my brain nonstop since then because frankly it's brilliant. If you want to understand leadership, engagement and one of the most fundamental tenants of lean, respect for people, then that's the phrase, that I think, w...

When Taiichi Ohno started the journey that was to revolutionise not just Toyota but the manufacturing world, which has now spread across all organisations including services and even healthcare and construction. Ohno started with good old-fashioned Industrial Engineering, that was his job. Today universally it's referred to as lean, but at its core...

Suppose you are sitting in your home, reading your favourite book when there's a bit of a bang and the light above you goes out. Now you are sitting there trying to read in the dark, what do you do? Obviously, there are options, you can just get up and move to somewhere that has a working light, you could go to the cupboard you keep the spare bulbs...

When I talk with clients undertaking their lean journey about heading towards one-piece flow in their processes, they tend to be slightly nervous. There are lots of discussions about how that will make things more expensive (it doesn't) and that it will slow things down (it won't) but mostly the thing I get is, well that may work in some places but...

We launched a 30 second survey a few weeks back to ask the main question, What is your biggest challenge in gaining engagement in your Continuous Improvement Programs? and the results are in. We had a great response with just over 180 people adding their input to the question and a big thank you to those who did. In the survey we asked a couple of ...

I've never understood how being busy, having a full calendar somehow became a badge of honour, I'm so important that there is no time, it wouldn't surprise me to hear someone say they were actually booked 25hrs in one day! It's a madness that seems to be getting to epidemic levels. What does your calendar look like? Is it full of really important m...

Work groups are characterized by the least amount of interdependence. They are based on organizational or managerial hierarchy. Work groups may meet periodically to hear and share information. Teams are highly interdependent - they plan work, solve problems, make decisions, and review progress in service of a specific project. Team members need one...